We’re going to talk about money a little bit (that’s a good way to stampede the herd, isn’t it?), but first we’re going to talk about Jesus.

When we find him this morning, he’s teaching in the Temple, and we’ve been told that the religious leaders and the political leaders have been "looking for a way to kill him, but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard." (Lk. 19:47-48.) Spellbound.

The leaders realized that Jesus is too popular for them to just arrest him, so they adopt a different tactic. They’ll discredit him. They will bait Jesus, try to trick him and trap him and trip him up. So they come at him with wave after wave of carefully crafted insincere questions that they think are airtight ways of shutting him up, of choking him off.

You know, I feel sorry for the people who were spellbound. Have you ever been spellbound by somebody, just hanging on to every word, and then somebody else starts asking questions that are really a speech in question form, or are designed to discredit the person? I have. And I just feel sorry for those folks who were spellbound by Jesus, just soaking up the Good News, and then had to watch him deal with all these carefully crafted questions designed to discredit him.

Anyway, one of the questions they pose is a really odd question about marriage in the afterlife. What you have to remember is, this is all about resurrection. The people asking the question are not really looking for an answer; it’s a trap. We know that because the question is asked by Sadducees, the priests and aristocrats who controlled the Temple. Sadducees believed that only the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, were authoritative, and since they didn’t see anything in those books about the afterlife, they didn’t believe in it; they didn’t believe in resurrection. The Pharisees disagreed. They included the prophets in Scripture and believed in the afterlife. This conflict between the Sadducees and the Pharisees over resurrection was the hot issue of their time, and Jesus sided with the Pharisees. So when the Sadducees ask Jesus a question about the afterlife, we know it’s a set-up, because they don’t even believe in the afterlife or resurrection.

Now, here’s the background to their question: in the Book of Deuteronomy, the law says that if a man dies without a male heir, his brother is to take the widow as a wife, and the first born son of that marriage takes the name of the dead brother so that his name is not "blotted out of Israel." In fact, it’s kind of interesting that if the brother doesn’t marry the widow, she can tell the elders, and they will meet with him and tell him to do it. If he still refuses, she can humiliate him by hauling him before the elders and pulling off his sandal and spitting in his face. (Deut. 25:5-6.) Now, I understand that it is humiliating to have someone spit in your face, but apparently having a woman pull off your sandal was pretty embarrassing, too, because, Deuteronomy says that from then on, "throughout Israel his family shall be known as ‘the house of him whose sandal was pulled off.’" (Deut. 25:7-10.)

Now, this practice had died out by Jesus’ time because polygamy was no longer practiced, but the Sadducees don’t care about that. They’re using this arcane old statue to trap Jesus, to get him to say, "You’re right; that doesn’t make any sense; there must not be an afterlife after all." Or at least to get him to say, "I dunno."

So they say, "All right, you believe in the afterlife: suppose this business about a man marrying his brother’s wife happens six times to one amazingly unlucky woman who is widowed seven times. She’s had seven husbands. Whose wife will she be in the resurrection?"

Well, I suppose that if I were Jesus, I might have tried to evade the question with some wisecrack about the need for an investigation of any woman who has buried seven husbands. Sounds to me like a made-for-TV movie.

But Jesus answers. He says that in heaven, there will be no need for our struggle to focus on and truly love one person. We will truly love everyone, and they will truly love us. We will give and receive love that is unconditional, unmotivated, undifferentiated. We will be like angels; we’ll be children of God, being children of the resurrection. It’s a beautiful vision, a gorgeous vision, given in response to an ugly, mean-spirited question.

Then he takes on the ugly motivation behind the question: their disbelief in the resurrection and their attempt to trap him. "And the fact that the dead are raised" he says, "Moses himself showed, in the story about the burning bush where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." The point, Jesus says, using the Scripture they agree is authoritative, is that God says "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Not "I was." "I am." "Now," Jesus says, "he is the God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive."

And then everybody was afraid to ask him anything else.

OK, what’s all that got to do with money? You’re going to have to help me figure that out. Look, I know that lots of you hate it when we talk about money in church. I’ve heard some of you tell me that you had terrible experiences in other churches when it seemed like all they talked about was money. But money is an important spiritual issue. So we need to talk about it every once in a while.

But I know it makes you uncomfortable, so let’s talk about Jesus some more. But if we’re going to do that, I’m going to need your help. I’m going to need you to answer some questions, not like God’s "frozen chosen," sitting there silently, but out loud, like you mean it. Will you do that? OK, then.

In this rather tense confrontation with the Sadducees, Jesus manages to preach the good news. To the people who are spellbound, to us, he’s saying, "You are resurrection people." "You are resurrection people. God will lift you up."

I think that’s a big deal. When the Sadducees try to trap him with their carefully crafted question into admitting there is no resurrection, Jesus not only manages to refute their argument, but at the same time to say to the spellbound people hanging on every word, "You are resurrection people. God will lift you up."

I think that’s a big deal. Am I by myself on this? Do you think it’s a big deal?

I think it’s a really big deal. I think that knowing that we are resurrection people, that we will be lifted up, becomes the organizing principle of our lives. Am I right?

I think that knowing we are resurrection people becomes the basis of our identity. Am I right?

I think that knowing we are resurrection people affects how we treat one another. Am I right?

I think that knowing we are resurrection people affects how we do our jobs. Am I right?

I think that knowing we are resurrection people affects how we tell other folks about the Good News of Jesus Christ. Am I right?

I think that knowing we are resurrection people affects how we use our time. Am I right?

I think that knowing we are resurrection people affects how we use our gifts. Am I right?

I think that knowing we are resurrection people affects every part of our lives. Am I right about that?

Oh. Every part of our lives? You mean that every part of our lives that is affected by us being resurrection people?

Oh. Well, then, I guess that’s what this has to do with money.