All of Them Are Alive

Sermon preached at New Life Presbyterian Church, Omaha, Nebraska, November 10, 2013.  

Scripture is Job 19:23-27a, Luke 20:27-38

This sermon shows some distinct influence of my recent reading of "Zealot:  The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth" by Reza Aslan.

My father was fond of saying that when some people get to heaven, God will have to put them in a cage.  Because they will believe they are the only ones there!

People believe a lot of different things about life after life, most of them not Biblical in the least! I have my own ideas about heaven, maybe a combination of a Starbucks and a really, really good Chinese restaurant?   Maybe not.


Well the Sadducees didn’t believe in heaven or resurrection at all.   The Sadducees were the real religious elite, the group that controlled the Temple.  The Temple was the one place that God could be worshiped, where sacrifices of animals could be offered.   The Sadducees were installed by the Roman authorities and the high priest came from their number.   They were the establishment to end all establishments.  


This story takes place after Jesus has entered Jerusalem.    The first thing Jesus did when he came to Jerusalem?  Do you know?  He went straight to the Temple and drove out all the money changers and all the people that were selling things in the Temple.   He broke open the cages and set free the sacrificial animals.  In other words, Jesus directly changes the Temple elite, the Sadducees, saying, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’ but you have made it a den of robbers!”  Luke tells us that, “Everyday he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him.”    So they tried to question him, tried to trip him up. 

And this story that the Sadducees tell Jesus, about a woman who marries seven brothers in succession is not an something that really happened, but the most ridiculous example they can make up to mock Jesus’ belief in the resurrection of the dead.  “Teacher, there was this woman and she married a man and he died, so according to the Law of Moses, she married his brother.  Now he also died and there were 5 other brothers and she married each one in succession, seven in all!  Seven husbands.  Now in the resurrection, whose wife will she be?"

It’s a good thing the Sadducees didn’t ask me this question, because my first response would have been, “What has she been feeding these guys?”   But Jesus is smarter than the Sadducees, smarter than me, fortunately.   He doesn’t fall into the trap to play their little intellectual games.

Are the Sadducees, suggesting a heavenly version of polyandry, when a woman has multiple, simultaneous husbands?  No.  They are mocking a belief they don’t share.    They didn’t believe that the resurrection of the dead existed. So they tried to mock a heavenly belief with an earthly problem.
They were trying to drag Jesus down with a problem, whose wife will she be?   
The Sadducees are making an assumption about heaven.  Every joke I’ve ever heard about heaven, makes the same assumption.  Every movie I’ve ever seen that depicts heaven makes the same assumption.  Most things that people like you and me believe about heaven makes the same assumption.

That assumption is that in heaven, we aren’t that different than we are now.  We will have the same problems, the same relationships, the same arguments.  “Whose wife will she be?”  Who will she belong to?”  “Who is better?  Methodists or Presbyterians?” 

Jesus is smarter than that.   Jesus refuses to make an earthly problem a heavenly problem.   Because in heaven, there are no problems!  Jesus says, “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.”

Jesus is not saying that we stop loving who we love on earth in heaven; he is saying that love is now perfect.   Instead of just loving the handful of people we love in our lifetime; we will love as God loves, because we will see each other as God sees us.

Jesus is teaching something really dangerous here.   In God’s eyes our worth is not determined by who we are fortunate to marry or who we are fortunate be.  Our worth is determined because we are children of God.  God is not some cosmic bean counter determining who is more worthy, who is more privileged; God is mercy and love beyond any words I can possibly give to the ideas of mercy and love.   Jesus knows this.   Jesus came so that we will know this.   Jesus is this.

The Sadducees caught up in the Temple structure, in the day to day operations of this elaborate place of worship, more richly decorated, more elaborate and detailed oriented and power structured than any church, any temple, any synagogue, any mosque in existence in the world today.  The Sadducees cooperated with the Roman authorities, kept the people in line and were allowed to continue this elaborate system of worship as long as the Romans got their cut.   Sounds like the tax collectors we were talking about just last week, doesn’t it?  Except that the Sadducees got to keep their status in the community.  Jesus, Jesus was a threat, to the Sadducees and to their Roman overlords.  They asked this question to mock this threat.

Jesus is still a threat to the powers of this world.  Jesus is still a threat to those who would keep some people down so others may thrive.   Jesus is still a threat to those who would use others for their own greed.  Jesus is still a threat to you and to me when we believe that our own faith gives us a privilege makes us more beloved of God than God’s other children.   To God, all of us are God’s children.  To God, all of us are alive.

We too, must be a threat to the world.  Not to threaten the world with violence, but with love.  Not to threaten the world with violence and hate, but to threaten the world with what God in Jesus offers the world:  love, understanding, mercy.

Amen.