Luke Chapter 20 – Jesus tells us that there is no marriage in heaven.
One of the few clear memories I have of being lectured to by our current Archbishop while in seminary was when he spoke on this passage. He began by saying that early on in his marriage, whenever his wife Christine read this passage, stating quite clearly that there was no marriage in heaven, she would start to get a little teary. Nowadays, he said, she doesn’t have that reaction.
Isn’t it odd that the only distinct thing Jesus ever told us about the world beyond is that there is no marriage there? And what does this mean? Free sex? That’s where the minds of some of the less regenerate amongst us probably wandered. No sex? That’s what we were taught in youth group. And yet the passage leaves those questions entirely unanswered because it’s not about sex, and it’s not even about marriage really, but about resurrection.
The Sadducees come to Jesus with this story of the seven brides for seven brothers, where the same woman plays the part of the bride each time. There are seven weddings followed by seven funerals, and then the question: ‘whose wife will she be at the resurrection of the dead?’ But this is not the real question any more than this woman is a real case study, taken from the pastoral archives of the Sadducees. Their real question is whether or not there is life after death, and this story is what we call in logic a ‘reductio ad absurdum’
A reductio ad absurdum is a technique you use in an argument to prove the falsity of your opponents beliefs by showing that if he or she were correct then it would lead to all sorts of absurd conclusions.
Time travel is not possible. Why not? Because if it were possible to travel back in time, then it would be possible for you to travel back and meet yourself earlier in your life (which would be extremely embarrassing). No. The absurdity of the idea that you could meet yourself in another time and still be yourself at the same time shows clearly that the whole idea of time travel is ludicrous. This is a reductio ad absurdum, or so the argument goes.
It’s the same scenario here. The Sadducees don’t believe in the resurrection of the dead. It’s an absurd idea – that the body can come back to life on the other side of the grave. If that were so, what would happen to those who have been cremated? How will they get their bodies back? If that were so, what about those unfortunate persons who have been devoured by cannibals? (This was considered a serious problem a couple of generations ago) And what about this woman who was married to seven husbands? Whose wife would she be? No. The whole idea of a bodily resurrection is ridiculous. Ain’t that right, Jesus?
It’s curious when you look at the way Jesus responds to people’s questions. Often people came to Him with straightforward questions — ‘who is my neighbour?’ — and Jesus mucks around with them a bit in response: ‘let me tell you a story ... ’. Here we’ve got the opposite scenario. These people are mucking around with Jesus – ‘let us tell you a story, Jesus’ – and it is Jesus who gives them a very straightforward response: ‘do you want to know about life after death? Yes, there is life after death. Is there a resurrection of the body? Yes, there is a resurrection of the body. Do you really want to know whom this woman would be married to? She won’t be married to anybody. Are there any more questions?’
It is an unusual scenario for the gospels. What makes it different, I think, is that in most of these gospel scenarios people come to Jesus asking what appear to be genuine questions, but they are really trick questions – ‘should we pay taxes to Caesar?’ Here, on the other hand, what appears to be a trick question is actually a genuine question – ‘is there a resurrection of the dead’. And so Jesus gives a very genuine response – ‘yes there is’.
People have always found it hard to believe in the resurrection of the dead, and for the same reason that the Sadducees found it hard to believe in the resurrection of the dead – because we tend to assume that what is to come will be some sort of continuation of what is now.
That assumption is at the heart of the Sadducees’ story. If you understand the nature of Old Testament marriages, you’ll realise that the question about the woman is technically one about property rights. This woman had been the property of seven different men. Whose property will she be at the resurrection of the dead? Jesus says she won’t be anybody’s property! Why not? Because things are going to be a whole lot different then.
The assumption is that what is to come will be some sort of continuation of what is now, and this is a false assumption, Jesus says. And yet I think we’ll find that most religious beliefs about the afterlife do see a fair degree of connection between what is now and what will be.
If you’ve ever seen the tombs of any of the great Pharaohs, you’ll know that all Pharaohs household and servants were buried with him, so that when life started up again on the other side everybody would be able to resume their respective roles as cooks and cleaners and concubines, for what was, is now, and shall be evermore, amen.
If you are king in this life, then you will move on as king into the next. If a slave, then a slave. If you did well in this life, then you will go on doing well in the next. That’s what makes the whole idea of reincarnation such an attractive concept. It’s all logically connected. If you owned property in this life – be it a cow or a house or a woman – then with any luck you’ll find that property waiting for you (in some form or another) on the other side.
Jesus challenges all of this. The new world coming, he teaches, is not like this world at all. It’s not just a continuation of life as we know it, with all its structures and traditions intact. On the contrary, the new world is a complete revolution, where the first are last and the last are first, where death itself has been completely abolished, and where even the most precious god-given institutions of them all – marriage and family – will be a thing of the past.
We have limited imaginations. We can only think about the future in a way that is somehow based upon our experience of the present and the past. That’s why we find it much easier to believe in the immortality of the soul than we do in the resurrection of the body.
Let me say it again in case you haven’t heard me say it before: the immortality of the soul is not a Christian teaching. Jesus did not teach the immortality of the soul. Socrates and Plato taught the immortality of the soul. Jesus taught the resurrection of the body.
