In Luke 20:27–38, Jesus confronts the Sadducees, a group who deny the resurrection, by revealing a deeper truth about God’s nature: “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” Here, Jesus is not just engaging in a theological debate; He is proclaiming a vision of a renewed world made new, one where God’s justice is not merely transactional, and hope is not buried beneath disappointment.
In this scene, Jesus prays with us and waits alongside all faithful people for a world transformed by resurrection power, “a world in which justice will not be a crude compromise or a commodity for the wealthy and powerful,” as the Professor Emeritus of Religion, Richard Swanson, would put it, but a living reality that springs from God’s own heart. This is the justice that breathes life into dry bones, that raises what has been crushed by despair, and that restores faith where hope has turned to ashes.
The sermon invites us to trust in the God who brings life out of loss, who waits with us in the tension between promise and fulfillment, and who calls us to live even now as children of the resurrection, people who work, pray, and hope for a world where life triumphs over death and justice flows like living water.