Rev. Doug Floyd

Pentecost +22 2025
Rev. Doug Floyd
Job 29:23-27a, 2 Thessalonians 2:13–3:5, Luke 20:27-38

Jesus says, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. (Revelation 1:17-19)

Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”” (John 11:25–26, ESV)

I believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. (The Apostles Creed)

We are journeying together from resurrection to resurrection, from glory to glory. This does not mean we won’t struggle, or we won’t lose jobs, or we won’t suffer heartbreak, or face serious health problems. It does not mean life will be sunny side up all the time. But it does mean that we have been adopted into the family of God, and he will lead us into the fullness of His love and glory. We are not alone.

Consider Job. He feels alone. He feels abandoned by God and condemned by his friends.

He is physically suffering, mentally broken, and emotionally exhausted. In this state of turmoil, he cries out for a kinsman-redeemer, that is a close family member to defend his cause and stand for him.

Job has been judged and accused by his friends of hiding some secret sin for this struggle in his life. But he believes he has been wrongly condemned. We see this same anguish in some of the Psalms as the writer cries out for vindication. “Oh God remember me.”

He cries out,

For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another. [1]

He fully expects to die with all his problems, but he wants a kinsman-redeemer to stand up for him even in death to a declare his innocence. He says, “And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God….” It is possible that he sees God as his Kinsman Redeemer. He wants God will stand on the earth and vindicate him.

What Job couldn’t see from this angle is that God would address him personally while he was still alive. He would learn how little he understood of God’s great creation, and at the same time, God would call him to intercede for his friends. God would recognize his covenant with Job, and Job would be vindicated. Throughout church history, the people of God read Job’s words and see Jesus.

For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.

Here’s an odd twist: Jesus is the kinsman redeemer but at the same time, he like Job, suffers the curse and must be vindicated. He dies on the cross as a cursed one. In three days, the Father calls, the Spirit breathes, and the Son rises in power and victory. When the Son rises, he is vindicated and all creation is transformed: the beginning of a new heavens and new earth. Jesus calls us to himself, and we rise with him. Even now we are being raised up from glory to glory. But we will also rise from the grave, the Sons of the Resurrection.

For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.

The Sadducees have come to Jesus with a trick question about a man who dies, and his brother takes his wife to provide for her an inheritance, but he dies. And this keeps happening until seven brothers have married her and died before providing the inheritance of children.

When we hear this passage, it is easy to get caught up in the first part of Jesus’ answer. When he says, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage,” (Luke 20:34–35, ESV)

But the point of Jesus’s answer is not to be found here. People either debate this meaning or struggle with questions about the afterlife. We won’t be married anymore? We won’t recognize our loves ones? What is this resurrection life? Will we even like it?

Trust me. We will like it. Joy unspeakable. We are not capable of understanding now what we will be then. But listen as Jesus continues,

“for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.”” (Luke 20:36–38, ESV)

In the resurrection of Jesus Christ, those who trust in Jesus are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.

This is a lot to unpack. More than we could do today. It is mind-boggling, and it’s too bad that this phrase is often lost behind the phrase that we will neither marry nor be given in marriage.

Now to be clear: sons of God is not about men alone. Jesus is talking about men and women: we are sons of God; we are sons of the resurrection. As He looks to His own death and resurrection, He looks to our resurrection in him, our adoption as Sons of God.

Consider what Paul says in Galatians, “So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:24–28, ESV)

In Christ, we are born again into the family of God. We grow up into Christ. Think of a baby in the family. At first, it cannot walk, it cannot talk. It is totally dependent. Though it seems helpless, the baby models for us a way of complete trust. Oh, that we could trust our Father in heaven the way that baby trusts it’s family to provide.

The baby grows up. She learns to speak. She learns to walk. She runs. She plays. She laughs. Yes, she makes mistakes, but she learns over time. She doesn’t question if the family will kick her out. She is safe.

We are safe in the arms of the Father. He will not leave us; he will not forsake us.

When the baby grows up, she becomes of image of her family. We bear the image of our Father in heaven.

This whole story of our adoption as sons of God and sons of the resurrection is rooted in the death and resurrection of Christ. It is the only way. Hans Urs Von Balthasar speaks of the Last Supper as Jesus is preparing to die. He says, “It is an hour which cannot be transcended, and to which men must return time and again (as the formulation of the command repeatedly to ‘do this’ indicates). For beyond it there is nothing, save the bringing to completion of what it freely inaugurates: dying. Yet it is itself eschatological, in that it goes eis telos, to the final end of love (John 13:1).”[2]

Every week we return to Jesus pouring out His life completely and feeding us with His body and blood, His very life. People are amazed by the story of the feeding of the five thousand, but for over two thousand years Jesus has been feeding the multitudes with His body and blood.

He is the food, the feast of resurrection life. As we partake in the body and blood of Christ, we are being prepared to go forth as the sons of resurrection. To go forth pouring out our lives in love.

“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” (Philippians 2:4–7, ESV)

This is the way that love is.

As Rowan Williams reflects on this wonder of Christ’s death and resurrection, he uses the language of “unbounded world.” The new creation is breaking in, in and through us, and we cannot grasp the glory of this unfolding in Christ. But we can celebrate it and anticipate it.

As Paul says in Romans 8, “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.” (Romans 8:19, ESV)

Now this is being revealed now even as we look in hope for the full unveiling. Even now, Christ works in and through His children to make known the good news, to bear the good news in our feet of peace, our hands of service, our mouths of grace. Though we are sons of resurrection, we still age. Our bodies grow weak, our limbs fail us, and at some point, we die.

Now, when we hear these kinds of things, it’s hard for us to really imagine the glory we walk in day by day. Day by day, it feels mundane. We go to work, or we sit at home or go to a coffee shop or meet with people. Whatever we do. It feels like we’re just repeating mundane activities. It does not feel like a life filled with glory. It doesn’t feel like some missionary on the mission field being threatened with their life and eventually being killed.

And yet, Soren Kierkegaard said, that’s what it means to be a knight of faith. To get up. and live your life unto the Lord, whether you’re a plumber, car washer, a coffee drinker, or whatever it is you do. That’s the knight of faith, because you are living in hope of the resurrection and in the mystery of God, Christ is working his glory in and through you. So let us rejoice in the goodness of our God in Christ. Let us serve and lay down our lives, let us reveal His redeeming grace in word indeed. Let us look with hope for the complete unveiling of His glory in us. Amen.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Job 19:25–27.

[2] Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter, trans. Aidan Nichols (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 96–97.