Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on November 9, 2025

[sermon begins after one Bible reading; the three other Bible readings are at the end of the sermon]

Luke 20:27-38 Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to [Jesus] ²⁸ and asked him a question: “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. ²⁹ Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman and died childless; ³⁰ then the second ³¹ and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. ³² Finally the woman also died. ³³ In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”
³⁴ Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, ³⁵ but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. ³⁶ Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. ³⁷ And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. ³⁸ Now he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.”

[sermon begins]

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has given over 300 million books to over 3 million children across 5 countries.[1] Her dad couldn’t read or write, which led her to inspire a love of reading by gifting books free of charge to children from birth to five years old. Because reading in a path to dreams coming true. Hope through literacy. I first met Dolly through the clock radio on my bedside table. She crooned about life, love, and loss in true country and pop tunes. In an interview, she was once asked about her wigs, nails, and clothes. She said that they made it handy to disappear into real life when she wasn’t wearing them. She put on a plaid flannel shirt, hop into the camper with her husband for a road trip, and no one knew who she was. The interview was around the time of her early movies. One of those films was Steel Magnolias. “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion,” her character Truvy chimed in a cemetery. We can feel the truth of those moments, “Laughter through tears…”

Last Sunday, we celebrated All Saints Sunday. One of my favorite Sundays of the church year, we remember sinner-saints who have completed their earthly journeys in the past year. It simultaneously fills my heart and breaks it wide open as Augustana folks we know and love are named and remembered along with family and friends who have also died. When I get to do a funeral for someone, my words of welcome acknowledge the celebration of life alongside the grief we experience, that we may laugh and cry and sometimes do both at the same time. “Laughter through tears.” People often ask me whether I like to do funerals. Honestly? Yes. One of the reasons I like funerals is because God’s promises resonate powerfully in the face of loss. There’s nothing like hearing that the separation of death is not the last word. I’ve learned that people describe the afterlife in all kinds of ways that bring sweet, sweet comfort to grief.

For goodness sake, after losing three fathers, I’M comforted by images that offer hope through death. We imagine loved ones laughing with the ones they’re with and what they’re doing together. We wonder if they carry the healed wounds of their suffering in this life or if they’re perfected among the communion of all the saints in light. And we look forward to the happy reunion with them. Of course, we imagine and wonder. It’s only human to wonder about what God is up to in resurrection. And, of course, we don’t really know anything about what it will be like.

Grief and comfort, hope through death, are one of the ways into today’s Bible story. Some of the religious leaders in Jerusalem called Sadducees are testing Jesus with a riddle about an actual marriage law that protected women and their children after men died by marrying women to the next brother. The Sadducees created a hypothetical woman who married the next brother after each of them died. The riddle reduced the resurrection to an absurdity.[2] But it’s also how OUR minds work around death and afterlife. My own mother was married to Dad for 11 years, and then my stepfather, Pops, who died after 25 years of marriage, and then her third husband, dear Larry, who died after 19 years of marriage. In total, Mom has been married for 55 years. The Sadducees’ question asks who she will belong to someday after she completes her pilgrimage on earth. The answer is God. Just as do Dad, Pops, and dear Larry. For God is the God of the living and the dead.

Jesus responds to the Sadducees riddle using their resources, the Torah, the first five books of the Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Sadducees only sacred text was the Torah. No other books of the Bible. But Jesus responds to their riddle with a joke of his own. That’s the thing about jokes. They don’t translate well cross-culturally or across time. When Jesus invoked Moses and the burning bush, “where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”

Jesus’ listeners may have reacted with laughter and “oooo, good one!”[3] His response was more likely playful than proof.[4] This conversation was not going to change people’s minds no matter how many stories in the Torah pointed to an afterlife.

Similarly, any argument we make Biblically as proof of the afterlife is not going to change people’s minds. So what good is this story if it doesn’t lead the Sadducees or their followers to a greater understanding of resurrection and it doesn’t help our understanding of resurrection? Jesus reveals the limits of our lived experience when it comes to the resurrection. The rules we use to organize our world in this life simply don’t apply to the next.[5] Jesus responds to the Sadducees by challenging them to imagine a future for which they have no human reference. A future in which “children of the resurrection cannot die anymore.” [6] A future of hope not constrained by fear of death. A future of hope unleashed by love.

