Love Will Be Our All in All
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question: “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.”
This scene appears as part of a series of questions and challenges put to Jesus by others. Some of them may be trying to understand his teaching, but many are trying to catch him in traps. They want to be rid of the troublesome preacher from Galilee, so they want to corner him into speaking blasphemy or advising illegal action to his followers. So far, Jesus has avoided every trap laid for him and has sent many of his challengers home scratching their heads.
Today’s exchange marks a shift in the conversations. The previous few questions have been about correct practices. Whence does Jesus derive his authority? How should Judeans relate to Caesar and the taxes of Rome? This question about the resurrection is not about correct practice, but about correct belief.
Jesus knows that the Sadducees are trying to trick him with this question about resurrection. The Sadducees do not believe that there will be a resurrection, so to ask a teacher for clarification about how it will work is a disingenuous start. Further, by the first century in Judea, the practice of levirate marriage was functionally extinct. The tradition and teaching were known among the people, but it was no longer a practice widely observed. The Sadducees were working hard to come up with a question that would put Jesus off balance. Their framing of the question about a woman with seven legitimate husbands is, of course, a hypothetical meant to demonstrate the problems that a bodily resurrection might cause. As though demonstrating a potential problem will support their claim that there will be no resurrection.
In the versions of this story told by Mark (12:18-27) and Matthew (22:23-33), Jesus begins by telling the Sadducees that they are wrong because they do not know either the scriptures or the power of God and then proceeds to dismantle their argument. Here, in Luke’s telling, Jesus leaves out those harsh comments and simply explains to them the flaws in their question, using their own tactics against them.
Jesus explains that their question, aside from being asked in bad faith, is irrelevant. There is no need for marriage in the resurrection because the relationships between people are changed profoundly in that life. Where there is no death, there is no procreation, so one of the culturally-normative functions of marriage is obsolete in the resurrection. This aspect of marriage is for this life alone. The question about to whom the woman would be married is put aside because there will be no marriage in the resurrection.
Since the Sadducees frame the question as part of the teaching of the Torah, coming from Moses, Jesus turns this around on them. He points out that, since they hold the Torah as an authority, they must accept the resurrection of the dead. Since God claims to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and since God is a god of the living and not the dead, then these men must be alive to God, even though they seemed to die.
Jesus has handily done away with both the Sadducee’s ill-intended question and their resistance to the idea of a resurrection, quoting their own authoritative sources back at them to make his point. He has also avoided speaking any blasphemy or contravention of the law, so the attempt at entrapment has failed. Jesus will remain a free, meddlesome preacher for a while longer. The Sadducees have no comeback for Jesus’ rebuttal of their question and the crowd listening in are amazed with what Jesus has been able to prove in the debate.
We Christians are quite convinced that there is a resurrection. It is at the very centre of our understanding of who God is, why Jesus matters, and what we are all doing here this morning. But this idea that in the resurrection our relationships will change dramatically may give some of us an unsettled feeling in the pits of our stomachs. There are so many good things about our friendships and marriages as they are, why would God want us to do without them on the other side of the veil?
In this life, the vocations that we discern and respond to, including marriage, are not only about our own lives, but the life of the whole Body of Christ. That is, all Christians. Not every Christian is called to be a parent. But those who are, in addition to the task of faithfully raising children, are also meant to remind the rest of us of our vocation to love as good parents do. To be protective, caring, nurturing, patient, and so on. Christians who have a vocation to the healing arts are called to be good, faithful practitioners but also to remind the rest of us of our vocation to be working for the healing of broken bodies, hearts, spirits, and societies.
Not every Christian is called to marriage, but the kind of love that we associate with a good, healthy marriage is the kind of love that every Christian is called to show forth in the world. This love is hopeful, generous, patient, adoring, self-sacrificing, gentle, and so on. Part of the vocation of those who are married is to remind the rest of us, through their words and actions, of the kind of love we are all meant to hold. And this is the kind of love that every one of us will have for every other one in the resurrection. We will not need the reminder of marriage because what it exemplifies will be the reality for every one of us.
This is why, whenever we baptize a new Christian, all of us already baptized participate in the promises and vows. We remind ourselves of the foundational beliefs and practices on which all of these other vocations rest. We remind ourselves also of the incredible gift of love that is offered by God in the waters of new life: to join Christ in his victory over sin and to never again fear death. Our destination, that place of perfect, deathless love, is assured. This is such good news, beloved. Such good news.
