Sermon | Lisa Levy, Community Care Minister | November 9, 2025
Chapel on the Green 17th Anniversary
Luke 20:27-38
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus 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. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her."
Jesus said to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; 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. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 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. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.
May I speak in the name of the One who creates us, redeems us, and sustains us, even in the darkest of times. Amen.
A tree. A snake. A spear. A fan. A rope. A wall. In Buddhism, there’s a parable in which six blind monks touch an elephant. The monk who feels the elephant’s leg says, “It’s a tree!” The monk who feels the elephant’s trunk says it’s a snake. Another touches the tusk and thinks it’s a spear. The ear is a fan, the tail is a rope, and the body of the elephant—a wall.
None of them are right, of course: their answers are constrained by what they know, and by the scope of their imaginations: their limited perspectives can’t even approach the remarkable mystery that is “ELEPHANT.” It is so utterly outside their realm of experience that they are unable to comprehend it: something as wondrous, as splendid, as creative, as an elephant.
Keep these monks in mind as we reflect on today’s Gospel.
Today, we have our first encounter with the Sadducees. During the time of Jesus, they were the Jewish aristocracy. They were a high priestly class to which many wealthy families belonged. Perhaps most importantly, they controlled the Temple—understood by Jews to be nothing less than the earthly dwelling place of God. The High Priest (generally a Sadducee) who oversaw the Temple was also a leading political figure in Judea. To protect their elite status and economic interests, they were appeasers of—and sometimes collaborators with—Rome. In the world of the Sadducees, Jesus was not just a charlatan or a false prophet—he was a threat—a threat to their system of power and influence, to their system of commerce, to their tenuous relationship with Rome.
The theologically conservative Sadducees believed in the sole authority of the Torah, and, as we are told in this morning’s Gospel, they don’t believe in the resurrection. And so they present Jesus with what appears to be an unsolvable conundrum, a test they are confident he will not pass, a test that will expose him for the fraud they believe him to be. They bring up the law of Levirate marriage, a law from the Book of Deuteronomy that decrees a man must marry his deceased brother’s childless widow. The Sadducees tell Jesus there are seven brothers, and they ask him: what happens if one of the brothers dies, and his brother marries the man’s childless widow, and then that brother dies, and the widow marries the third brother, etc. etc. Finally, she also dies. The question: Whose wife would she be in the resurrection?
Because of the Sadducees’ wealth, authority, and, perhaps most importantly, their control of the Temple and their relationship with Rome, Jesus’s answer matters. The stakes are high. But—like the monks in the parable—the Sadducees suffer from limited imagination. Their test case rests squarely within their frame of reference: God is contained in the box of the Torah, in the details of the Law, behind the walls of the Sadducee-controlled Temple.
As usual in these situations, though, Jesus doesn’t just turn the question on its head; he breaks down their frame of reference entirely. In this age, we marry; in this age, he says, we die. But in the Kingdom of God, there is no more marriage. And there is no more death. God bursts the walls of the text, the walls of the Law, the walls of our own impoverished imaginations. They—and we—are utterly incapable of imagining the vast and boundless mystery that is the resurrection. How, then, do we live—as Jesus said in today’s text—as children of the resurrection? How do we live with resurrection minds, and resurrection hearts, in such a time as this?
Today we are celebrating the 17th anniversary of Chapel on the Green. For those of you who don’t know, Chapel on the Green is Trinity’s weekly 2pm service, held outdoors, that centers Trinity’s unhoused parishioners. Every week, we sing together; we pray together; we tell one another about the joys and sorrows of our lives; we reflect on Scripture together; we celebrate Eucharist and take Communion together. Lately, we’ve had nearly 60 people who gather each week for worship; we have another 40 or 50 who come for food afterwards. I have had the unique privilege of coordinating this service for the past 3 ½ years, and what I am most grateful for, what moves me the most, is the stubborn hope that flows from the sacred imagination of this community, of these children of the resurrection.
