A few years back I was asked to write a meditation for the back of one of our Sunday bulletin covers, and I was excited about the prospect until I took a closer look at the assigned text. It was today’s text, whose message I continue to find difficult to distill into a few short paragraphs. But in the weeks prior I had come across one of Yogi Berra’s picturesque sayings. Berra, you may remember, was the New York Yankees catcher back in the 1950’s and ’60’s who in his own garbled way said some profound things, once asserting that “the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”

In effect, is this not what Jesus is saying to his critics? In the life of faith, keep focused on the main thing. And what is the main thing, but to maintain and nurture our rootedness in God, to embrace life in God’s kingdom, a life of compassion and grace, of peace and self-giving love, of servanthood and hope. When Jesus speaks of the God of the living, he is prodding his critics to expand their vision. In effect, says William Willimon, Jesus is saying to that group of critical Sadducees, “Your questions betray your limited point of view, your narrow frame of reference. The resurrection is not just some extension of your world. It is a whole new world, the world as God intended the world to be.” It is a world in which the woman of your story is “a child of God, not a piece of property.” It is a world in which each of us lives as children of the resurrection.

Joel D. Kline, Life in the Real World