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Marriage at the
Resurrection: Hard Sayings
Message from Ben Gregory in November, 2004
Luke
20:27-38
Some
of you know me well enough to know that I’ve made a deliberate
decision (at least I think it’s been my decision) in my life to move away
from the rigid, argumentative world of religion and toward a freer
pursuit of the Life that Jesus said he came to bring and the Kingdom that
he said was at hand. Because we live in the world of e-mail, I’ve had
several opportunities just recently to discuss our collective journey
with people I’ve still never met. It’s pretty incredible really--a lady
I’ve never heard of, who lives on the far northwestern coast of
British
Columbia
,
stumbled onto my e-mail address through a series of internet
links and wanted to talk about Life in the Kingdom. I’ve been dialoguing
with a student from
Bowling
Green
State
University
about a kind of Life
in Christ that’s not what either of us grew up with. And there are more.
The world “community” doesn’t mean what it meant just ten years ago.
(Language is funny like that.)
Part
of what we’re discovering about each other and finding that we have
in common is an excitement about the possibilities for honest
communication and pursuit of Truth. We are all of us in a very positive,
optimistic place right now. But we’re also finding in common that we’re
only in so positive a place for having worked through some pretty deeply
felt negativity. Many of us are just now emerging from a personal
approach to God in which, God’s grace notwithstanding, behavior was the
standard by which we judged ourselves and one another. In which, contrary
to all the evidence that God loves the world, and that he created us all
to be different, there was little or no room for ideological or practical
diversity--the highest goal seemed to be some kind of army of theological
clones. An approach in which believing the right things -- possessing
more correct data about God -- was the highest measure of righteousness.
In which it was accepted, sometimes even expected, to be abusive to a
brother or sister if it was done in the name of “right doctrine.”
The tradition that I grew up in was born in reaction to what was
perceived as bad theology, (or at least bad practice, if there’s a
difference,) and has, as best as I can tell, continued to cling to being
right as its most sacred tenet. In my adult life as a believer I’ve seen
all kind of things made litmus tests for the legitimacy of a person’s
faith. Maybe you have too.
-
Attendance
at a meeting.
-
Adherence
to an acceptable model of church organization.
-
The
very perception of the Church as an organization.
-
Proper
political orientation.
-
A
popular understanding of the End Times.
-
An
acceptable opinion of what the
United
States
’
relationship to the
modern state of
Israel
should be.
-
An
orthodox approach to the Bible.
The
list goes on and on. If we wanted to take the time, we could probably
spend the next few minutes brainstorming a dozen more without much
effort, (we’re not going to do that,) though I know that I wouldn’t
volunteer any of my own ideological idols -- I’d much rather point out
someone else’s -- and I doubt you would either.
And
I don’t know if it makes me feel better or worse about the whole
thing to look at a passage like the twentieth chapter of the Gospel
according to Luke and see that none of this is new. That one of the
easiest ways to oppose Jesus has always been to turn Life into a
philosophical contentiousness that allows everyone involved to miss the
point while feeling good about their own rightness.
Look
at what Luke’s doing in chapter twenty. He begins with the religious
leaders -- the people who claimed to have cornered the market on God’s
dealing with humanity -- challenging Jesus’ legitimacy. It’s downright
comical to watch them sort through their strategy, (check out these first
eight verses sometime,) and in the end, Jesus dismisses their argument
without much effort. And then, rather than let the whole thing go, he
turns to the rest of the crowd gathered there and tells a parable -- in
the hearing of these religious leaders -- which can accurately be
described as antagonistic. It’s about some servants who kill their
master’s son, thinking that his death will leave them to inherit the
master’s wealth. The crowd at large doesn’t seem to get it -- they’re
just appalled that these servants could be such evil people -- but you
can almost see Jesus wink at the teachers of the law and the chief
priests when he explains just who will be broken to pieces and crushed.
