Seven Husbands

“They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.” (Luke 20.36)

I once knew a woman who had seven ex-husbands. Also, a current one. Not only did she have all those men in her life, she had a good memory also. She remembered the names of each husband—in chronological order. More amazing—to me—she remembered the date of each of her weddings— month, day, and year. She also could tell you her husbands’ birthdays. I happened to notice that the age of each husband decreased as her age increased. No judgment, just a fact.

I always think of her when I read the story in the Bible about the woman with seven husbands. The story takes place when the Sadducees—they were the ones with an Ivy League education in first century A.D. Palestine—thought they could trick the Rabbi from the backwaters into showing his lack of academic credentials.

As the story unfolds, they are in for a surprise. They present the Teacher with a trick question that he answers with the finesse of a spelling bee champion. Their concern, as we might recall, was about a woman who had seven husbands. More to the point, who would she belong to after the resurrection of the dead. “Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be?”

On the surface it may have seemed an honest concern. But the Sadducees–sly foxes–didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead, and so their question was meant to show the absurdity of believing in any such resurrection. It was an attempt to poke a hole through the whole silly notion of people rising from the dead.

The Rabbi from Galilee gently—I would say—informed the panel of experts that they were looking at the resurrection in the wrong way. Put simply—as he always did—he said that the resurrection could not be seen as a continuation of life as it was. It is so much more. “The children of this age marry and remarry. But those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.”

I’m sure his answer was met with skepticism and with a few scratches of their beards, although I suspect they were smart enough to know they had been outsmarted. “They are like angels,” he tells them. Angels, as they knew, were not bound by the same conditions of human life on earth, such as space, and they lived in another mode of existence entirely.

That conversation also is important for us to hear because we too easily can start to think like the Sadducees. We do it when we talk of the resurrection from the dead as transporting us to a physical place, like getting on a plane for a long flight and disembarking when we arrive at our destination. It’s understandable–we have limited ways of talking about the things we don’t understand all that well–the so-called mysteries of life. But we have to admit all our analogies limp.

In much the same way, we like to speak of heaven like a hotel with a five star rating. There, we can sleep late and take an afternoon swim and room service is great. But when we speculate on scenarios of life “up there in the penthouse” in strictly physical terms, we have undersold heaven, like a realtor who puts a house on the market at a grossly undervalued price.

The resurrection—Rabbi Yeshua instructs us—should not be confused with resuscitation, which means life as it was is resumed after a short break, like kindergarten children experience after nap time when they have to go back to the same boring books. He says the resurrection is a new life, a different life, a better life.

We need only remember that the Rabbi, when he himself was resurrected from the dead, was not recognized by his closest friends. Mary Magdalene thought he was the gardener. The Emmaus disciples thought he was a hitchhiker. The fishermen on the sea thought he was a stranger. So if our plans for heaven include our keeping our pretty brown eyes and those nice straight teeth that we spent a fortune on, we’re in for a disappointment.

The Galilean Rabbi wants us to understand that heaven has no zip code. And when we talk about it like it is a house on some street with a signpost and with a number on the mailbox, we’re thinking like small children who want to write a letter to Grandpa who has died and gone to heaven. Understandable for sure when small children who think in concrete terms do it, even sweet, but not sufficient for adults who can think more abstractly.

Not that we don’t all go to physical descriptions from time to time when the puniness of our understanding pains us and we grab for images of heaven, such as streets paved in gold or fishing holes full of fat bass. But we are better served to think of everlasting life as a state of being (like being in love), not a place in the sky (like the space station), unless we want to be like the cosmonaut who returned from space travel and proudly declared there was no God because he saw none in the far reaches of the universe.

 As we may want to recall, the Rabbi often chose the image of a banquet to describe that state of being called eternity, and while we can associate a banquet with a place, the real significance of a banquet is found in the joy, in the unity, and in the satisfaction we feel when our stomachs are full. These are “states of being” that speak well to the experience of life with God in eternity. Augustine nailed it–he always was an overachiever–when he explained it in these terms, “Our hearts are made for Thee, and they are restless until they rest in Thee.”

The Christian Scriptures also sought to explain the unexplained in ways such as “eye has not seen nor ear heard what God has prepared for those who believe in him” (Paul of Tarsus). Or, “And the One who sat on the throne said, ‘See, I make all things new.’” (John the Seer). Or, “Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then, face to face” (Paul again). All of these are good images and nearer to what the Rabbi always taught about resurrection from the dead.

In the end, should somebody ask me that same question that the Sadducees asked the Rabbi, “Who will this woman with all those husbands belong to when they are together again in heaven,” I think I would take my cue from the Galilean Teacher and I would answer the question in this way, “She belongs to God. And because she belongs to the God who is Love, she has enough love in her heart for all seven husbands.”

—Jeremy Myers