Penelope Bridges
As we begin our extended observance of Advent, we are approaching the end of our year with the Gospel of Luke. One of the themes of Advent is “last things”: death and resurrection, judgment and grace, heaven and hell; so it’s quite fitting that today we hear about a confrontation focused on the next life and the nature of God’s Kingdom. The tension in the Gospel is rising as Jesus repeatedly challenges the religious authorities, the people committed to the status quo.
Today’s story has him in the Temple in Jerusalem. He has told the parable of the wicked tenants in the vineyard – you know, where the tenants refuse to pay their rent and end up murdering the landowner’s son. The scribes and chief priests recognize that this story is a pointed criticism of them as stewards of God’s vineyard; and they have attempted to make a fool of Jesus by asking him about the coins that had the emperor’s image on them: the Render unto Caesar story that leaves them humiliated and speechless.
Now the Sadducees take their turn at trying to trip Jesus up.
The Sadducees were a sect within Judaism that had a narrow view of Scripture: they believed that only Moses had sacred authority, and therefore the Torah, the first five books of our Bible, which contain words and teachings attributed to Moses, were the core of their belief system.
The Torah has no explicit reference to the idea of the resurrection of the dead: therefore, the Sadducees rejected the concept.
The Sadducees were a minority group of wealthy Jewish aristocrats who liked the world just as it was: they didn’t see any need for transformation or resurrection. They were doing just fine in what Jesus calls “this age”.
The Pharisees, a larger group of highly educated men who dominated the leadership of the Jewish community, had a broader view of Scripture and adopted the idea of resurrection as it was presented in other portions of the Hebrew Scriptures, the prophets and writings. Sadducees and Pharisees often clashed on matters of Jewish practice and belief. It seems that, despite the frequent challenges and squabbles between the Pharisees and Jesus, he was understood to be more in the Pharisee camp, so the Sadducees grasped this opportunity to try to catch him out.
The story paints a rather unlikely picture of a woman married to one of seven brothers. Ancient Mosaic law called for brothers to sire children on their bereaved sisters-in-law so that a widow wouldn’t be left childless and ultimately destitute. It doesn’t seem to have been common practice by the time Jesus was around. In fact, you can be sure that the well-off Sadducees were even less likely than most to embrace this practice, so the “case study” they present is rather disingenuous, and obviously designed to be a trap.
When this woman’s husband dies without giving her a child, she is passed on to the next brother, who also dies without issue. She is trafficked to seven brothers in all, and when the last one dies she is left still childless. So, the Sadducees ask, was this unfortunate woman a “Real housewife” to any of the brothers? To the first one? To the last one? To anyone? And, if you believe in the resurrection of the dead, whose wife will she be counted as when all faithful people are resurrected according to your doctrine?
So much for the first paragraph of our story.
The Sadducees intended to trap Jesus, but all they did was to reveal their own limitations. They assumed that the next life would be a carbon copy of this life, with the same divisions, structures, and oppressions.
Jesus is ready to set them straight.
He doesn’t answer their question directly: whose husband will she be? But he dives into the beliefs behind the question, the nature of eternal life and the character of God. He educates the Sadducees on their own Scripture, referencing Moses in his reply, cleverly anticipating that the Sadducees will give more weight to his answer if Moses features in it.
It’s not that Jesus avoids talking about marriage: you’ve probably noticed that Jesus talks quite a bit about marriage and divorce in the Gospels. He is hard on those who choose divorce, because in that time and place, divorce could leave a woman and her children destitute.
But in this conversation he is reminding his listeners that marriage as an institution isn’t an immutable law. Like his statement elsewhere that the Sabbath was made for humankind, not humans for the sabbath, like his welcome of tax collectors and sinners, he is overturning assumptions and resetting expectations; he is dismantling oppressive systems and condemning hypocrisy.
Marriage is a human institution. It provides a useful structure for relationships and families, because in this life we need such structures to guide our behavior. In ancient times it was a highly oppressive structure for women, even to the repellent extreme of a woman being passed from brother to brother like used clothing. Religion itself is a manmade structure which enables us to practice our faith in an orderly way. Science has taught us what St. Paul wrote in his letters, that there is no male or female: gender roles are artificial and gender identities fluid.
Jesus tells us that in “that age”, the age to come, when the Kingdom is fully inaugurated, we won’t need any of these structures or definitions or divisions or hierarchies. It will be a radically egalitarian world. Life will be on a different plane altogether. We won’t even need physical bodies or the means to reproduce. People won’t be categorized, condemned, or marginalized based on some physical trait. All will simply be beloved children of God. That is the great good news of the Gospel.
The Sadducees were prisoners of their small imaginations. They simply couldn’t conceive of a world radically different from the one they inhabited. But think about it: how awful it would be if heaven were simply a repetition of this life. If all the pettiness and brokenness of this world were replicated. If we were stuck with bodies that were diseased or damaged. That wouldn’t be heaven by any definition that I can think of.
Scripture tells us that God is preparing better things for us than we can ask or imagine.
Where are we falling short in imagining the good things that God has for us?
Where are we reluctant to trust in God out of fear or a refusal to color outside the lines?
When change happens, do we allow ourselves to imagine new opportunities, or do we limit ourselves to grieving whatever has been left behind?
31 years ago, when my family and I prepared to leave New Hampshire so that I could attend seminary, I grieved for weeks over the upcoming losses: the home we had made there, our friends, our church, the choirs I sang in. Until the day when I was granted an Epiphany that opened my eyes to the possibilities ahead: the realization that there would be another church, new friends, new homes to make as I followed the call to serve God in ordained ministry. That moment turned what felt like a death into a promise of new life, even though I didn’t yet know what that new life would look like.
Jesus doesn’t explain what resurrection or life in the Kingdom looks like, but he does offer us the good news that to God we are all eternally alive, no matter what our physical bodies might do. Our God is the God of the living, not of the dead: death is never the end of the story.
The good news is that God is not limited by our imaginations. There is always something better out there for us. We may live now in discomfort, in awareness of our own and our neighbors’ pain. That is important, because that awareness prompts us to get out there and do something about it, to feed the hungry, to agitate for justice, to protest cruelty and corruption. We are not Sadducees, living in blind complacency and denying God’s ability to change the world. But we are followers of Jesus, who came into the world that he might destroy the works of the devil and make us children of God and heirs of eternal life; Jesus who taught us that for God all things are possible, even the resurrection of the apparently dead.
So, in the words of today’s epistle:
“May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.” Amen.