Jesus compares those of “this age” with those of “that age” inviting us into “that” one without being limited by “this” one.[7] In the resurrection, the long-awaited new age had already begun.[8] From the new age, Jesus coaches us to live in hope, not fear. The temptation is to take his coaching and curve it inward as a solely individual act. It is an individual reassurance, but hope is a fragile thing without others holding a vision of hope, too. Together as church, God’s mission for us unifies and elevates us above our individual buried hopes, and we are made more than the sum of our fears. Drawn into a collective hope from which we serve in love and embody Jesus’ example of feeding, healing, and connecting people in community.

In the past few months, we’ve been talking about how hope lives here through our Augustana congregation. We recorded people talking about their experience of hope in the community they find here and produced a video called “Hope Lives Here.”[9] They talk about being connected with each other, accepted for who they are, and treated like a real person who matters and belongs. They talk about putting their faith in action for the wider community and world. They talk about the hope they find in the unconditional love and grace of Jesus. We are a place and a people who receive a message of hope each Sunday, give it to each other, and take it back into the world that is oh so weary and in need of we have discovered here and what we’re able to give to each other in community.

Here and now, in this new age inaugurated by Jesus, the resurrection is less about the promise of more life and more about a promise of the presence of God in all and through all.[10] Like Job, we can say that in our flesh we shall see God.[11] Like the Psalmist we are guarded as the apple of God’s eye and sheltered under God’s wings.[12] Like the Thessalonian church, we are given eternal comfort and good hope by God’s love and grace abundantly bestowed upon us, comforting our hearts and strengthening them in every good work and word.[13] And ultimately, we are assured by Jesus, that to God we are all alive in life and in death. Thanks be to God for the good hope instilled in us and inspired through us by the power of the Holy Spirit for the sake of the world. Hope holds laughter through tears. Hope Lives Here. Amen

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[1] Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library | USA, UK, IE, CA, AU

[2] Matt Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul., MN. Sermon Brainwave podcast about Bible texts for November 9, 2025. #1051: Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost – November 9, 2025 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[3] Rolf Jacobson, Professor of Old Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul., MN. Sermon Brainwave podcast about Bible texts for November 9, 2025. #1051: Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost – November 9, 2025 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[4] Skinner, Ibid.

[5] Kendra Mohn, Lead Pastor, Trinity Lutheran Church, Fort Worth, Texas, United States. Commentary on Luke 22:27-38 for November 9, 2025. Commentary on Luke 20:27-38 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] N.T. Wright. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 244.

[9] Hope Lives Here. August 24, 2025.  https://youtu.be/74d7bqQ_hgg?si=-hAvpSihfkv5AjfC Produced by kenrinehartmedia.com.

[10] Skinner, Ibid.

[11] Job 19:26

[12] Psalm 17:8

[13] 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17

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Job 19:23-27a: “O that my words were written down!
O that they were inscribed in a book!
²⁴ O that with an iron pen and with lead
they were engraved on a rock forever!
²⁵ For I know that my redeemer lives
and that in the end he will stand upon the earth;
²⁶ and after my skin has been destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God,
^27a whom I shall see on my side,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”

Psalm 17:1-9 Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry;
give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit.
² From you let my vindication come;
let your eyes see the right.
³ If you try my heart, if you visit me by night,
if you test me, you will find no wickedness in me;
my mouth does not transgress.
⁴ As for what others do, by the word of your lips
I have avoided the ways of the violent.
⁵ My steps have held fast to your paths;
my feet have not slipped.
⁶ I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God;
incline your ear to me; hear my words.
⁷ Wondrously show your steadfast love,
O savior of those who seek refuge
from their adversaries at your right hand.
⁸ Guard me as the apple of the eye;
hide me in the shadow of your wings,
⁹ from the wicked who despoil me,
my deadly enemies who surround me.

2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, ² not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here. ³ Let no one deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction. ⁴ He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God. ⁵ Do you not remember that I told you these things when I was still with you?

¹³ But we must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth. ¹⁴ For this purpose he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. ¹⁵ So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter.
¹⁶ Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, ¹⁷ comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.