November 13, 2022
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois
Luke 20:27-38[1]
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.”[2] 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?” (v. 33).
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.
These debates, these challenges to Jesus’
authority, illustrate the power of questions. 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…”[3] 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” (v. 36).
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 not 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.”[4] 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.
[1] The
scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard
Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of
the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[2]
Deuteronomy 25:6.
[3] Reprinted
from Book of Worship © 1986 by permission of the United Church of Christ
Office for Church Life and Leadership, p. 373.
[4]
Exodus 3:6.
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