He wants to make it clear that religious bullying won’t stand in the way
of his Kingdom and, though they don’t like it, they get the message. So
clearly, in fact, that they up their efforts to bait him into saying
something that they can use against him, keeping a close watch on him and
sending spies who pretended to be righteous to question him.
Do
you see what’s going on here? The people who were proudest of their
status as God’s chosen people, in fact the leadership of God’s chosen
people, who were so satisfied with their own righteousness, are
conspiring and lying and sending spies against the God they think is so
happy with them.
I’m
glad that doesn’t happen anymore.
They
try, in what seems to me a lame attempt, to get Jesus to say
something treasonous -- this whole matter of paying taxes or not. And
again Jesus defuses their whole concocted scheme with a deft turn of a
phrase and they’re back where they started and angrier than ever.
And now here come the Sadducees. The rival religious/political party. The
Sadducees, who said there was no resurrection, and they too have a
question for Jesus. And because they’re trying so hard to accomplish
something, it’s a little convoluted, but let’s take a look at it.
The
Law of Moses said, “If brothers are living together and one of them
dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her
husband’s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a
brother-in-law to her. The first son she bears shall carry the on the
name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from
Israel.” (That‘s Deuteronomy twenty-five.)
So
the Sadducees offer Jesus a hypothetical situation. There was a woman
who married a man who died before they’d had any children. So she married
one of his brothers, but the same thing happened. In fact the same thing
happened repeatedly until she’d married and buried all seven brothers and
then died herself without ever bearing any children.
And
their question is this: “At the resurrection whose wife will she be?”
Now wait a minute. Luke’s already pointed out that the Sadducees didn’t
believe in resurrection. Any one who’s there to hear this question knows
that. Jesus knows that. It’s common knowledge, and it gives them away for
the calculating conspirators that they are. It also may inform our
reading of Jesus’ answer.
I
am very hesitant to take what Jesus says in verses 34-38 as definitive
teaching on the nature of resurrection. We’ve seen before that when Jesus
addresses a question he’s addressing a question. One of the things that
drives me nuts about politicians is the way they turn every question put
to them into the one they wanted to answer in the first place. Jesus
would’ve been the worst politician of all time. Take his answers for what
he intended them to be.
Jesus
is responding here to a bogus question from a group of people whom
he is very aware don’t want an answer. So he gives enough of a response
to demonstrate that they haven’t stumped him, and he ends it by reminding
them (or maybe this was the first time they’d heard it) that God is much
more interested in Life than in death. And some of the teachers
recognized that for the brilliant answer that it was and no one asked him
any more insincere questions that day. The people who came with the trap
have seen it fail embarrassingly and they’re content to drop the whole
thing and walk away. Jesus won’t let them. Again, he presses it.
He points out to them in verses 41-44 that none of them had any trouble
reconciling the fact that David, hundreds of years ago, referred to the
promised Christ, who would be his descendant, as his Lord, in a time when
an older man would never use that kind of title for someone who had come
after him. That didn’t bother any of them. They weren’t really that hung
up on the hermeneutical precision they seem to be demanding of Jesus. And
Jesus seems to be saying, let’s just get over all that foolishness.
Because
hypotheticals, by definition, are not Reality.
And
then he turns to his students, the ones who really did want the
Truth, and he tells them, “Look out for these guys. These religious
leaders and ‘teachers.’ They look good. They seem to be doing the right
things. They live respectable lives, but they devour widows’ houses and
they pray long, impressive prayers. Such men,” he says, “will be punished
most severely.” (46-47)
“They
devour widows’ houses.” I’m not certain what Jesus had in mind
here, but it reminds me of a preacher Ruthie and I knew years ago. He was
an older man, nearing retirement age, and a lifelong bachelor. Because he
was single, he had lots of time to spend “calling.” And lots of his
calling time he spent with elderly widows convincing them to name him
beneficiary in their wills. More than one family was torn apart as these
ladies left entire estates to this preacher, who lived like a king on the
money he coerced from frail, lonely, scared women.
