Insights
Rev Gav
What does Jesus say about resurrection?
Luke 20.27-39
Then Jesus was approached by some Sadducees — religious leaders who say there is no resurrection from the dead. They posed this question: “Teacher, Moses gave us a law that if a man dies, leaving a wife but no children, his brother should marry the widow and have a child who will carry on the brother’s name. Well, suppose there were seven brothers. The oldest one married and then died without children. So the second brother married the widow, but he also died. Then the third brother married her. This continued with all seven of them, who died without children. Finally, the woman also died. So tell us, whose wife will she be in the resurrection? For all seven were married to her!”
Jesus replied, “Marriage is for people here on earth. But in the age to come, those worthy of being raised from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage. And they will never die again. In this respect they will be like angels. They are children of God and children of the resurrection.
“But now, as to whether the dead will be raised — even Moses proved this when he wrote about the burning bush. Long after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died, he referred to the Lord as ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ So he is the God of the living, not the dead, for they are all alive to him.”
“Well said, Teacher!” remarked some of the teachers of religious law who were standing there.
Reflect
Then Jesus was approached by some Sadducees — religious leaders who say there is no resurrection from the dead.
Mentioned in the Bible were different religious groups and two of them were the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Sadducees followed a literal translation of the Torah — the first five books of the Bible written by Moses. The Pharisees also followed the Torah but they also had the Talmud and Mishnah — a commentary and discussion on the the Torah. Another way of putting it is that the Sadducees had a written tradition whereas the Pharisees had both a written and oral tradition. So, when it came to the idea of ‘resurrection’ what did it mean to the Sadducees?
This next point is very important. The idea of resurrection was not only about being ‘raised from the dead’ but was 100% connected to, and aligned with, vindication of the righteous and the banishment of all evil. Resurrection might be best thought of as encompassing two things: raising and revolution! You cannot separate the physical idea of resurrection from the ethical concept of good triumphing over evil, power reversals, and equality for the oppressed.
Now, the Sadducees did not believe in resurrection, therefore they did not believe there was any divine ‘moral’ compass connected with the idea. In other words, because they did not believe in resurrection they also did not believe that God was concerned with good and evil, or to put it the other way round, as the poor would not be vindicated and there would be no power reversal, there could be no resurrection!
This is what Josephus, the first-century Romano-Jewish historian wrote this about the Sadducees:
“The Sadducees… take away fate entirely, and suppose that God is not concerned in our doing or not doing what is evil; and they say, that to act what is good, or what is evil, is at men’s own choice, and that the one or the other belongs so to every one, that they may act as they please. They also take away the belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades… The Sadducees (attitude) one towards another is in some degree wild, and their conversation with those that are of their own party is as barbarous as if they were strangers to them.”
Harsh words indeed!
The Sadducees were the temple elite, akin to religious aristocrats and the very top of the religious food chain. You had to be born into the right family to be a Sadducee, and they were involved in the leadership and oversight of the Temple. Jesus had recently ridden into Jerusalem — hailed as a king – and arrived at the temple, therefore it was no surprise that he would come face-to-face with the Sadducees, and because Jesus threatened revolution and he preached resurrection, they plied him with a whole heap of questions — including this question about marriage — intended to trip him up.
“Teacher, Moses gave us a law that if a man dies, leaving a wife but no children, his brother should marry the widow and have a child who will carry on the brother’s name. Well, suppose there were seven brothers. The oldest one married and then died without children. So the second brother married the widow, but he also died. Then the third brother married her. This continued with all seven of them, who died without children. Finally, the woman also died. So tell us, whose wife will she be in the resurrection? For all seven were married to her!”
As expected, the Sadducees started with Moses — the written law, and they told a farcical story that would embarrass Jesus and highlight the stupidity of his idea of resurrection.
Jesus replied, “Marriage is for people here on earth. But in the age to come, those worthy of being raised from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage. And they will never die again. In this respect they will be like angels. They are children of God and children of the resurrection.
Jesus was firm and secure in his understanding. Because resurrection was to do with revolution, in answering the question he also tackled another related issue — that of the fact that the poor woman in the story was handled like an object, passed from one man to another. Jesus was known for the way in which he treated people equally. In fact, in a preceding passage Jesus was told, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are.” Therefore, Jesus, true to form, answered by treating both men and women equally when he said that, “those worthy of being raised from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage.”
The point of the Sadducees story was all about identity and power. In that culture, especially to the Sadducees, a man’s patriarchal future was determined by the children that he fathered. In fact, the emphasis on marriage was less on meeting needs or love, but on procreation. You have to remember that the Sadducees were the elite — powerful men who had a vested interest in maintaining the patriarchal and religious hierarchy to secure their earthly future. They were on the winning team! There would be no resurrection because there would be no revolution where the poor and marginalised were vindicated by God. Therefore, the question about marriage was not about whether the woman would be married after death, but to whom would she be married — what male hierarchical owner? They were highlighting that Jesus’ narrative of resurrection (raising and revolution) would upend the status quo and patriarchal order of things, and how bloody ridiculous would that be?
Jesus replied by explaining that someone’s future was not bound up by whether they had children or not, but that humans are destined to be eternal beings and that we are children, not of earthly parents, but of God.
Note, that Jesus slipped in the words, “those who are worthy of being raised from the dead.” There is a sting in that — especially for the Sadducees, because, by implication, Jesus was asking them if they themselves were worthy! But of course, to a Sadducee ‘worth’ had nothing to do with it because they were designated royalty!
Finally, Jesus went back to the written Torah — to what Moses himself wrote — to put the Sadducees straight.
“But now, as to whether the dead will be raised — even Moses proved this when he wrote about the burning bush. Long after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died, he referred to the Lord as ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ So he is the God of the living, not the dead, for they are all alive to him.”
In other words, as far as God was concerned, these people who had died were seen as alive.
Now, all this has implications for how we live in the here and now — the present — because resurrection is not only about being raised from the dead, but about death, the punishment for evil being conquered, with the result being, quite literally, life. As Christians, we are resurrection people, and we are called to join with Christ in his resurrection — we were raised with Christ, we are being raised with Christ, and we will be raised with Christ. And because resurrection is both being raised and revolution, we are called to join in with Christ’s resurrection in the here and now — to live out God’s ongoing revolution where good triumphs over evil, the poor are fed, the oppressed are set free, and the marginalised are welcomed. We are called to live out a life where, as Jesus affirmed, women are not treated as objects to be owned and for the purpose of securing future generations — but where all, “are children of God and children of the resurrection.”
I realise that this is all quite a bit of a mind-bend and difficult to get our heads around! Being united with Christ, through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection means we are part of a new order of creation, where good triumphs over evil, and we have eternal life — life in the here and now and forever — that started the moment we trusted in Christ.
Our understanding of resurrection shapes how we live and have our being. We are not holding on, biding our time until we die! We are caught up in a great movement of God, where each one of us has a role to play in proclaiming the great and glorious truth, and to be God’s love to the world.
Amen
and then