Sad, you See.
Proper 27, Year C; Luke 20:27-38
Finishing Touches.
Jesus has finally reached His destination—Jerusalem. From Luke 9:51 onward, His face has been set toward this city, the place where His earthly ministry would reach its climax. Most of His ministry has happened outside of Jerusalem, among ordinary people in the countryside and synagogues, but now He enters the heart of Israel’s worship—the Temple. It is here that He begins putting the finishing touches on His ministry. Before He will go to the cross, Jesus has some final affairs to put in order.
These final moments in Jerusalem are not random encounters. They are deliberate acts of divine preparation. The Temple represents the old order—the old wineskin—and Jesus has come to change it out to make room for the new wine of the Kingdom. As the Father declared through Isaiah, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it will spring forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19). That “new thing” is now happening through Jesus.
But in order for the new to take hold, the old must pass away. Luke hinted at this early on when Jesus said, “No one puts new wine into old wineskins… new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.” (Luke 5:37–38). And now, at the end of His ministry, we see Jesus doing exactly that—changing out the old system of Temple worship, priesthood, and sacrifice in order to make room for something new, something better, something everlasting.
The old Temple—a building—will soon give way to the new Temple, which is His body and, by extension, His people.
The old sacrifices of bulls and goats will be replaced by the final sacrifice of the Lamb of God.
The old covenant sign of circumcision will yield to the new covenant sign of baptism.
The old land promised to Abraham will widen into the Kingdom of God, encompassing all nations.
And the fear of death that defined the old world will give way to faith in the resurrection that defines the new.
Inside the Temple, Jesus begins making these changes visible. He overturns tables, clears the courts, and declares that His Father’s house is meant for prayer, not profit. He teaches that the Temple itself will be destroyed and rebuilt in a new way—through His death and resurrection. And one by one, the religious leaders take their turn challenging Him. The scribes question His authority. The Pharisees try to trap Him politically. And then, the Sadducees step forward to challenge His theology.
The Sad You See
This is the only time we meet the Sadducees in Luke’s Gospel. They are a small but influential group, made up mostly of priests who controlled the Temple. They believed only in the Torah—the five books of Moses—and rejected anything spiritual beyond that: no angels, no spirits, and certainly no resurrection. Their religion was moral but not mystical, earthly but not eternal. It was a faith without hope. In Paul’s words, “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19). That’s why they are Sad, you see.
The Sadducees come to Jesus with a hypothetical question about a woman who marries seven brothers, one after another, each dying childless. “In the resurrection,” they ask mockingly, “whose wife will she be?” They think they’ve painted Jesus into a corner. But you can’t corner the One who walks on water. Jesus exposes their misunderstanding, revealing that the resurrection life is not a mere continuation of this life—it’s something entirely new.
In the resurrection, Jesus says, there is no marriage for the sons and daughters of God “cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection” (Luke 20:36). The life to come will not depend on the same systems that govern this one—it will be fuller, richer, and eternal.
To prove it, Jesus reaches into the very Torah they claim to uphold and quotes Exodus 3:6: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” His point is clear: God is not the God of the dead but of the living. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are alive even now. Resurrection is not a new idea—it has always been part of God’s plan.
The Reality of Resurrection
The resurrection is the great “new thing” Jesus came to accomplish. Until now, resurrection had been a hope, a prophecy, a promise. But in Jesus, it becomes a person and a power. He is the firstborn from the dead, the beginning of the new creation. And this resurrection life doesn’t just await us in the future—it begins in us even now through faith.
We can see small signs of resurrection woven into creation itself. When you cut your skin and it heals, that healing is a faint whisper of resurrection—life overcoming decay. But the scar remains, a reminder that it is not yet complete. When Jesus raises us, He will remove the scars altogether. The resurrection He brings is full restoration—life made completely new.
In the resurrection, everything broken will be made whole. The marriages of this life, precious and good as they are, will give way to a greater union—the marriage of Christ and His Bride, the Church. What was once partial will become perfect; what was mortal will put on immortality.
Application: Don’t Be a Sad You See
Don’t live as though there is no resurrection. Don’t live as though this life is all there is. The Sadducees’ outlook was tragic because it left no room for hope, no space for change, no expectation of glory. But resurrection gives meaning to everything we do in this life. It assures us that nothing done in faith is ever wasted.
Be open to the new things God is doing among us. The life of faith is a journey from glory to glory. God doesn’t leave us as we are—He transforms us into the image of His Son. We must not cling too tightly to what is familiar or resist the work of renewal He is bringing. The Sadducees couldn’t see what God was doing because they were bound to what God had done.
Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 15:40–41 that there are different kinds of glory—earthly and heavenly—and we are being shaped to bear the heavenly kind. The question is: How will you embrace change so that God can shape you from one glory to another?
If Jesus is pouring out the new wine of resurrection life, we must be willing to let go of the old wineskins. Our previous life in the flesh must be put down and cast aside, so that we can carry the new life of the Spirit. To live toward resurrection is to welcome change, to trust the work of God’s renewal, and to believe that what He is making new is better than what has been.
“Behold, I am making all things new.” (Revelation 21:5)
Don’t live like a Sad you see—live like a child of resurrection, full of hope, ready for change, and alive in the new thing God is doing.
Peace be with you,
Pastor Bruce
