Matt. 22:23-33, Lk 20:27-40, Mk 12:18-27
The event in today’s gospel lesson actually occurred within three days of Jesus crucifixion. Therefore, you would think this lesson appropriate for some Sunday during near the end of Lent, or during passion week. But, its subject matter makes it entirely apt for this season of the year, the Sundays after the resurrection and prior to the Day of Pentecost. It was during these weeks that the disciples were reprocessing so much of what Jesus had told them, so much of what he had taught them which they had not believed, or because of disbelief, they had not understood. What Jesus said on this occasion would have fresh and compelling meaning for those who were coming to grips with Jesus’ resurrection, and not only his resurrection, but also those of hundreds of others. Matthew records in the 27th chapter of his gospel that “52and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; 53and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.”
What prompted this encounter between Jesus and his enemies was their attempt to catch Jesus in a trap. The Pharisees had been doing this for some time, plying him with questions designed to trip him up, or to make him unpopular with the disciples of this rabbi or that rabbi. The Pharisees hadn’t succeeded, and so it was now the turn of the Sadducees.
A proverb says that politics makes strange bedfellows. Surely that was the case here, for the Pharisees and the Sadducees were very much opposed to one another. The Sadducees were the descendants of Zadok, whose lineage can be traced back to Eleazar, son of Aaron. After the Jews returned from exile in Babylon, these descendants of Zadok formed the nucleus of the priesthood that served in the Jerusalem Temple. The word Sadducees derives from the term for the descendants of Zadok – the Zadokites.
From our point of view, it is very odd that the Sadducees were considered to be the arch-conservatives, while it was the Pharisees who were the liberals. The Sadducees were the conservatives insofar as they insisted that the only doctrine which they would assent to had to be explicitly taught in the Books of Moses – the first five books of the Old Testament. And, they said, there is nothing about a resurrection from the dead in those books, so they denied that there would ever be a resurrection of the dead.
On the other hand, there is a provision in the Law of Moses for the situation that arises when a man marries and dies before his wife bears a son to be his heir. The provision is called levirate marriage, and it laid upon the dead man’s eldest brother to take the widow as a wife, to sire a son by her, who would then inherit his deceased father’s property. This provision in the Mosaic Law helped to preserve family integrity and longevity, it helped to conserve property in a family, both for the welfare of those who were living and to pass it along to those who would should follow.
What these Sadducees attempted to do is to challenge the idea of a resurrection by a device known to students of logic as reductio ad absurdam. You take as a starting point some idea, and you draw logical inferences from it, until you reach a conclusion that is manifestly absurd and false. Having done this, you therefore demonstrate that the original starting point was, in fact, false.
In this case, the Sadducees never think of questioning the Mosaic provision for levirate marriage. But, they set it alongside an idea which they flatly reject – that there is a resurrection of the dead. So they say, *IF* there is a resurrection, then how are you going to decide which man is the true husband of the woman in the scenario that they lay out? Clearly, it will be impossible for all of them to be her husband, BUT all of them married her. Therefore, professing a belief in the resurrection of the dead leads you to an absurd result. And so, the implication is irresistable – according to the Sadducees – there CANNOT be such a thing as a resurrection of the dead.
I am sure the Sadducees had smug smiles aplenty after they put their question to Jesus. Not only were they relishing Jesus’ discomfort when attempted to answer what they were sure could not be answered, they had also publically put down those idiot Pharisees who were also standing around.
Back in my younger days, I took a philosophy course from a German professor named Helmut Girndt. Dr. Girndt is forever branded on my memory because of a paper which I wrote for him at the end of a course on phenomenology. It was a very ambitious paper and I was quite pleased with myself when I turned it in. When I got it back a week later, I was shocked to find the margins full of comments made in red ink. But, my shock was a trivial thing when I began to read the comments. One of them – about midway through the paper – captured the sense of all of them. He had underlined an entire paragraph of my paper, and beside it had writte in large capital letters “This is Exactly Wrong.”
Jesus said something like that to the Sadducees. Matthew preserves it for us in his account of this conversation in the 22th chapter of his gospel: “24Jesus answered and said to them, "Are you not therefore mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God?”
Surely that was a slap in the face, especially for the Sadduccees, since they camped on the notion that true doctrine simply HAD to be taught in the five Books of Moses. And, so, Jesus says to them, as it were, “This is exactly wrong! And it is exactly wrong because you do not know the Scriptures. Moreoever, you do not know the power of God Himself.” Jesus then explains their error, beginning with their ignorance of the power of God.
Luke’s account gives Jesus answer most fully: “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage. 35But those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage.”
Jesus first points out that the Sadduccees are looking at the future as if it were simply an extension of the past. On the contrary, this age is quite different from that age. Marrying and giving in marriage is the norm for this age; it is not for that age.
