Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. “Teacher, they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. The second and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. Finally, the woman died too. Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?” Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die, for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” (Luke 20.27-38)
History repeats itself. On this Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, we find ourselves in much the same situation as we did last Sunday when the Feast of All Souls’ upstaged the Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time on the liturgical calendar, causing the scripture readings reserved for ordinary time to be replaced by readings more appropriate for the feast day.
Well, the same happens again today. Rather than observe the Thirty-Second Sunday as we normally would do, the Roman calendar has put in its stead the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome, accompanied by readings that arguably augment that particular feast. We rightly might ask why this feast usurps the place of honor on the calendar when, all things considered, it celebrates a building.
The answer, I suppose, is found in the fact that the Basilica of John Lateran is the oldest public church in Rome, dedicated in the year 324, and is the official church of the bishop of Rome, that is, the Pope. Many people assume Saint Peter’s is the Pope’s church, but in fact, it is John Lateran. Saint Peter’s did not appear on the scene until the year 1506, almost twelve hundred years after John Lateran and after some 266 bishops of Rome had come and gone.
While I do not underestimate its historical importance and while I appreciate any building where people go in the hope of encountering the sacred, I plan to do today as I did last Sunday. In other words, I want to stay with the scriptures for the regular sequence of Sundays, in this way allowing us to continue our study of the Gospel of Luke that nears its conclusion.
In fact, only two Sundays remain before we move to a new liturgical year and a different gospel, that of Matthew. I feel it is important that we follow Luke’s text to its natural end, having spent so much time with this particular evangelist over the last year. And, as we might expect, the final text that we will study will be the crucifixion of Jesus, provided to us on the Feast of Christ the King, the last Sunday in the current cycle.
So, without further ado, we turn to Chapter 20 of Luke’s gospel where we find Jesus now in Jerusalem, his planned destination since Chapter 9. And while crowds may have cheered him as he entered the Holy City, he did not receive the same reception from the chief priests and other religious leaders in Jerusalem. Just the opposite. They continued their verbal assault on Jesus, greatly intensified after he had removed the money changers from the Temple, telling them that they have turned the temple into a den of thieves, not a house of prayer.
After that expulsion of the money changers, Luke tells us that “the chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people were seeking to put him to death.” That hostility is the background for the scene we have before us today. Angered by Jesus’ criticism of them, exposing their moral failures, and threatened by the crowd’s attraction to Jesus’ teachings, the chief priests and religious leaders are intent on removing this troublemaker from their midst. As we know, people in power do not cede their authority without a fight.
Initially, they hope to do it by putting Jesus in an awkward situation through a series of questions that they believe will put him on the spot, in this way presenting him as a fraud because he is unable to answer their question or proving him to be as an apostate by answering the question in a way that would put him at odds with the Hebrew scriptures.
After he had caused chaos in the Temple, they asked him, “By whose authority do you do these things?” It is but one of several questions that they will put before him. The next question appears before the scene we have today when they attempt to trap Jesus by posing a question concerning taxes. “Is it lawful for us to pay tribute to Caesar or not?”
Exasperated with their inability to match wits with Jesus who is clearly capable of answering their question without falling into a trap, the leaders next pose to him a rather ridiculous situation, hoping he will be unable to find an answer to this quandary. As we have seen, it concerns a woman who married seven brothers in sequence, each brother dying before giving her a child. “At the resurrection of the dead,” they ask him, “whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
The scenario is rooted in the so-called Levirate marriage, provided for in the Book of Deuteronomy, a provision that states, “When brothers live together and one of them dies without a son, the widow of the deceased shall not marry anyone outside the family, but her husband’s brother shall come to her, marrying her and performing the duty of a brother-in-law.”
It is an obvious effort on the part of the Sadducees who pose the question to discredit Jesus as he wrangles with it, the Sadducees hoping in this way to show the incredulity of a physical resurrection, something they do not believe. Their position was that a person lived on through his posterity, as the Book of Deuteronomy spelled out when it concluded in the above citation that “the firstborn son she bears shall continue the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out from Israel.”
