Some of the Sadducees came to Jesus to put their question. (The Sadducees deny that there is any resurrection.)
‘Teacher,’ they said, ‘Moses wrote for us that “If any man’s brother dies, leaving a widow but no children, the man should marry the widow and raise up a family for his brother.” Well, now: There were seven brothers; the eldest married a wife, and died without children. The second and the third married her, and then each of the seven, and they died without children. Finally, the woman died as well. So, in the resurrection, whose wife will the woman be? The seven all had her as their wife.’
‘The children of this age’, replied Jesus, ‘marry and are given in marriage. But those counted as worthy of a place in the age to come, and of the resurrection of the dead, don’t marry, and they are not given in marriage. This is because they can no longer die; they are the equivalent of angels. They are children of God, since they are children of the resurrection.
‘But when it comes to the dead being raised, Moses too declares it, in the passage about the burning bush, where scripture describes the Lord as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”. God is God, not of the dead, but of the living. They are all alive to him.’
‘That was well said, teacher,’ commented some of the scribes, since they no longer dared ask him anything else.
They just come out of the woodwork sometimes. Here you are, you have a word from God you are doing your best to walk in it and suddenly everyone wants a piece of you. Just made a confession that Jesus is Lord…you lose your job. Just followed Him through the glorious waters of Baptism…your wife is cheating on you. Went on your first mission trip…you came back and let yourself get dragged into pornography.
Let me just say that there are safer things to do than to follow Jesus and much easier ways to live… the irony is that if all that is going on…most likely God has much to accomplish through you, if you would be faithful. A wise person does not under estimate evil, but realizes that evil has made the mistake of under estimating God. Evil, precisely because it is evil, has not looked to see out beyond the immediate…it is short sighted…it serves God and doesn’t even know it. As a matter of fact the Rabbi’s teach that God created demons as a spiritual whip for the wicked, to drive the hardened heart to true and full repentance. Sadly, some of us need that. And given our propensity for wickedness, we are all subject to attack, therefore it is written, ‘Do not give the devil an opportunity’. That was not written to those outside of Christ, but to those within…though it certainly applies to all of God’s human creatures.
So what about these Sadducees? Christians love to hate the Pharisees and sing songs about how we don’t want to be one of them (the irony is thick here)…how about these Sadducees though. Well, here Jesus is firmly on the side of the Pharisees. You see Judaism has many different branches and the Sadducees where very much like your modern day Zionists/Religio-Political Conservatives. They were highly political, aristocratic, extremely wealthy (Archeologists have found bottles of wine in Sadducee homes from the second temple period that were valued at round $5K in modern equivalent) and they were actually running the show more than the Pharisees, who certainly had more sway with the common folks (which is probably why we have Jesus interacting with Pharisees more, they were where he was.
On the table here in this scripture however is nothing less than life and death, heaven and hell, marriage and divorce, Old Creation and New Creation. This is heavy stuff…and the Sadducees are mocking. You see the Sadducees have many of these ridiculous little stories that attempt to drive at some spiritual teaching that they do not understand and so they ridicule. They only really respected the Torah and had little or no affection for anything written much outside of that…particularly more recent stuff like Daniel,the prophets, oral Torah etc…and given their status, you can understand why…they were exactly the kinds of people the prophets cry out against and call to repentance. They understand everything and they are in control, and they will stay in that position at any cost…and it all goes on under the guise of faith.
So the doctrine has far less to do with marriage of men and women as it does ‘the Resurrection’ covenant renewal and the coming together again of the Creator God and His creation, and ‘the two became one flesh’. You see most Jew’s believed that there was this age (or world) and there was ‘The Age (or world) to Come’ or ‘Eternal Life’ as most Christian’s understand it. The belief goes that YHWH, the creator God, will act to set all things to rights and that His Kingdom (His Sovereign, Saving Rule) which existed just as a hope, a spiritual destination ‘out there’, would one day manifest itself, on Earth as in heaven, and in that day death itself would be fully and finally defeated. So God’s Kingdom was not just some ethereal spiritual concept with no purchase on real life in the real world, but was to be the spiritual power that becomes incarnate within and through God’s good creation…this is in fact the ultimate Christian hope by the way…as Paul says in that glorious summation of the Gospel and the final state of things in 1 Corinthians 15… “and YHWH will be all and in all”.
I am warmed just thinking about it…but these Sadducees, these religious conservatives, having become very much Hellenized mock this vision, they have kicked God upstairs, so they can do just about anything they can get away with ‘down’ here…the ancient world looks nothing at all like today I am glad to say (a little dash of sarcasm for irony).
Jesus will not have it though, he shuts down their mocking and he purposely does it from the Torah and not from the prophets or psalms, etc (where most of this idea of Resurrection/New or Re-Newed Creation comes from). He meets them where they are at, on their terms and flips the script to set them to rights. That’s the gracious wisdom of our Lord at work. Because though he agrees with the Pharisees on the big picture, the methods and means are wholly different…one example was that nobody expected the Messiah to come in the middle of the story, certainly not to be crucified and Resurrected before everyone else…but that is the grace of God! Just as Moses raised the serpent in the wilderness, so too the Son of Man was to be lifted up…and the Kingdom does not come with signs to be observed…that is, it is not some great and final taaaadaaa!
No, the Kingdom of God is within your grasp, He holds it out to you as an offer, a free gift of His grace set before you, His Messiah…crucified for you and for me…why does Jesus want to suffer? Why does He want to die? Why have Christians followed Him in this vocation for centuries...because those are the front lines into your mind, straight to the heart is where it’s got to start…and like a woman who took and hid leaven in three measures of flour until the whole thing was leavened, so to… the Kingdom comes, on earth as it is in heaven.
Grace and peace.
Ps I love the scribe at the end (he got shut down in the last section we went over) I’m that guy sometimes… like yeah go get him Jesus!… root for Jesus, when he agrees with us (our theology, our politics, etc)…we tend to crucify the Word when He doesn’t. Lord have mercy on us.
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