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SUNDAY WORSHIP
Stewardship Sunday November 9, 2025 11:00 AM Hold Onto Faith Sunday’s Bulletin Rev. Dr. Chris Ponnuraj , preaching Mr. John Strybos, Music Director WILLIAM ROSLAK, ORGANIST/PIANIST Choir: Eliza Bonet, Kelly Guerra Sedgwick, J.J. Haigh, Lauren Mitchell, Robert Orbach, Susie Reisinger Join us for our
Friendship and Fellowship Hour after 11:00 AM service in Bodge Lounge. Come and share the joy of Christ's love with us.
All are welcome! 
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Join us!
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~ All Year Long ~
Ongoing Food Collection
The Board of World Service collects
food donations for the
Yonkers Emergency Food Pantry,
which distributes them to families in Yonkers.
Non-perishable food can be brought to the church
any Sunday and left in the large basket
in the back of the Sanctuary.
Monetary donations are welcome, too;
checks can be written to West Center Congregational Church, noting "Yonkers Food Pantry" on the memo line and can be left in the offering plate on Sunday.
With the holidays coming up sooner than we think, the stores already have displays of side dish food for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners -- how about picking up a couple of things for the Food Pantry? No matter what you can give, all donations are much appreciated!
In our gospel reading for this Sunday Luke 20: 27-38, Jesus addresses the issue of being resurrected to everlasting life. Jesus is in his final week of life, which is known as the “passion week.” After his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Jesus returned to the temple on Monday and drove out the merchants who were selling their wares and obscuring people’s access to God. This enraged the religious rulers, who then engaged in several controversies with Jesus. St. Luke records in chapter 20, verses 1to 8, the Chief Priest and scribes questioned Jesus’ authority. Then in verses 20 to 26 they tried to trap him politically with the question about paying taxes. The third controversy Luke relates in which the Sadducees try their hand at tripping up Jesus on an internal Jewish dispute over the resurrection.”
Let’s look more into what Jesus is teaching here about the afterlife. But to understand the context, we need first to start with the Sadducees. The Sadducees are the ruling class in the Jerusalem Temple, more the aristocratic Jewish party. The Sadducees controlled the high priests and most of the seats on the presiding Jewish High Council, the Sanhedrin, flatly denied the resurrection of the body. The Sadducees only believed in the first five books of the Bible - Genesis to Deuteronomy, the Torah, and there they found no hints of an afterlife, a resurrection. This was their basic theological difference with the Pharisees, who believed strongly in a resurrection. You can remember their name and theology if you reflect on this: The Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife. That is why they were “sad-you see.” The Pharisees, on the other hand, believed and taught there is life after death doctrine. Therefore, they congratulated Jesus on His ingenious response. According to Moses, argued Jesus, death is not the end because Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are still alive to God.
How would you like to live under a religion that believed in no life after death - no resurrection? In one sense, I guess you wouldn’t have to worry about eternally frying in hell. That would be nice for some. But what hope would you have for the future? And what would your real purpose in life be? What need would you have of any religion? What a sad state of existence it would be if we didn’t believe in a life after death. But that’s what the Sadducees believed! They only accepted the first five books of the Bible as truly being “God’s Word”. They denied the existence of angels and demons. And so the Sadducees approached Jesus with a question that they felt would prove there is no life after death. When this action took place, Jesus was already in the third year of his public ministry. As a matter of fact he was only three days from his crucifixion. By this point in His ministry, the spiritual leaders of the time - the Sadducees and the Pharisees had had quite enough of Jesus. Jesus had humiliated them, and He had proven them to be wrong. In their eyes, Jesus had stolen many of their followers with His “romantic” ideas of what Judaism is about. So, they finally decided to attack Jesus with this one last round of questions to try and nail Him to the wall.
The Sadducees thought they had the perfect scenario. It was based on a provision called Levirate Marriage. Levirate Marriage stipulated that if a man died childless, his brother was under obligation to marry his widow and have children in his brother’s name. So, their scenario had the same woman marrying seven different brothers, with all of them dying. Now, “whose husband would she be in heaven?” Here’s their logic. One man can marry one woman according to God’s Law. This law provides for one man to be married to one woman at a time.
