Proper 27 (32) – Year C
22nd Sunday after Pentecost: November 9, 2025
Gospel Lectionary Text
Luke 20:27-38
20:27 Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him
20:28 and asked him a question, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.
20:29 Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless;
20:30 then the second
20:31 and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless.
20:32 Finally the woman also died.
20:33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her."
20:34 Jesus said to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage;
20:35 but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.
20:36 Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.
20:37 And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.
20:38 Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive."
Context
Welcome to the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost. For the last several weeks, Jesus has been traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem, by way of Samaria. In this week’s Gospel, he finally arrives in Jerusalem, where he is confronted by the Sadducees. Unlike the Pharisees, who accepted the prophets and the wisdom texts that taught there is an afterlife, the Sadducees only recognized the first five books of the Bible (Torah), which don't mention it.
In an attempt to trap Jesus, they concoct an absurd (if not obscene) riddle based on what’s known as Levirate law (Deut. 25:5–6; Gen. 38): If seven brothers each marry the same widowed woman, whose wife will she be in the life to come? It’s tempting to read this as a debate between two equal and opposite ideas. It’s not. It’s an encounter between two very different and unequal modes of existence — one formed by Death and the other by Life.
In Edwin A. Abbott’s famous parable Flatland (1884), a three-dimensional character enters a two-dimensional world and tries to communicate the existence of the third dimension to “flatlanders.” They can't comprehend it and vehemently deny it.
The Sadducees (like all of us) are flatlanders. They live in a flat world with flat lives, ruled and run by Death. They can only see reality from that perspective. Anything to do with the afterlife is imagined as a continuation of their flat lives. But Jesus rejects the premise of their question. Resurrection isn’t about prolonging our flat lives. It’s about participating in the Life of God. And this isn’t something that begins after we die. It’s breaking into our flatlander existence now.
Jesus says, those who belong to the age of resurrection “cannot die anymore.” Why? Because we find ourselves undergoing the multidimensional reality of Life itself. This changes everything, including who belongs to who.
Question
The Sadducees try to engage Jesus in an absurd if not obscene argument. Jesus awakens their dead imaginations with the utter aliveness of God. In the presence of resurrection aliveness no one is reduced to an object that can be given or taken. We all become subjects of humanizing love. How is Jesus inviting you to practice resurrection now?
Reflections
Chewy Words
By Ojii BaBa Madi |
Just as the Sadducees in today’s Gospel refused to accept the realities of the resurrection, systems of privilege can be averse to the realities of those experiencing poverty, even while offering lofty banter on their behalf.
Children of the Resurrection
By Joel Van Dyke |
The Gospel not only empowers us to see, but to see from a particular vantage point-through the unconstrained eyes of a child. It is an invitation to see from within the reality of the resurrection. Jesus is now in Jerusalem. On the way, he stops to weep over Jerusalem before taking time to cleanse the…
Praying Eucharistically - Weekly Homily by James Alison:
Understanding the Bible anew through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard.
Poetry
This week, we invite you to read and reflect on “Demand,” by Langston Hughes. Known for his role in the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes invites us, through his poetry, into the joy, hope, and agony of African American life in the 20th century. Here, the speaker of the poem demands that the “dream of utter aliveness” listen, touch, and heal their “body of utter death.”
How might you freshly read Jesus’ rebuke of the Sadducees in this week’s gospel lectionary text — “God, not of the dead, but of the living” — in light of Hughes’ poem?
Demand
by Langston Hughes
Listen!
Dear dream of utter aliveness-
Touching my body of utter death-
Tell me, O quickly! dream of aliveness,
The flaming source of your bright breath.
Tell me, O dream of utter aliveness-
Knowing so well the wind and the sun-
Where is this light
Your eyes see forever?
And what is the wind
You touch when you run?
Prayer
This week, the call to prayer comes from the Street Psalms Centering Prayer:
Come, Holy Spirit, wild and free. Do as you please. Shine your light on me that I might see things as they are, not as I am. Free me to act in your name with courage, creativity, and compassion.
