Resurrection…Out of the Blue
The First Sunday of Advent
November 9, 2025
The Rev. Josh Evans
St. John’s Lutheran Church
Albany, NY
Whose wife is she anyway?
It’s such a bizarre question –
not to mention steeped in patriarchy and misogyny,
as though this woman’s only defining characteristics
are her marriages (all seven of them),
not to mention her childlessness.
And what’s resurrection got to do with it?
From the perspective of the Sadducees…
nothing.
Resurrection is made up.
There’s no evidence for it in the Torah –
the five books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy)
which they hold as canon –
and so therefore, it’s irrelevant –
unless… we can use it to trap Jesus…
And so, the Sadducees fire away
with their contrived scenario and bizarre question,
based on the historical practice of levirate marriage,
as described in Deuteronomy 25,
by which a man’s brother was obligated to marry his widow
if he died childless
as a means of carrying on the family name,
as well as caring for the widow in her old age.
Here’s a fun tangential fact about levirate marriage
we don’t talk about enough (or at all):
If the man’s brother decides not to marry his dead brother’s wife,
then the wife gets to publicly admonish him
by pulling his sandal off his foot
and spitting in his face.
(Deuteronomy 25:9…look it up!)
In the case of the Sadducees’ made-up scenario,
each brother obliges –
no spitting required –
and each brother, in turn, dies childless,
this poor unnamed woman outliving them all.
And so, in the resurrection –
which, mind you, they don’t even believe in –
whose wife will she be?
As though, even in death,
still she is defined only by her husbands
(all seven of them).
In classic Jesus fashion,
he doesn’t exactly answer the Sadducees’ question directly.
Instead, he offers his own bold assertion
and surprising plot twist,
hearkening back to the story of the burning bush –
in one of the books the Sadducees do hold as authoritative –
in which God reveals God’s identity to Moses:
“I am the God of your father,
the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob” –
not “I was” … but “I am” –
for God is God not of the dead
but of the living,
for to God all of them are alive.
The Sadducees ask a bizarre hypothetical question
about a resurrection that they don’t even believe in,
purely to try to trap Jesus.
I doubt they actually care about what happens
to this widowed, vulnerable woman after death
any more than they do or don’t care about her during life.
But Jesus redirects their focus,
as one biblical scholar extrapolates:
“God is a God of the living,
and the living are hungry.
Thirsty. Exploited. Homeless.
Abused. Overworked. Out of work.
Lonely. Despairing. Addicted.”
As though to say:
Why spend so much time worrying about hypotheticals in the future
at the expense of overlooking or neglecting present realities?
Or why spend so much money building a gaudy, gilded ballroom
while people’s SNAP benefits hang in limbo
and families wonder not so much about what’s for dinner
as they do about whether they can afford to eat?
God is God of the living,
Jesus reminds them,
and God cares deeply about the living,
here and now,
and this woman
is not anyone’s wife,
but a child of God,
a child of the resurrection,
whose worth depends not on any of her marriages,
but on her inherent belovedness –
and so Jesus recalibrates their focus,
and aims to change their perspective.
I don’t know if Jesus actually changed their minds
about their theology of the resurrection,
but he certainly shut them up:
“Teacher, you have spoken well,”
some of the scribes answered…
and no longer dared to ask him another question.
And more than that:
he upends their expectations –
which is what resurrection is really all about:
Resurrection defies predictability
and what we think is possible.
“We think we know how the story ends,”
one pastor writes.
“When people are killed and buried, they are dead.
That is the end.
The political power and show of the day,
the Roman Empire had triumphed […]
But God, in the act of resurrecting Jesus
was proclaiming, ‘I am not done!’
There is more, and this more will change everything
you think and understand
about life and how the world works.”
Resurrection defies predictability
and upends our expectations.
Resurrection…out of the blue.
The Sadducees’ question presumes more of the same.
Jesus’ answer interrupts — and subverts the status quo.
What’s resurrection got to do with it?
Everything.
Where the systems of this world
trap us in death,
and more of the same,
or define us by labels not of our own choosing,
resurrection offers us God’s promise:
God is God of the living,
and God cares deeply about the living –
the living who are sick or hungry,
the living who are detained or alone,
the living who are afraid or angry –
the living who are,
above all else,
children of God,
wholly and deeply loved,
worthy of dignity and care.
On this First Sunday of Advent,
and throughout this season,
we’re invited to practice resurrection –
a reality not confined to Easter alone,
for every Sunday is a little Easter –
and to notice the astonishing ways God is at work,
breaking into our reality, in all its brokenness and messiness,
“unexpected and mysterious,” as the Advent hymn text goes,
upending our expectations of what is possible,
catching us off-guard,
surprising us with grace,
surrounding us with unimaginable love,
offering us indescribable and certain hope –
inviting us to interrupt the systems that have grappled our fellow siblings,
showing up for life and liberation and wholeness for all.
Resurrection…
even in Advent.
Resurrection…
out of the blue.
