Some of the Sadducees came to him, those who deny that there is a resurrection. . . They asked him, “Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.” Jesus said to them, “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. 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 20.27, 33-36)
Rabbi Jesus has arrived in Jerusalem. That is the first thing we need to know if we are to come to some understanding of the ridiculous riddle that the Sadducees, the priests of the Temple, put before him in the passage we study today. No sooner does the Rabbi step foot within the city walls and he is bombarded with questions from the religious leaders of the city. The questions serve as vehicles for the conflict that is front and center from this point on.
The verses that precede this particular episode present the first of the questions. The chief priests, seeing Rabbi Jesus teaching the people in the Temple precinct, ask him, “Tell us, by what authority do you do these things? Or who is giving you this authority?” (20.2) No sooner does he respond to that question than he is asked another one. “Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” (20.22)
In this instance, Luke clues us in as to the cause for the interrogation, telling us that the leaders wanted “to keep Jesus under close scrutiny, and sent as spies those who pretended to be righteous so they could catch him in his speech, in this way handing him over to the rule and authority of the prefect.” (20.20-21). In other words, this game of 20 Questions is intended as a trap, not as any serious effort at finding an answer to a complex question.
Failing at the first two attempts, the leaders resort to a third effort, posing the improbable situation of a woman seven-times widowed, marrying seven brothers in succession, one dying after the other. Having set the stage, they ask the question, “In the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as a wife?” (20.33)
The question is a particularly loaded one even beyond the conundrum posed by the plot since the questioners–the Sadducees–did not believe in the resurrection of the dead in the first place, their fictionalized story of the oft-widowed woman intended to prop their own position through the absurdity of the plot, believing they have backed Rabbi Jesus into the proverbial corner.
Once again, as had happened in each of the prior instances, the Rabbi is more than equal to the scrutiny, with the result being his questioners end up with egg on their face, and some of the scribes, not impartial judges by any means, admit he has bettered his adversaries, saying to him, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” Of course, since their interest was never in gaining understanding but only in getting incriminating evidence, they accelerate their efforts, satisfied only when Rabbi Jesus is nailed to a cross outside the gates of the city.
Although the story line that the Sadducees pose to Rabbi Jesus of the seven brothers married to the same woman is absurd in itself and is intended for a malevolent purpose, it does allow the Teacher to offer an important lesson to his listeners, one that we also benefit from as we hear his response again today.
That lesson is found in his distinction between “this age” and “the coming age” when he says to the Sadducees, “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.” Simply put, Rabbi Jesus says heaven and earth are worlds apart.
And because they are worlds apart, it’s never going to work to try to use our earthly experiences to describe heaven, although we inevitably do whenever we describe our departed loved ones as enjoying never-ending golf or ever-plentiful fish holes. We can excuse these efforts to paint heaven as a place of our favorite hobbies, but we have to be cautious in presenting heaven as a physical place, when, in all likelihood, it is a state or a condition of being.
Granted, the evangelist John has Rabbi Jesus assure his followers before his return to his Father that “in my Father’s house there are many mansions,” himself using descriptors of a physical place, but his purpose was not to describe what heaven was, but to promise his disciples that they would find themselves with him in the end if they stayed true to his word. They, like him, would be in a condition of oneness with the Father.
But here the Galilean Teacher makes clear that the Sadducees–and us, if we think along those lines–are mistaken in thinking that there is a continuity between the ways of earth and the ways of heaven. Life in heaven is not simply a continuation of life as we lived it on earth. The only continuity is that we are close to God in heaven so long as we remain close to God on earth. In all else, there is discontinuity or a “great divide” as Luke tells us in the parable of the rich man and the poor man Lazarus.
The fallacy of the Sadducees’ proposition is already buried beneath the surface, had they bothered to give it some thought. Marriage, as a human construct, principally allows for the propagation of the race. Restricted by mortality on earth, life is continued by way of our children. Procreation is necessary to sustain life on earth.
But in heaven there is immortality, marriage no longer needed then to ensure the continuation of life. In short, marriage serves no purpose in heaven. No longer subject to death in heaven, there is no need to procreate. Rabbi Jesus says as much when he replies to the Sadducees, “In the coming age they neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels and they are the children of God.”
As a rule, happily married couples are bothered by Rabbi Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees, finding their marriage to bring them great joy and much fulfillment, believing eternal life without one another would be a loss of that same joy and fulfillment. That fear is certainly understandable, but overlooks the fact that Rabbi Jesus did not say married people would not be together in heaven.
More likely, he is saying that they no longer need the bond of marriage to hold them together. In heaven, their love, joined to the love of God, requires no additional buttress or safeguard. In “the coming age,” the purity of their love for one another will be made perfect in heaven in and through the love of God. The overflowing love of God now holds them together, not the construct of marriage.
In Robert Inman’s beautifully told tale of sixteen-year-old Trout Moseley’s growing up days in Georgia during the hot summer of 1979, carrying the simple title Dairy Queen Days, he tells at one point of a conversation between Trout, who works at the local Dairy Queen, and his dad, Joe Pike, the town’s minister. Inman describes the scene in this way:
“He gave Joe Pike a long look, waiting. But Joe Pike didn’t say anything. He finished off the banana split, placed the plastic spoon in the Styrofoam boat, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, wadded it up and put it in the boat beside the spoon. ‘Will there be any Dairy Queens in heave-n-n-n-n?’ he sang off-key, then grinned. ‘I sure hope so. It is one of life’s great pleasures, and I can’t imagine the Lord running the afterlife without it. How could you have the Sweet By-and-By without Dairy Queen?’”
One thing Joe Pike failed to understand was the same thing that the Sadducees failed to understand. In heaven, you don’t need the Dairy Queen and you don’t need marriage. When you’ve got the presence of the Most High God right in front of you, you’ve got those things and more, more than you can possibly want, a banana split not even in the running.
This is one thing that John the Seer, at the close of his visions in the Book of Revelation, understands, describing in his own way the same thing that Rabbi Jesus says to the Sadducees. John writes, “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb. The city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and to it the kings of the earth will bring their treasure. During the day its gates will never be shut, and there will be no night there.”
Certainly, we still have many questions about “the coming age.” It is in the nature of mere mortals to ask questions of the high heavens. But, our answers will come in time, our questioning minds at peace when we stand at last before the Most High God who is the answer to all questions. Until then, we must be satisfied with the words of St. Paul who said, “Eye has not seen and ear has not heard, nor have entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love him.”
His words simply re-echo what Rabbi Jesus tells the Sadducees when they throw questions his way.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 