One of the key things that separates human beings from animals is our ability to ask questions. Human beings ask a lot of questions, and all our questions are driven by a wide range of reasons and motivations.
It’s not surprising, then, when we read the Gospels and find people asking Jesus all sorts of questions. Sometimes their questions arise out of sheer amazement (“Who is this that even the winds and the sea obey him?”), sometimes suspicion (“By what authority do you do these things?”), and sometimes from what seems like sincere attempts to seek God (“Teacher, how can I inherit eternal life?”).
And so today’s Gospel text centers on yet another question to Jesus. As we’ll see, it’s an unusual question, and the motivations behind the question seem suspect. But Jesus answers it brilliantly, and in doing so he points us to something that is central to our faith and hope: the resurrection of the dead.
With that in mind, let’s go through the text and follow it through to its implications.
We’re in chapter 20 of Luke’s Gospel. Jesus has arrived in Jerusalem. Danger is imminent. The religious authorities are trying to trap him by asking him supposedly incriminating questions. Earlier in this chapter they asked him about his authority, hoping to hit him with a charge of blasphemy. But because of the shrewdness of Jesus’ answer, the charge didn’t stick.
And then again the religious authorities sent spies to ensnare him with another question, this time about paying taxes to Caesar. Again, Jesus wiggles out from the trap and turns it on his questioners. Nonetheless, it is abundantly clear at this point that some very powerful people want Jesus dead.
And so our text opens with yet another group of religious leaders coming to question Jesus. This time it’s the Sadducees, who are best known for denying the existence of any afterlife. According to their belief, death is the end; there are no judgements or rewards after death, and any idea of resurrection is false. They believed this was consistent with the teaching of the Old Testament.
And so they ask Jesus a strange question. They begin by citing a command given by Moses (which you can find in the book of Deuteronomy). That command stipulates that if a man’s brother were to die, and if his brother had no sons, then he would be required to take his brother’s widow as his wife. He would then be expected to provide for her needs and have children with her to preserve his dead brother’s line. This law was there to protect widows in a society in which they were very vulnerable.
But then the question veers off into a weird hypothetical. The Sadducees describe a situation in which this happens seven times to seven brothers—a man marries his brother’s widow, but then dies before she has children. The next brother marries that woman, but he dies childless too. And on it goes until all the brothers are dead, leaving behind a childless woman who has been widowed seven times.
Now here’s their question: Given that this woman had been married to all seven brothers during her earthly life, whose wife will she be once she is resurrected into eternal life? Will she have seven husbands?
This is what philosophers call a “reduction to absurdity” argument. What the Sadducees are trying to do is show that if you take the idea of resurrection to its logical end, then you end up with something completely ridiculous, like a woman stuck with seven husbands for all eternity.
They probably expect Jesus to stop, think for a moment, and say: “You know what, fellas? I hadn’t thought of that. But since you put it that way, this whole resurrection business is ridiculous, isn’t it?”
But Jesus doesn’t say that. Instead, he responds to them clearly and forcefully, and in such a way that the resurrection is reaffirmed more strongly than ever. His response has two parts: The first is a point about our bodies and our relationships in the life to come; the second is a larger point about God’s life-giving purposes.
Let’s start with the first part: To show the inappropriateness of their question, Jesus tells them that, regarding marriage, eternal life is different than earthly life. In our earthly life, we are married and have children.
For Jesus, marriage is inherently bound up with reproduction, and both are inherently bound up with death. That is not to say that marriage is a bad thing. In fact marriage is instituted by God in the beginning and is fundamentally good. The point is that it isn’t permanent.
But the resurrected life is different because there is no death. At that point death will have been conquered, and thus there will be no need for marriage. Jesus tells us that in our resurrected life, we will be deathless, just like the angels.
So that’s Jesus’ first point: Death makes marriage necessary. Since resurrection is the defeat of death, it makes marriage redundant.
The second point is a larger point about God. To make this point, Jesus refers to the story of Moses encountering God in the burning bush (Ex. 3:6). During that encounter, God says to Moses: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Notice that God didn’t say “I was” but “I am.”
From this, Jesus reasons that God is presently in a covenant relationship with the patriarchs, even though they have been dead for centuries. The implication, then, is that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still living in some way, having been resurrected by God to eternal life. After all, Jesus says, God is not God of the dead, but of the living.
The major point Jesus is making here is that God has ultimate power over death, and that power over death is what raised the patriarchs to new life. That power over death is what will raise Jesus to new life, and that power over death is what will eventually raise all God’s people to new life.
And so the Sadducees find the tables turned on them. They were certain that they had a knock-down argument against the resurrection and eternal life, only to find their argument in tatters after a few moments with Jesus. And so they slink with their tails between their legs, mumbling out a “Well done, teacher.” Not one of them dared ask Jesus a question ever again.
And our text ends there, with the hope of the Gospel ringing out clearly for all to hear, and the enemies of the Gospel shamed into silence. And what is the hope of the Gospel that this text elucidates so well? Simply that there is life after death for those who love Jesus and are called according to his purpose. What happened to Jesus—resurrection—will happen to all of us who belong to Jesus. And all the feeble arguments of all the Sadducees in the world can’t take that away.
Elsewhere, St. Paul puts it this way: “Look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.” In other words, our life today is not all there is. The New Testament is relentless about this. Time and again it urges us to see the big picture by cultivating an eternal perspective, by trusting in the death-defeating promises of God.
If we learn to look at the world through an eternal perspective, then we realize that our earthly existence is only a brief stop on the way to eternity. But this brief stop has a purpose, and that is to prepare us for the resurrected life. During our time on earth, God is working out his salvation in us. Life is like a training camp to prepare us to live forever with God, and those who persevere in faith reap eternal joy.
Not long ago, I was listening to an interview with Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. Rowan was talking with the host about his time as archbishop, about the challenges he faced as leader of the world’s Anglicans, and about his hope for the future of the church. At one point the host asked him: When you look ahead to the future, what do you think Christians should fear the most? What should Christians be afraid of when they look out into the world?
Rowan’s answer took me by surprise: Christians have nothing to fear. Why should we? We have the power of God, the same power that raised Christ from the dead.
Exactly right. Do not fear! Cling to Jesus, because there you find the hope of resurrected life.
