Whose Wife Is She, Anyway?

 

Whose Wife Is She, Anyway? 

Luke 20:27-38 

2025-11-09 

What's happened lately that you found embarrassing -- to yourself? What have you done lately that embarrassed someone else? Like, Jesus?

--

 If you could ask Jesus ONE question, what would it be? 

 

 In the Gospel According to Luke, the Sadducees are only mentioned ONE time. They get ONE visit to Jesus, to ask him ONE question. And of all the questions in the universe, they ask him a trick question, designed to make him look dumb. Good luck with that.

"Whose wife is she, anyway?" Who cares? The REAL question is, "Why do we ask Jesus anything in the first place?" 

Do we honestly WANT his answer? Or do we just want him to agree? To acknowledge that we're right, and we're smart, and we're going to heaven? Ahead of all the lower-ranked competition?

What do we use Jesus to prove? About ourselves? TO us? And to anyone watching?

The whole idea of fooling Jesus made fools of the Sadducees. It makes fools of us, too.

--

Embarrassment and shame.

Are you the kind of person who wakes up at 3 in the morning remembering times you were embarrassed? Or worse, ashamed of something you did? Yesterday? Or 40 years ago?

I can tell by your faces I'm not the only one.

"Why did I say that to my boss?"

"How long has that strip of toilet paper been stuck to my shoe?"

"Why in the world did I marry HIM?"

Embarrassment's one thing. The FEAR of being embarrassed, the FEAR of being embarrassed is even worse.

"What if my boss thinks I'm an idiot?"

"What if this guy I'm marrying's an idiot?"

"What if I'm an idiot?"

I think the Sadducees in this story were horribly insecure.

After all, their income and their status depended on making people think they were as smart as God.

But you don't go asking Jesus trick questions, you don't go making bargains with Jesus -- if you're not UP HIGH on the insecurity spectrum.

The Sadducees were probably asking themselves questions like:

"What if -- Jesus is smarter than we are?"

"What if -- we're wrong about God? And religion?"

"What if -- we should have chosen another career path?"

Insecurity is the fear of embarrassment.

Don't get me wrong. Sometimes we SHOULD have regrets.

Sometimes we do wrong things, bad things, that SHOULD embarrass us, should make us ashamed. Even ARRESTED.

"What if -- trying to steal the ATM was a bad idea?"

And who HASN'T asked themselves that?

I'm sure you know some Sadducees. They're still around. They have this compulsion to show how bad, or how dumb, or how wrong someone ELSE is in order to prove how smart THEY are.

News flash: We're not Jesus. 

Embarrassment is going to happen. 

It's just part of being human. 

So why are we so afraid of it? Especially when it comes to religion and the Bible?

 

--  

Trick questions. 

We're all familiar with the "Gotcha" questions people on the news get asked.

There may be no such thing as a "stupid" question, but there are sure are questions designed to make us look stupid. 

That's the kind of question the Sadducees dreamed up for Jesus. 

When someone quotes the Bible at you, unsolicited, they're almost always showing off. "You illiterate Presbyterian. Ha!"

The Sadducees quote Deuteronomy 25. You know someone's smart if they can quote Deuteronomy. A lot of us have trouble FINDING Deuteronomy. It's right after Numbers. (Oh, THAT helps.)

"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."  

- Deuteronomy 25

This was the way the Jewish people cared for a grieving widow back then.  

It's called Levirate Marriage.  

If your husband dies, his younger brother "inherits" you and has naming rights to any future offspring. 

Unlike a lot of other societies, Jewish law required that widows and orphans be cared for.  

We might not be keen on how they did it. But that's Deuteronomy for you.

So, Sadducees. Please go on.

Once upon a time, there were seven brothers. 

The oldest dies. 

The next oldest inherits his former sister-in-law, who now becomes his wife. 

And so it goes, and so she goes, passed down the line of brothers, each of whom died. 

7-6-5-4-3-2-1. 

Then, the woman dies, too. 

(She's probably thinking, Praise the Lord!) 

And then – THEN finally -- the Sadducees get to their devilish little question.  

"So, In the resurrection, Rabbi Jesus, whose wife will she be?"  

Their goal was embarrassment.

-- 

YOUR public humiliation.

When was the last time you got embarrassed?  

In public? 

Can you remember the first time? 

Maybe you were young and you denied all knowledge of the Cookie Jar. With crumbs on your face.

Or when you were called up to the front of the class to solve a math problem.

Or you said something that made all the other kids laugh at you. 

In our church we had a local TV meteorologist. She was the first female Chief Meterorologist in the market, so people watched her, not for the weather, but to see her make a mistake. 

She said her biggest worry was showing up on one of those TikTok video collections of local news gone wrong. You know, like when their clothes match the Chromakey and their head's floating in midair.

LOL. For us.

Good for you if you've never gone viral.

It's another reason teachers to take up phones in school.

--

Who were Sadducees?

The Sadducees were the temple elite. The one percent.

Wealthy. Powerful. Arrogant.

Sadducees recognized only the first five books of Scripture: 

Genesis through Deuteronomy. 

Not the prophets. Not the Psalms. That'll be important in a minute.

They didn't believe in angels, 

or in eternal life. 

