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November 7, 2025

Focus

Heather Neal Bennett   |   Read Luke 20:27-38

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Lectionary Week
November 3–9, 2025
Scripture Overview

The passages for this week remind us to stay focused. Without focusing, we become distracted and disoriented like the community in Second Thessalonians. In Haggai, the remnant have to be reminded that God has, is, and will be with them. In Luke, the Sadducees are refocused to see that God does not operate as humans understand. The psalmist reminds us what it looks like to be focused on God. The passages are reminders that God is always with us. God has given scripture, one another, and creation to learn from and experience God if we focus.

Questions and Suggestions for Reflection

• Read 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17. Spend a few minutes in silence, focusing on your inhalations and exhalations. Allow any distractions to enter one ear and exit the other; do not give them more awareness than that.
• Read Haggai 1:15b–2:9. Create a one-line drawing of what captures your attention. Begin at one point and do not lift your pencil until finished.
• Write down a list of questions you have for Jesus. Read Luke 20:27-38. How do you feel about your questions after reading Jesus’ response to the Sadducees?
• Read Psalm 98. Study creation this week from your window or in nature. How does creation praise God?

Respond by posting a prayer.

Luke 20:27-38

27 Some Sadducees, who deny that there’s a resurrection, came to Jesus and asked, 28 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother diesleaving a widow but no children, the brother must marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first man married a woman and then died childless. 30 The second 31 and then the third brother married her. Eventually all seven married her, and they all died without leaving any children. 32 Finally, the woman died too. 33 In the resurrection, whose wife will she be? All seven were married to her.” 34 Jesus said to them, “People who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 But those who are considered worthy to participate in that age, that is, in the age of the resurrection from the dead, won’t marry nor will they be given in marriage. 36 They can no longer die, because they are like angels and are God’s children since they share in the resurrection. 37 Even Moses demonstrated that the dead are raised—in the passage about the burning bush, when he speaks of the Lordas the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. 38 He isn’t the God of the dead but of the living. To him they are all alive.”

Unless otherwise indicated, scripture quotations are from the Common English Bible. Copyright © 2011 Common English Bible. Used by permission.

Do you remember the camp song “I Just Wanna Be a Sheep (Baa Baa Baa Baa)”? This song was my introduction to Pharisees and Sadducees, and Sadducees were “sad, you see.” Perhaps camp songs have contributed to the negative images we sometimes have of the Hebrew leaders!
In today’s passage,...

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God, when I am expecting your ways to be my ways, remind me that I just wanna be a sheep. Amen.


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