While many people choose to focus on the answer that Rabbi Jesus gives to the question–a fair option for sure–it is also important that we see the context, that being the series of controversies that the religious leaders put before Jesus, hoping to see him stumble, their intentions made clear by Luke a short while later when he tells us once again that “the chief priests and scribes were seeking a way to put Jesus to death.” They are not interested in his answers per se, only in finding a way to end his life.
It is clear that they will not be content until they see him on a cross, these many machinations orchestrated towards that end. In a short while, we will see their bloodthirst answered as Jesus hangs on a cross between two thieves and as these religious leaders gloat over their win, Luke telling us that “the leaders sneered at him and said, ‘He saved others, let him save himself if he is the chosen one, the Messiah of God.’”
As to the answer that Jesus provides to them concerning the widow of the seven deceased brothers, it is important, not only for its insight, but also because it betters the Sadducees, proving Jesus quite able to take on his critics, so much so that upon hearing his answer to the question, some of the scribes said, “Teacher you have answered well.” In fact, Luke tells us that “they no longer dared to ask him anything.”
And what is Jesus’ answer? It is beautiful in its simplicity and in its profundity. In short, he answers that marriage is a construct for life on earth, but not for life in heaven. “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage.”
His answer works from the notion that the purpose of marriage, at least as understood from the Jewish mindset of the time, was to allow the perpetuation of life because of human mortality. While each person’s life may draw to an end, life nonetheless continues through a person’s offspring. That need no longer exists in the hereafter because, as Jesus said, “they can no longer die, for they are like the angels.”
For those who might want to hear Jesus spell out in detail what the hereafter looks like, there will be some disappointment. And yet there is great consolation as well because his explanation of the hereafter should be enough when he says, “They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection.” In other words, whatever the hereafter, it means God continues to claim us as his own and because he is a God of the living, we do not remain dead.
Of course, it is quintessentially human to ponder what awaits us after our deaths. And seeing as how we are limited by our human constructs, marriage being one of them, we imagine heaven to be some continuation of our experience on earth. As a result, I have heard eulogies that express the hope that the fishing holes in heaven are full because the deceased was a fisherman or that the celestial golf course stays eternally green because the deceased loved a game of golf, each scenario making an attempt, I suppose, to argue for the decedent’s happiness and satisfaction on the other side.
Truly, I understand and honor the effort, but also agree with the Jesuit theologian Walter Burghardt who once countered by saying he would be mad as hell if heaven were nothing more than eternal fishing or eternal golfing. As a result, when asked on multiple occasions by someone nearing death as to my own vision of heaven, I shied away from fishing holes and golf courses, choosing instead Saint Paul’s position that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for them that love him.”
My answer always begins with my belief that God is love. I explain that if we hold onto that belief, then we have to trust that whatever comes after our death will be rooted in a God who loves us, a God who gave us life here and whose love for us is neverending, meaning he will see that our life continues in some way on the other side.
I found it was usually enough to satisfy the curiosity or anxiety of the person who was soon to find the answer to the question for him or herself. I see much the same satisfaction in Jesus’ reply to the Sadducees, particularly when he reminded them that we are God’s children. As such, I believe we can conclude that our Father in heaven will continue his care for us when we have moved from this world to the next.
It is interesting to remember that Jesus used the image of a wedding banquet in an earlier parable when he told of the Kingdom of God. Obviously, it connected with the lived experience of his listeners. But it also speaks to us of joy, unity, fullness, and love, all components of a wedding feast. If heaven contains these and more, then we should find ourselves more than satisfied, less concerned about whose wife the widow was, and content to know that in the end we are all children of God, held in his heavenly embrace. Truth be told, that is the more primary and the more perfect relationship, the one with us from beginning to end.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 