The service starts at 2pm; but worship starts at 1:00. Our musicians are the first to arrive, and they begin to play and sing when no one else is there. Drawn in by the sounds of the drums, people begin to gather. They come from the doorways where they sleep; they come from benches and bus shelters; they come out of tents and from beneath tarps. Gail takes the bus from Derby. Gabriel and Muhammed ride their bikes. Lorraine brings her carts. Able-bodied people; people using walkers and wheelchairs; young people and older people; white, Black, and brown people; people in need of healing, and people in need of help.
I confess that over the past year, I have experienced an attrition of my own sacred imagination, and my hope is not so stubborn anymore. We live in a broken world with broken systems, just as Jesus did. And we live in a world where leaders (like the Sadducees, and like our current administration) wield merciless power over people who have been victimized by these systems, and the leaders profit from the pain they cause. The latest count of people experiencing homelessness in Greater New Haven revealed that we have 1,196 unhoused neighbors; 346 people are on a months-long waiting list for a shelter bed. Winter is coming, and there isn’t enough space in the four overcrowded warming centers, where people try to sleep packed tightly together on yoga mats. Due to the government shutdown, over 30,000 New Haven residents woke up last Saturday morning to find that their SNAP benefits—what used to be called food stamps—were gone. And, because of HR1, the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” many of those people who lost their SNAP money in November will not get it back, ever. The people impacted include: refugees who were invited to resettle in this country when they left war and persecution in their home countries; people who came to America fleeing the Taliban because they helped the American military during the war in Afghanistan; children aging out of foster care; people experiencing homelessness who are unlikely to be able to meet the stringent new work requirements imposed upon them. Every day in New Haven, I see people sleeping in doorways or on park benches; every day, I have more people than I can count ask me to buy them a meal; every day, I see someone with a cardboard sign asking for help. Many of these people are Trinity parishioners who attend our 2pm service. And right now, these Trinity parishioners are suffering in unconscionable ways. They are part of the fabric of our community, and they are struggling, and I don’t know how to help. This situation breaks my heart, and it is real, and it is coming at us with the force of a tsunami. My limited imagination is running dry, and I cannot see a way out of the sheer volume of pain inflicted by these cruel and inhumane systems.
But every week, just as my imagination begins to fail, just as my hope begins to wither under the weight of the people I know who are suffering mightily, I go to Chapel on the Green—and I am reminded that suffering is not the whole story, and it is certainly not the end of the story. When I arrive at Chapel on the Green each week, it is common for someone to greet me by saying, “God is good.” The only acceptable response, I’ve learned, is “all the time.” God is good. All the time. And when we pray for each other, I am reminded that the power of the Sadducees, and the earthly power being wielded in our country now, is nothing compared to the power of God, the power of love, the power of the resurrection. I come face to face with my own essential belovedness, and I remember the belovedness of everyone I encounter, both within the church and outside of it. God is good. All the time. The Sadducees, and our current administration, want to keep us weak by shrinking our imaginations, our imaginations that show us what is possible. They want us to stay limited. But our imaginations can expand exponentially when we allow ourselves to think with a resurrection mind, when we allow ourselves to feel with a resurrection heart. Jesus invites us to a different vision: one where love is stronger than death, where that love can permeate every corner of this world. Jesus calls us to remember who we really are: children of the resurrection.
After all, there are no walls on the Green. There is no building to make into an idol. We are not bound by the strictures of earthly power. On the Green, I feel God is closer than bone, that God is in the marrow of each and every one of us, every one of the children of the resurrection. Although these times are troubled and our fates are uncertain, God is good. All the time.
A tree. A snake. A spear. A fan. A rope. A wall. When, like the Buddhist monks, and like the Sadducees, we operate within our limited scope of our earth-bound imaginations, things can feel bleak, and our hope can erode. But if we can allow our imaginations to swell past our earthly understanding, when we allow the mystery of God’s love to operate within us and through us, when we open ourselves to the power of the resurrection life, more is possible than we can ask or imagine. So let us leave here today with revitalized imaginations unconstrained by the walls of the Bible, or the building where we’re worshiping, or the budgets imposed on the most vulnerable among us. After all, God is good. All the time. Let’s let our imaginations run wild. May it be so. Amen.