Why? Jesus explains further: “36 ... nor can they die anymore, for they are equal to the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.” The important thing to notice here is the notion of death – present in this age, but absent in the age to come – and its connection with marriage. Whatever else is true of marriage, Jesus points to the procreative power of marriage in this age, and that capacity to generate life in an age marked by the curse of death, is critical for this cursed age. But, in the age to come, when there will no longer be death, the generation of new life is no longer needed. And, therefore, there will be no more marriage.
May I point out in passing how closely Jesus links together the institution of marriage and the generation of new life in the form of children. The modern mind – even of evangelical Protestants – is quite otherwise. Children, to the modern mind, are an option, an option that it is reasonable to decline, in order to serve other interests and projects for which children would simply get in the way. But, to judge by Jesus’ teaching here, the production of children is so intrinsically bound up in the purpose of marriage that when producing children is no longer something needed, then the institution which served that purposes is also no longer needed.
Jesus’ point to the Sadducees is simply this: because you are ignorant of God’s power, it never occurs to you that the age to come – which is, of course, a result of God’s power in redemption – will be, by God’s power, an utterly different kind of place. The future is NOT like the present. Heaven is NOT like earth. THAT age is NOT like THIS age.
The Sadducees are like a baby in the womb, who speculates what it will be like when he is born. All he knows is the murkey, warm, wet enclosure that has always surrounded him. He does not see much of anything except, perhaps, a dim, vaguely red-brownish haze. He does not hear much of anything except a muffled, disffused murmur layered over a never ending sloshing beat of his mother’s heart. He does not speak. His movements are small and quickly constrained by the rubbery warmness of his tiny universe.
Have you ever considered how radically different is the world of the womb from the world outside the womb? Can you imagine how wrong, how utterly and absolutely wrong a baby would be to think of the world outside the womb in terms of his experience inside it? That is what the Sadduccees are doing. And, that is another reason why they are Exactly Wrong.
But, Jesus not only pierces their pride with a sword, he then slowly twists it by pointing to the very Scriptures which they claim have absolute authority. “26But concerning the dead, that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him, saying, "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. You are therefore greatly mistaken."
Luke tells us that some of the scribes then said, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” No doubt these scribes were Pharisees. And, who knows? Perhaps these, and some others, eventually came to faith in Jesus after he proved his teaching on the resurrection was true by coming out of the grave himself. Luke also says that after this point no one – Sadducee or Pharisee – dared not to question him any further.
I wish to leave us with two thoughts from this for this Sunday.
The first deals with how we view this life. I suggest to you that we view this life in the way that a baby should view its life in the womb. Between here and then there are many connections and things which are the same. I am who I am in this life, and I do not cease to be who I am in the resurrection. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John saw and recognized Moses and Elijah. They saw and recognized Jesus after he rose from the dead. And, when you and I meet one another in the resurrection, we will know and recognize one another as the same people we know and recognize here today.
At the same time, it will be wholely different world, just as the world of the womb is so vastly different from the world outside the womb. We came into this world from a world very different from it. And, this world is, according to Jesus, very different from the world we presently inhabit. This world is, as it were, a second womb. And, while we are here, we are doing what we did as babies in the first womb – we are growing in ways we may not even appreciate. We are developing capacities, talents, character qualities, perhaps all sorts of capabilities which we do not even understand, because this is not the world where all those things are supposed to be deployed. We were growing legs in world where no one can walk. We were growing fingers when there was nothing to grasp. We were growing lungs when there was no air to breath. Is it so strange an idea that in this present world, this second womb, we are being fitted for a kingdom that will turn out to be as different from this one as this one is different from our mother’s womb?
Indeed, Paul says in Romans 8, 19For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. … 21because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 22For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. … ”
So, in view of this, let us renew in our hearts a determination to obey the teaching of the Apostle John in 1 John 2: 15Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16For all that is in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – is not of the Father but is of the world. 17And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.”
The second thought I will leave with you relates to those who have loved ones who have died in the Lord. This next Thursday, April 21, is the eighth anniversary of my daughter Francesca’s entry into heaven. The memory of that day is, of course, carved pretty deeply into my own memory. She died in the same bed, in the same room, in which I lay down each night to go to sleep. That fact has often generated in my much sadness.
But, among my chiefest comforts and encouragements are the words which Jesus gives us in the gospel for today: God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And, so she lives even now, and when I meet her someday upon my entrance into heaven, I know that I will find her there, and that I will know her for who she is. Perhaps that is not the best reason, certainly it is not the most important reason, but for me it is a compelling reason look away from this world and to long for the next one.
God grant that all of us will look to that age as our true home, the place for which we are now being equipped by God’s grace.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