To them, when you die — you die. That's it. 

Imagine there's no heaven, no hell. No afterlife. That's them.

So… they were asking a question whose answer they didn't believe in. 

They didn't want an answer.  

They wanted embarrassment.  

"At the resurrection, whose wife will she be?" 

OK., more Jewish history.

Back then, there wasn't any understanding of individual resurrection. 

Like, how at funerals we say, "She or he's now with Jesus." 

So, when they say, "resurrection," they mean, THE Resurrection. 

One big one -- at the end of time. For everybody. 

Like in Ezekiel 37 where it talks about dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.

Or as in Daniel 12:2: 

"Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake…."  

But the Sadducees didn't even have those parts of the Bible in their Bibles. 

To them, afterlife was a joke. 

So when they came to Jesus with their little riddle, they were mocking Jesus.  

They were mocking the faith of the less-educated, the poor, the commonfolk.  

Members of the wrong denominations.

But Jesus -- because he's Jesus -- answers the Sadducees' gotcha question with authority and with scripture. 

"The people of this age marry and are given in marriage," he says, 

"but those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age 

and in the resurrection from the dead 

will neither marry nor be given in marriage." 

(Luke 20:34–35.) 

He's telling them — 

the life to come isn't just a continuation of this life. 

It's transformation. 

Then he quotes the Scripture they DO accept — one from the second book of their Bible:

Exodus 3:6 — 

where God speaks to Moses from the burning bush: 

"I am the God of Abraham, 

the God of Isaac, 

and the God of Jacob." 

And Jesus explains, 

"He is not the God of the dead, 

but of the living..." "For all are alive to him."

(Luke 20:38.) 

And the crowd goes: "Whoa."

Since we aren't first century Jews we might not totally get Jesus's answer. That's OK. Religion is complicated.

Bottom line: Jesus outgamed the gamers. They embarrassed themselves.

And because of his answer, not just here, but throughout Scripture we can have hope.

That's the hope we confess every time we say, 

"I believe in the resurrection of the body, 

and the life everlasting." 

And still — we wonder if we're getting our answers right. 

We wonder if we understand our own answers. 

We don't want to be wrong about this. 

That would be embarrassing. Maybe for eternity?

-- 

Supper Club Sweatfest.

One evening, we were at a church supper club, nearing dessert, when one of the guys at the table maybe had had an extra glass of wine.  

Or two.  

This guy leans across the table at me, points a finger, scrunches his eyes, and says,  

"OK, Preacher." 

Oh boy. Here it comes.

He says, "OK Preacher. I just want to know ONE thing." 

He says, " When I get to heaven, is my DOG gonna be there?" 

"I don't knowwwwwww. Was he a GOOD dog? Then, yes?"   

-- 

Even Jesus had people who wanted to embarrass him.

And even now, there are people who want to embarrass Jesus. 

Embarrass his followers for believing in Jesus.

Sometimes we Christians are willing and able to embarrass ourselves. 

We can be pretty good at it.

Embarrassment will find us.

It'll sneak up with a sucker punch.

Or, we'll find someone to wish it upon.

But even when Jesus was confronted by people who had a plan to publicly humiliate him, what did he do?

He stood his ground. He listened. He spoke the truth as he knew it.

Those are all things we can do, too.

Even if we're not Bible scholars.

We can stand our ground.

We can listen, patiently.

And we can speak the truth as we know it.

We can flip the question back, too.

Say, "Why'd you say that? Were you trying to embarrass me?"

We can flip the question back on ourselves, too.

"Why did I say that? Was I trying to embarrass someone? In order to feel superior?"

I doubt you intentionally ask Jesus questions in order to embarrass him. 

We might ask him questions that ought to embarrass US. 

Thankfully, Jesus forgives.

Even if he does roll his eyes.

--

I don't know why the Lectionary ends this lesson at verse 38.

Because in verses 39 and 40. 

Luke recounts the conclusion of this episode. He says:

"Then some of the scribes answered, "Teacher, you have spoken well." (And) they no longer dared to ask him another question."

If we were scoring this, it would be: Jesus - 1, Sadducees - nothing.

Roll Tide, War Eagle, Gator Chomp -- Jesus wins!

But it's not a game.

It's life.

And Jesus being the Lord of the Living, and God being God of the Living, we can rest assured that our shame won't be the death of us.

We know -- we'll get into embarrassing situations again. Someone will find it their spiritual calling to make us look dumb. To make us feel dumb. 

"Thanks for fixing me."

But they're not Jesus. They're just people. And whether they dare ask us another question, or dare post another video of us, or tell our moms what we did -- 

regardless of what THEY do, is what Jesus did. Speak the truth. Stand firm. And know that even if everyone else wants to prove otherwise, YOU ARE a child of God. You're not the SON of God. But you're definitely one of God's Children. 

And there is absolutely no shame in that.

People say, "I just died of embarrassment." No you didn't. You're still here. Telling your story. You're part of the living. Just another one of the living souls God is God of. Yes, you're a little embarrassing sometimes. You'll do. 

Praise be to God the Father and the Compassionate Lord who saves us from dying of embarrassment, and who gives us life to lift up, and not to put down.

[eos]