November 11, 2007 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Maccabees 7:1-2,9-14 + Psalm 17 + 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5 + Luke 20: 27-38
He is in Jerusalem now, and he has already cleansed the Temple. Jesus is in a no-win conversation, and anyone who has been the target for religious questions raised by persons who had no intention of being influenced by the answers can sense the frustration. These Sadducees were the ultimate right-wing religious fanatics. They only believed and gave authority to the first five books of the Old Testament: the Pentateuch. They did not ask this question to get an answer or have a conversation. They raised the issue to bully Jesus with their conviction. They wanted to argue, to embarrass, and perhaps, turn people against Jesus. Their attitude gets no response from Jesus only their question.
To understand the answer, we must understand the culture. Marriage at that time was not about love, affection or romance. It was a simple political/economic system concerned with property accumulation and population growth. Population growth is the issue addressed in the Book of Deuteronomy requiring the brother of a deceased man to take the widow and her children into his care so as to continue the family line. The scenario proposed by the Sadducees is of course exaggerated to the point of being silly, and Jesus ignores that. He simply sticks with logic and avoids being embarrassed by their proposition.
On the second point, Jesus stays within their accepted scriptures reminding them that their own scriptures speak of the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” who must somehow be alive since the same scriptures refer to God as a “God of the living”, not a God of the dead. At this point, their trap collapses by the words of their own accepted authority.
Yet the point Jesus makes is not just for the Sadducees, it is for all who are listening. What he reveals or teaches here is that there is a radical difference between the present life and the resurrection; but because of God and within God, there is some continuity. In other words, life after death is so different that procreation will not be necessary. He is not saying that there will be no relationships; but that the primary relationship will be with God and in God and all other relationships will be found in God. This becomes a proposal for ordering our relationships now. Perhaps what Jesus suggests is that the more God is a part of a relationship, the closer that relationship is to the divine plan
that comes to fulfillment in heaven.
When earlier in his teaching Jesus raised questions about how much his disciples should worry about material possessions, he proposed that we consider what of those possessions we would take with us after death. It was a radical way of questioning values and how we look upon the stuff we gather up and keep in our garages, attics and storage facilities. Now he goes one step further raising a question about our relationships. He proposes that one relationship will carry over through death: our relationship with God. Getting that point calls into question how we relate to one another, and what we might seek, expect, and find in our human relationships.
The heart of what is revealed here is that belief in the resurrection is not the same as the conviction that the soul is immortal. On this point we divert from religions that believe in reincarnation because they believe in immortality but not in resurrection. Our belief in resurrection is grounded upon the concept of covenant, which claims that God has established a relationship with human beings. The question is this: does physical death end that relationship, or is God’s desire to keep the covenant stronger? The tradition in the Bible is that God’s desire is stronger than death.
Consequently, for you and me, this covenant holds our hope for resurrection. Only one relationship holds that promise. Other relationships we have in this life must lead us into the covenant which is why love is such an indispensable issue. Casual sex, narcissistic relationships, or the insincere manipulation of another for the sake of profit or fame does not lead us into covenant. Only sacrificial love takes us there, and these are the relationships that should matter and be the focus of our attention and the source of our hope. Our relationships are what we shall take with us into God, nothing else. Relationships are what we must work for, nothing else. A family that suffers the absence of someone because they are working all the time is very poor no matter what the earned income. This Gospel on a November Sunday simply calls into question the quality of our relationships with one another and how those relationships lead us to God.