November 10, 2019
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois
Luke 20:27-38
Does anyone else think the Sadducees are a little crude?
Yes, there is this odd instruction in Deuteronomy 25 that if a married man dies
childless, his brother should take the woman to be his wife and the children “shall
succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be
blotted out of Israel.”[1]
If you hadn’t noticed before, there is some shady stuff in the bible that makes
us cringe. The Sadducees, hoping to humiliate Jesus, go for the gotcha line.
They pick a demeaning rule about widows and make up a ridiculous hypothetical.
They use a rhetorical fallacy, the slippery slope, to try to show that belief
in the resurrection can’t be based on the Torah, the laws of Moses. “Whose wife
will the woman be?”
Jesus doesn’t fall for it. People in this age marry, but in
the age of the resurrection there is no marriage. The rules no longer apply.
Your question is meaningless. And don’t get me started on the concept of
married women being the property of their husband. The children of the
resurrection don’t belong to anyone but God. Don’t be so crude.
So, who are these Sadducees, anyway? During the time between
200 and 100 BCE, the interpreters of the law were split into factions, with the
Pharisees and Sadducees disagreeing over belief in the resurrection. According
to the Sadducees, there was no doctrine of the resurrection of the dead or of
angels in the Torah, the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy. The Pharisees argument was that the written Torah was only part of
the story, and the interpretation of the law must be ongoing, taking into
account new beliefs such as those which emerged in the prophetic literature.
An example they would have used was the book of Daniel,
which features the angels Gabriel and Michael as well as reference to the resurrection
of the dead. The Pharisees valued the ongoing interpretation of the Torah in
oral tradition, embracing new understanding about the final judgement and
everlasting life. Jesus participated in these debates, and spoke often about eternal
life. Even though we often see Jesus arguing with the Pharisees, they were both
aligned against the Sadducees.
It is interesting to read about these debates, these challenges
to Jesus’ authority.
Questions can have many purposes. Questions can set or frame the conversation.
Questions can seek knowledge, a better understanding of a situation, or seek to
challenge the authority or character of an opponent. Questions can be used to find
out what another knows, or to show that the other can’t possibly know anything
of value and should be dismissed. For the Sadducees, the question they ask here
is clearly framed to show the crowd that Jesus is not trustworthy or
knowledgeable.
Jesus doesn’t fall for the dirty tricks. This is the master
Teacher, after all, and he takes the question not as a challenge but a
teachable moment. Heaven and earth are not the same. The rules are different. Things
work differently in the life to come, and God is less concerned about the
particulars of the rules than the love and mercy that you show to one another. “Holy
God, whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts…”[2]
These familiar words remind us that in heaven even the lowest of the low “are
like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.”
The kingdoms of the earth are not the kingdom of heaven,
where the last shall be first and the first shall be last. Jesus teaches that
heaven is where those who have been dehumanized will be restored, the oppressed
will be set free, those who have been treated as inferior will be lifted up. In
God’s realm we neither marry nor are given in marriage, women are no longer the
property of men, and the children of the resurrection will know the peace and
joy that was denied them in life.
Jesus knew the scriptures. He had studied as much as any
good Pharisee or Sadducee. What set him apart, among other things, was that he
looked up from the book to see the people. People who hurt, people suffering,
people in need of hope, people in need of the God of the living. These people
living under the oppressive Roman rule, slaving day after day to see little or
no improvement in their lives, these people needed to know that just because it
has been this way in life doesn’t mean it will be this way in the life to come.
Suffering keeps people from imagining new possibilities. The
dehumanizing systems of oppression that we witness today, of racism, classism,
sexism, heterosexism, ableism, keeps people from seeing anything better. Suffering
keeps the children of the world looking down, backs bent in labor, faces hidden
in fear, minds weary from struggle, so that they cannot see the promise of
freedom. Though they may be dead to the world, Jesus sees them, and to him they
are all alive, for they are children of the resurrection.
It is in faith that they, and we, have hope. Had it not been
for the steadfast faith of Moses, the Hebrews might still be lost in the
desert. Had it not been for the faith of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, the people
might not have returned from Babylon. Had it not been for the faith of Mary,
Peter, and John, the risen Christ might not be preached today. Had it not been
for the faith of the slaves in America, the spirituals of freedom might still
be only sung in chains.
In the good news of Jesus’ resurrection, we know that we too
are children of the resurrection. In the midst of every situation, this promise
bring hope to rise above what tries to bring us down. God loves and cares for
the poor, the widow, the oppressed, the exploited, the illegal. In this
knowledge we may find hope. As children of the resurrection, this world does
not have the last word, and our worth and dignity will be restored. With this
faith we may find courage.
When God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, he was
greeted by these words: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the
God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”[3]
To God, all of them are alive. This means that not only these ancient
ancestors, but all who have gone before us are alive in God. They are not dead
to God, and they are not dead to us. They did not only speak in times gone by,
but they speak to us now. And together with all we are the complete family of
God.
We cannot connect directly with those who have passed on
before us. It doesn’t work that way. But we do believe in the resurrection, and
we know the living God, and in the life of God we are one with all of God’s
family. In that company we are strengthened for the journey of faith,
encouraged in the work of justice and peace, and blessed to share this world,
and this life, with our one great family. Amen.
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