For Christ teaches us that the world of tomorrow will NOT resemble the world of today - that things are NOT going to go on and on in the same way for ever and ever – with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, in a world full of violence and inequalities and deep injustices. This is NOT the final word on creation. This is NOT the end of the story.
‘Behold I am making all things new’ the voice booms from heaven (Revelation 21:5). The whole of the heavens and the earth are about to be recreated. The Kingdom of God is at hand, and the world as we know it is about to get replaced by the bigger and better world that is to come. This is the gospel of Jesus. This is the good news, and good news it is, as while there may be some things in this world that only require fine-tuning if they are to be put right, there are other things – injustices that are so massive and heartaches that run so deep – that nothing short of an entire recreation of the cosmos is required in order to fix them.
‘Behold I am making all things new’. Everything is about to change. Pain and injustice are about to be wiped away. The earth is going to be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Death itself is going to be abolished, and marriage and family are going out along with it! Like it or lump it, nothing is going to be like what it used to be, and if we are going to follow Jesus then we had better start adjusting our lives accordingly.
Personally, I think that if we could get this right, that we would probably get everything else right, and I think that it’s when we lose track of this that we lose track of everything.
I suspect that the problem is that for most of us white, middle-class, land-owning persons who live in a country under no immediate threat of war, pestilence or famine, we envisage the Kingdom of God as being something quite a lot like what we experience now, but a little more widespread and with a few improvements. All the nasty people are gone for instance, so that there won’t be any more lying or stealing going on, so that everyone respects everybody else’s privacy and property rights.
Jesus says ‘No, no, no! The Kingdom that is coming will be so unlike anything you experience now that you will barely recognise yourself. The whole world is going to be recreated, and the body is going to be recreated, and we’re all going to relate to each other in an entirely new and powerful way.’
We don’t know exactly what that will look like, but we know enough from Jesus and we know enough of Jesus to know that it will involve us all in somehow being intermingled quite intimately with each other in some sort of intensely spiritual community, sharing relationships of love, compassion and self-giving with God and with each other. That may all seem a little threatening or it may all seem a little too wonderful, but the bottom line is that it is all going to be very different. And if we are going to follow Jesus in this world then we are going to have to live a life that reflects a sincere belief in the coming of this Kingdom.
That’s why, in some ways, it’s much easier to become a Christian if you’re a drug-addict or a sex-worker. Because you realise from the start that coming to Jesus means that everything has got to change. When you’re white and middle-class, on the other hand, coming to Jesus only means that certain things are going to require minor adjustment, or so it would seem.
It’s interesting that in the two chapters in Luke prior to the one this story is taken from we read of a pair of wealthy, middle-class, land-owning males who come to Jesus, both wanting to be part of the new world coming.
’What have I got to do to be a part of this new world?’ the first guy says to Jesus. ‘I’ve been living my life by the book for as long as I can remember. Is there anything more I need to do?’ ‘Yes’ says Jesus ‘Go and sell everything you have, give the money to the poor and then come and join me here as a roaming homeless evangelist living for the gospel’. And that guy realises that he doesn’t really want to be a part of the new world that Jesus is talking about.
The second wealthy, middle-class, land-owning male was a guy by the name of Zacchaeus, and he, we are told in Luke 19, received Jesus joyfully. And what does he declare to Jesus? ‘From now on I’m going to devote an evening each week to Bible study and I’m going to increase my charitable giving by an extra 5%.’ No. He doesn’t say that at all. ‘Half my goods I give to the poor’ he says ‘and if I have defrauded anybody I will pay them back four times over.’ ‘That’s the spirit’ says Jesus. Here’s a guy who believes in the coming of the Kingdom. Here’s someone who understands that everything has got to change because everything is going to change.
It’s a bit like learning to speak Hungarian!
I’m told that most European languages are part of a family of languages. We are familiar with the Romance languages: French, Spanish, and Italian, and the Slavic languages: Russian, Czech, Slovakian, Serbo-Croatian and others. We know the Germanic languages: Norwegian, German, Swedish, Danish, and English. But the Hungarian language stands alone, related only to Finnish. So it is said that we will all speak Hungarian in Heaven. Why? Because it is all so ‘new’! (and also because it will take an eternity to learn it)
There is a new world coming, and if we are going to live for Jesus, then we have got to live the life of that new world. And I know we have to keep one foot planted in this world, but we’ve got to have the other foot planted in the world to come, and if that means shedding ourselves of old traditions and old prejudices, bad habits and bad friends, excess wealth and excess property, then so be it. There is a new world coming, and if that means taking on new friends and new family, opening up our homes and opening up our lives, emptying our hearts and emptying our bank accounts, then so be it.
‘Behold I make all things new’ says the Lord. He doesn’t say ‘behold, I am making all things slightly better’ or ‘behold, I am going to make a few improvements’. He says ‘behold I am making all things new’. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the days to come are going to resemble the days that have been. There’s no marriage in heaven you know! The whole of creation – the things that we hate and those things that we love – the whole of creation is about to be recreated. Everything is about to change, says the Lord. The only question is whether we are ready and willing to be changed along with it.
