Lectionary 32; November 11, 2007; Bethel Lutheran Church, Rochester.
Luke 20:27-38.

Dear Friends in Christ, Grace to you and Peace, from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. AMEN.


Arthur Schiff died last year at the age of 66. You may not recognize the name, but I guarantee you’ve heard his voice. Arthur was a TV pitchman extraordinaire. He sold everything you can think of. He accomplished this in some 1800 late night commercials. I know you’ve heard some of his commercials: “Buy now!” he would always say. Then he would describe his product’s amazing virtues, then he would use a phrase he coined himself, “But wait! There’s more!” Then he would give you one more bonus product to sweeten the deal. And everything sold for just $19.95.

When Arthur was assigned to sell an uninspired steak knife that had the boring name of Quikut, one night in his dreams he came up with the Japanese sounding name, “Ginsu.” Anybody remember the commercials for the Ginsu steak knife? Arthur used an amusing tag line to describe the Ginsus: “In Japan, the hand can be used like a knife,” he would say, “But this method doesn’t work with a tomato.” Said Schiff about his knife selling success, "By giving that set of knives a Japanese identity, I somehow managed to convince people that no matter how many knives they already owned, these were something special. Of course, I neglected to mention that the knives were manufactured in Fremont, Ohio."

“But wait! There’s more!” Another set of smaller knives would come at no additional cost. “But wait! There’s more!” A special potato peeler would be thrown in if you called in the next ten minutes.

Arthur was parodied by a series of late night comics starting with John Belushi’s Samurai Warrior, but he earned himself a place in the Pop Culture Hall of Fame when the comics character Opus the Penguin was portrayed as a helpless and addicted buyer of everything Arthur offered for sale.

Today, Jesus wants to tell us, “But wait! There’s more!”

Our Gospel story for today sets up a classic confrontation between a powerful group of people, the Sadducees, and a wandering rabbi, Jesus. In Jesus’ time the Sadducees controlled the high priesthood and had the most seats in the religious ruling body. They had many differences with the Pharisees—among the differences is the fact that the Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection—our text plainly says that.

So what do the Sadducees ask Jesus? They ask him a question about the resurrection that ultimately cannot have a satisfactory answer. They don’t even believe in the resurrection—they just want to trap Jesus into saying something dim-witted. So they postulate a problem about a woman whose husband dies. By Jewish law, the brother is to take the wife as his own. But then he dies, and the third brother marries her. Then he dies. This happens until seven brothers have married the woman! A lot of thoughts occur to me at this point. First, I wonder how dim-witted the seventh brother is to even marry this woman! Can you see yourself walking down the aisle with her thinking to yourself, “Well, seven is a lucky number.” Then I begin to wonder if CSI shouldn’t get involved in this story. Is the woman just unlucky that seven husbands have died?

The Sadducees use this preposterous example to ask Jesus whose wife she will be in the resurrection—of course, a resurrection in which they didn’t believe in the first place. Will she be wife to her first husband? To the last? To her favorite? To the one who unloaded the dishwasher without being asked?

Jesus, I suppose, could have invested himself in that question. He might have been able to pull a rabbit out of the hat and astounded the Sadducees and the people with his wisdom or theological trickery. But, if Jesus had done that, he would have had to say at the end, “But wait! There’s more!”

Jesus could have allowed the conversation to center on some tortured mortal understanding of marriage. Jesus could have made the discussion a sociological lesson. Jesus could have checked with the Jerusalem County Recorder as regards marriage licenses.

“But wait! There’s more!” There is so much more than our limited human understanding of the resurrection. We might be concerned about wives and husbands and children in the resurrection. Jesus asks us to expand our vision. People will neither marry nor be given in marriage in the resurrection. There’s more!

When Kathy and I were married 33½ years ago, we sang a song called “The Wedding Prayer”. The last part of that song sounds like this, “O God, until we reach life’s ebbing tide, may we in perfect love and peace abide. And when life’s sun shall set beyond the hill, may we go hand in hand, together still. Amen. Amen.” It is an idyllic picture of two people, living on this side of the resurrection. Life’s sun has set for them, and they continue to walk hand in hand in the new kingdom!

I believe that will happen in some way. I don’t know how. Like you, I am limited to my human understanding in capability. With all my heart I believe that in the resurrection I will be with those I love, and I will recognize them and have an eternity with them. Sounds great!

But wait! There’s more! My primary identity in the next kingdom will not be as a husband or a father or a child of Walter and Blanche—not even as a pastor! Jesus says that my primary identity will be like that of an angel. Even more, my primary identity will be as a child of God! I am ecstatic to be husband to one named Kathy. I am blessed to carry the name of Wahl and to have had loving parents and loving children. I am doubly blessed to serve the church as a pastor.

But all of those are earthly constructs. God has something much greater in mind in the resurrection. God wants to perfect us as his children.

We need to move beyond our earthly imagination to our heavenly promise. We won’t worry about whether the stock market moved up or down 100 points every day like the stock market has been doing—we won’t need any money. We won’t have to worry if the boy or the girl with the next locker likes us. They will all like us—even love us! We won’t have to worry about the next doctor’s appointment—we will be in perfect health. We won’t have to worry about paying the bills—there won’t be any. We won’t get bamboozled into buying a bunch of unnecessary Ginsu knives—someone else is doing the cooking and the feeding.

And, if we are to believe Jesus, we won’t even have to worry about our family, because we will all be God’s family. We will be children in a new and special way.

But wait! There’s more! We are not talking about something just for the by and by. We are talking about right now, too. Oh, we are going to have to worry about all the things above on this earth, but we do so knowing that God has so much more waiting for us. Those with difficulty in this world have always found comfort in knowing about the joy of the next world. That is one reason why so many Negro spirituals are about heaven. Slaves lived such a miserable existence on this earth, faith in the next kingdom gave them hope and the strength to carry on.

We are a people of resurrection—even now. We don’t have to wait to celebrate. We can acknowledge Jesus’ wonderful promises right now. There is always more in Jesus. AMEN.