“They
devour widows’ houses.”
Whatever
it means, here again we see Jesus far more concerned with the
way the world treats women than his culture would have expected. Just
like with the woman caught in adultery. The only woman these religious
men seem to be concerned about here is a hypothetical one. She doesn’t
exist. Jesus seems to be pointing out for anyone who’ll listen that these
guys are more compassionate toward a woman they’ve made up than to the
widows in their community.
(It
may be helpful at this point to remind ourselves that when it came to
marriage in first century Palestine, the issue of what we call “falling
in love” was rarely a factor in determining marriages. It may be more
accurate to understand that to a man in that culture, a wife was closer
to property than to any kind of a romantic partner. Jesus has no time for
scenarios in which women are mere props or plot devices.)
None
of the bad rap that Christianity has acquired regarding the place of
women in the world has anything to do with anything Jesus taught or
demonstrated. All of that has come in the years since he was here.
And by the time we get to what has since been designated chapter 21, one
of these widows has come in and made her modest, timid contribution to
the institution that should have been taking care of her, and Jesus
points her out, and lets the contrast speak for itself. And suddenly, no
one can even remember the question that started it all.
So
what’ve we got here? Respectable “Men of God” asking dishonest
questions in an attempt to make Jesus do what they want him to do.
Theological hypotheticals used as weapons in the face of Real need.
Religion that worships being better and righter than the next guy, and
that preys on the vulnerable. Aggressive self-righteousness deflated by
Jesus.
And
while Jesus seemed to kill all of that for the moment, it’s pretty
clear two thousand years later that an idolatrous disinterment of
theological narcissism has taken place which would make even the
Sadducees believe in resurrection.
I’ve
talked here before about the wine tasting that Ruthie and I go to
most Friday nights. We look forward to it. It’s a small little wine shop
and we’ve gotten to know not only Ralph and Larry who work there, but
lots of the other customers too -- it’s largely the same crowd every
week.
Well
these days Ruthie is pregnant and can’t participate in the tasting
like she used to, and it’s not as much fun to be a spectator as a
participant. It was especially crowded this past Friday and it’s
generally warm in there anyway, and when you cram that many people into a
space that small, it can get a little stuffy and uncomfortable,
especially, I would imagine, if you’re four and a half months pregnant
and maybe feeling a little left out in the first place.
And
then, through the buzz of too many people talking at once, I heard,
to my right, my wife smiling and thanking someone. And I looked, and
someone had brought her a bottle of cold water -- Perrier, in fact, which
Ruthie loves. And just that quickly, the feel of the entire evening
changed for me.
There’s
a lady who may or may not be employed by this wine shop, (it’s
hard to tell sometimes who’s an official employee and who’s just helping
out,) whose name is Carmen. Carmen’s a sweet lady -- one of these ladies
who cooks something whenever there’s an event -- you know who I’m talking
about. She’s always been friendly with us, though socially we’re pretty
out of our element around wine people. She’s always asking how Ruthie’s
doing and counting down the months with us.
And
last night, while all the rest of us were enjoying our Merlots and
our Cabernets, Carmen noticed, through a hot, crowded, noisy room,
someone she could serve. Someone in a degree of need, albeit a small one,
and she did something about it.
And
here’s the thing -- for me -- in the Before Times, in the religion of
my youth, I would never have allowed myself to get to know Carmen,
except, possibly with the goal of converting her to something. Based
entirely on her connection to alcohol, which was taboo, I would have
written her off as lost, maybe even bad. And in doing that I would have
missed making a friend -- the kind of friend who watches out for the
wellbeing of the person I love most in the world when I fail to.
And
I am reminded again here in Luke 20 that Jesus is consistently more
interested the capacity of his followers to love the people around them
than in their theology, that very often that looks a lot like a cup of
cool water. And that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
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