But if there’s a resurrection - that all gets messed up - because then all the brothers would be alive. Then one man could not be married to one woman, or six of the brothers would have to divorce the one woman so the one could stay married to her in heaven. It would be impossible to figure it out. The Sadducees envisioned Jesus having a hard time trying to explain it - saying, “well, since the oldest one gets the inheritance, he would get the woman,” or something that would be embarrassing to try to explain. Jesus said there is no marriage in heaven. Before we get to the main point, let me just point out that this doesn’t mean that you won’t know each other. What was the first problem with the Sadducees question? It was based on the premises that heaven would have to be like earth. The Sadducees were assuming that the principles that govern this life can never change! And since they didn’t want to let go of this life, they denied any life after death.
Jesus said there is no marriage in heaven. Jesus also said in Luke 14: 26, “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple" (RSV).
Let’s look more into what Jesus is teaching here about the afterlife. But to understand the context, we need first to start with the Sadducees. The Sadducees are the ruling class in the Jerusalem Temple, more the aristocratic Jewish party. The Sadducees controlled the high priests and most of the seats on the presiding Jewish High Council, the Sanhedrin, flatly denied the resurrection of the body. The Sadducees only believed in the first five books of the Bible - Genesis to Deuteronomy, the Torah, and there they found no hints of an afterlife, a resurrection. This was their basic theological difference with the Pharisees, who believed strongly in a resurrection. You can remember their name and theology if you reflect on this: The Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife. That is why they were “sad-you see.” The Pharisees, on the other hand, believed and taught there is life after death doctrine. Therefore, they congratulated Jesus on His ingenious response. According to Moses, argued Jesus, death is not the end because Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are still alive to God.
How would you like to live under a religion that believed in no life after death - no resurrection? In one sense, I guess you wouldn’t have to worry about eternally frying in hell. That would be nice for some. But what hope would you have for the future? And what would your real purpose in life be? What need would you have of any religion? What a sad state of existence it would be if we didn’t believe in a life after death. But that’s what the Sadducees believed! They only accepted the first five books of the Bible as truly being “God’s Word”. They denied the existence of angels and demons. And so the Sadducees approached Jesus with a question that they felt would prove there is no life after death. When this action took place, Jesus was already in the third year of his public ministry. As a matter of fact he was only three days from his crucifixion. By this point in His ministry, the spiritual leaders of the time - the Sadducees and the Pharisees had had quite enough of Jesus. Jesus had humiliated them, and He had proven them to be wrong. In their eyes, Jesus had stolen many of their followers with His “romantic” ideas of what Judaism is about. So, they finally decided to attack Jesus with this one last round of questions to try and nail Him to the wall.
The Sadducees thought they had the perfect scenario. It was based on a provision called Levirate Marriage. Levirate Marriage stipulated that if a man died childless, his brother was under obligation to marry his widow and have children in his brother’s name. So, their scenario had the same woman marrying seven different brothers, with all of them dying. Now, “whose husband would she be in heaven?” Here’s their logic. One man can marry one woman according to God’s Law. This law provides for one man to be married to one woman at a time.
But if there’s a resurrection - that all gets messed up - because then all the brothers would be alive. Then one man could not be married to one woman, or six of the brothers would have to divorce the one woman so the one could stay married to her in heaven. It would be impossible to figure it out. The Sadducees envisioned Jesus having a hard time trying to explain it - saying, “well, since the oldest one gets the inheritance, he would get the woman,” or something that would be embarrassing to try to explain. Jesus said there is no marriage in heaven. Before we get to the main point, let me just point out that this doesn’t mean that you won’t know each other. What was the first problem with the Sadducees question? It was based on the premises that heaven would have to be like earth. The Sadducees were assuming that the principles that govern this life can never change! And since they didn’t want to let go of this life, they denied any life after death.
Jesus said there is no marriage in heaven. Jesus also said in Luke 14: 26, “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple" (RSV).
If you would like to learn more about love and relationship,
please join us in our worship on
Sunday at 11:00 AM.
Peace!
Rev. Dr. Christopher Ponnuraj
Minister
please join us in our worship on
Sunday at 11:00 AM.
Peace!
Rev. Dr. Christopher Ponnuraj
Minister
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Contact us:
Church Office: 101 Pondfield Road West, Bronxville, NY 10708 Email: [email protected] Phone: (914) 337-3829 |
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our Missions during these trying times!
View other ways to donate to West Center.