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

Coming soon.

Question

Coming soon.

Reflections

Chewy Words

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.

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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.

In today’s lectionary text, Jesus outmaneuvers a group of Sadducees who have come to make fun of his belief in the resurrection of the dead. The Sadducees represented an aristocratic, wealthy, and elite segment of the Jewish social hierarchy. They were also, in their way, something like “scriptural inerrantists” for their time. Seeing no explicit statement of a universal resurrection from the dead in the Biblical texts, they rejected it as fanciful.

When they try to trap Jesus in a logical riddle about the implications of the Law and the afterlife, Jesus essentially answers that their imaginations are too small. Why assume, he says, that the same rules will hold for those raised from the dead? He also rebukes them for not reading their cherished scriptures closely enough: “The fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed.”

It’s easy, from a place of power and privilege, to treat the afterlife like an afterthought. We may live this life feeling we have “received our reward in full.” But the hope for resurrection is not merely personal; it leaps from the “dream of utter aliveness” that exists in every human being. That “flaming source” which burns especially hot in the hearts of those who, whether by poverty or violence, have not had the privilege of feeling truly, freely alive—and know it.

Known for his role in the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes’s poetry invites us into the joy, the hope, and the agony of African American life in the 20th Century. Though his own spiritual beliefs were complicated, he understood the “dream of utter aliveness” well, enough to “demand” that it listen, touch, heal his “body of utter death” and show him that same reality which Jesus called, “God not of the dead, but of the living.”

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.

See the complete prayer >