(Graphic is a lectionary drawing by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in Peru, available at www.mscperu.org)
Gospel Lectionary Reading - Luke 20:27-38 NRSV
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her."
Jesus said to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive."
"God of the Living"
My goodness, where does one begin with a scripture story/event like this? There are many wonderful and empowering commentaries of this encounter between Jesus with the Sadducees. In most of them, the comments center upon the rub between the “organized religion” of the time and new insights offered by a controversial young rabbi who we know by the name of Jesus.
For their part, the Sadducees were a highly rigid and puritanical priestly sect. Almost always, they’d be engaged in some kind of minutia or micro-management that would make most people’s heads spin today. For instance, they insisted that the high priest light the kindling for the Temple altar fire outside the Temple so the smoke from the kindling’s burning enveloped and wrapped around the high priest before he entered into the presence of God in the Temple. My guess is that the smoke somehow minimized or disguised human essence so its depravity did not anger or offend God’s divine being.
The Sadducees tended to be hostile toward rabbis and the rabbinic law; however they were not above using its own methods against it. In the above case for instance, the Sadducees employed a rabbinic tool for reasoning things to whatever absurd extreme they find necessary to make rabbinic teachings like those of Jesus appear nonsensical. They hope in the course of their efforts to trap Jesus into saying or teaching something that could be labeled heretical, dangerous, and therefore a reason to get rid of him. It didn’t matter that they didn’t believe in an afterlife to begin so why even engage in such a discussion with Jesus. The main thing is that they – the religious authority and establishment -- wanted him gone and banished from the Temple altogether. They would therefore employ whatever means they considered necessary to achieve that end. Organized institutional religion would have its way with a contrarian like Jesus, so either he better get with the institution’s program or he better get lost.
Jesus turns such misguided effort back on to itself. From a seemingly insignificant piece of the Hebrew scripture, Jesus points out to the Sadducees they’re failure to grasp the depth of Judaism’s own sacred writings, i.e. that those who have passed on from “this age” into “that age” to come, remain very much alive. In that regard, God has said, “I am the God” of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, not “I was the God” of these persons. As Jesus points these things out to the Sadducees, one can almost imagine the “Ah, yes” expressions of the crowd and all the heads nodding in agreement with him. Not content to let things end there, Jesus cuts the Sadducees’ absurdity to shreds when he takes the position that marriage is a product of “this age” however it will not be part of “that age” to come. Undoubtedly angered at their embarrassment before the crowd, which most self-righteous people would be, it’s likely the Sadducees withdrew to watch for their religion’s next opportunity to take Jesus down. Score one for Jesus and zero for organized religion.
As we know however, the followers of Jesus eventually promulgated a new religion. In time, they evangelized a considerable portion of the world. In time, they became the organized religion dominating people’s reality and governing thought and governing lives. Even today in an increasingly secularized and pluralistic world, the followers of Jesus continue to wield significant influence and power in people’s lives. Yet as most of us realize, that power and influence is waning with more and more prophetic contrarians of our time. With information technology being what it is, they are far more prolific and vocal than at any time in the past. From many of their points of view, they offer a singular insistence which is that all paths to the love and grace of God are good. There is no one path that people must adhere to or only one way into the family of God. Voices suggesting that such is the case reflect only the prejudice of “this age” rather than the thinking of “that age” which is to come and which is already manifesting itself in various forms. To the degree therefore that organized religion ignores this or speaks or plots against it, it does so at great peril. For it will be a peril that ultimately judges and rules against organized religion as an utterly irrelevant archaic thing. The sad thing will be the memory and tradition that gets lost rather than the memory and tradition that transformed itself into a new creation capable of blessing generations long into the future – generations in turn which would have generously honored those which preceded them.
For the generations that follow you, may you always find the generosity to embrace and resource their needs so the memories and monuments they erect to your foresight can bless you in “that age” to come; remembering always that our God is the god of the living and never the god of the dead.
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