Luke 20.27-38
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 31and 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 any more, 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.
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Is there life after death? It’s one of those ‘ultimate’ questions that we sometimes ask ourselves in the quiet moments when the distractions of life fall away and have time to really think about things.
When I contemplate this, I admit I feel a sense of trepidation. I like the fact that I’m getting older (I am much happier in my thirties than I ever was in my twenties), but I am also aware that there is an inevitability of where that leads; after all, our bodies do not continue on forever. I’ve said it before, Faith is a four-letter word ‘R I S K’. we risk everything, betting it all that our deaths are not the end. Last week we celebrated All Saints, where we remember those who have paid the ultimate price for their faith. I think to myself, would I be willing to do the same?
Epicurus, a famous philosopher from ancient Greece had a particular attitude to death; his followers had on their epitaphs, ‘I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care.’ They believed that we should not fear death, for it is inevitable, when it happens you won’t know about it, so why fear it, you won’t be around to be afraid of it.
It is the human condition to know that we are finite. We are all terribly aware of our flaws and our weaknesses and the fact that we do not live forever. These things ‘hit’ us every day. We persist in faith, hope and love for a long as these bodies of ours endure. This has always been the traditional view of things with Christianity. Some modern theologians reject the idea of a life after this one, but I still hold to it. It seems to be the view that Jesus holds.
As does Saint Paul, a man who wrote a letter to the church in Thessalonica, telling them not to worry about those who die in the faith. He reassures that fledgling church that when Jesus returns, their relatives and friends will will be the first to greet him. Paul himself was eventually executed for being a Christian.
Saint John as well in his book of revelation has a vision of the New Heavens and the New Earth, where God comes to earth to dwell with his people fully, wiping away all our tears ‘for there is no more death, or mourning, or crying or pain, for the Old Order of things has passed away.
So what does Jesus have to say about the topic of life in eternity, this passage illustrates it in a conversation he has with a particular group of Jews. When we look to the past it’s very easy to assume that a particular group all had the same views. This isn’t true, in Judaism there are a myriad of sects and viewpoints. The most famous that we are probably aware of are the Pharisees, (the easy target for the preacher) and the Sadducees, whom Jesus has various interactions with in the gospels.
The Pharisees were the social conservatives, believing in obedience to the letter of the law and even beyond it in order to be considered ‘right with God.’ They also believed, as Jesus did, in the resurrection from the Dead; the belief that one day God will raise everybody who has died so that they can dwell with him in a world that had been renewed by his divine power. Notice that this isn’t a kind of ‘life after death that one may think of, a disembodied experience or anything like that. But rather, that our bodies themselves will be restored and renewed. Like in the prophet Ezekiel, where he sees a vision of a valley of dry bones being given life.
The Sadducees were a sect who belonged to the rich priestly class. who believe that there is no resurrection from the dead.. They ridicule the idea with a riddle. A woman marries a man, who then dies, so his brother marries her according to the custom, who also dies. And so on and so on until she has been married to eight of them in total. So when she dies, who will she be married to in the resurrection? After all, one can only have ‘one’ wife, in the sense that you can’t be married to more than one person at the same time. It’s an interesting question, but this is a common tactic when trying to find a flaw in an argument, it’s called ‘argumentum ad absurdum,’ (arguing to absurdity.) An attempt to show that a viewpoint is absurd by taking a viewpoint and creating a scenario which demonstrates that the view is ultimately absurd.
Jesus responds to the quip of the Sadducees, by saying that our lives in the New Heaven and the New Earth will not be like it is currently; he says that we will be (not the same as) but like the angels, who cannot die. He also says that there will be something different about our relationships, (not that we won’t have them mind) but these things we do on earth, such as marriage, that ‘image heaven’ hear and now, will be different.
Our logic and reasoning only goes so far. It has its limits, and beyond this, we are in the realm of mystery. We only get glimpses of what any kind of afterlife or eternity could look like in the whole bible. And in a sense, this is all it can be, as our language can only provide metaphors which inevitably break down.
it looks like being with Jesus, risen from the dead; restored and glorified. It looks like as King David writes in psalm 23, dwelling in the house of the Lord for ever.’ It’s a place where pain, loss, darkness and doubt are gone, and like the angels, the full experience of new creation is open to us.
Look at what Jesus says about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, those people who you think are dead and gone, dry bones that have probably crumbled away by now, they’re not! They’re alive, for God is the God of the living, and not of the dead
That’s the Christian message, God gives life back to those who have died. Death is no longer an undiscovered country because Jesus, the first born from the dead has been there and returned from it in triumph and glory.
As I wrote these words I thought of that wonderful hymn ‘thine be the glory.’
Thine be the glory, risen, conquering son. Endless is the Victory. Thou o’er death hast won.
We can take great comfort from this for our own loved ones whom we have lost, for they are known to God and will be raised with us all on the last day, into that great eternity for which we all long for. Death is not to be feared, not because there is nothing after it, but because it has been conquered, it has lost it’s sting.
Amen.
