I remember the first time that I read this scripture on my own as a child—let’s say as, maybe, a nine or ten-year-old. It absolutely terrified me. I had already heard about the idea of hell, which frightened me. But this passage made me frightened about heaven. Because what I heard in this passage was that I would not be with my family in the resurrection. Jesus tells the Sadducees that in the resurrection there will be no marriage. “If there is no marriage,” I thought, “then neither will there be families.” Suddenly I was facing an eternity without my mom, my dad, and my brother. I knew heaven was supposed to be the greatest thing ever. But without my family…it might as well be hell.
Today, I read the passage very differently. And yet, I think that my initial interpretation as a child actually contains an important kernel of truth. I interpreted Jesus to be saying that heaven would not be everything that I expected. It would not be everything just the way I wanted it.
Let’s be honest. In popular thought, that’s what heaven is. Heaven is the self glorified. It is the extension of everything we like. All the good stuff from this life—let’s just put that on repeat. In heaven, we’ll be with our loved ones, we’ll be our younger, best-looking selves, and we’ll live in comfort, forever and ever, amen.
This popular picture of heaven is nothing new. It is almost as old as time. Take the Sadducees, for instance. The Jewish aristocrats of the first century, sophisticated and influential—they did not believe in the resurrection. They were above such low-minded daydreams. Yet even they had their own version of heaven. You could call it posterity. Legacy. The family name. The Sadducees didn’t think they would live forever in the same body, but they did think they would live forever by their descendants. A man’s memory, his possessions, the little kingdom that he built in his time on earth—it does not die but survives through his children. A different picture of heaven, but heaven nonetheless. The self glorified.
We see this in the riddle that the Sadducees pose to Jesus. Suppose, they say, a man dies without any children. The ancient Jewish custom prescribes that his brother must marry the widow and “raise up children for his brother” (20:28)—in other words, to preserve the brother’s name and legacy. So, in their riddle, the deceased man’s six brothers, one at a time, marry his wife, but each of them dies childless. Whose wife, the Sadducees ask, will the woman be in the resurrection?
The Sadducees’ question is meant to show that resurrection is a silly idea. Surely all seven brothers cannot all be married to the same woman in the resurrection. But what this question really does is show the Sadducees’ self-centered mindset. They are thinking of resurrection in the same way that they think of posterity—as an extension of everything that is ours in life. Just as a man’s son would carry on his name, his possessions, the family business, and so on, heaven in their mind would do the same. A man would have the same wife, and presumably he would maintain possession of his other property as well.
And if that word “property” lands wrong, if it sounds harsh to your ears, I think you’re hearing it right. I think you’re hearing what Jesus heard. True to their patriarchal world, the Sadducees are thinking about wives as the property of men. Whether they are thinking about their posterity, where a wife is the necessary vehicle for childbearing, or whether they are thinking about the possibility of resurrection, where a man’s possessions live on forever, including his wife—in the end, the Sadducees are really only thinking about one thing: themselves. How will everything that is mine live forever?
Letting Go in Order to Live
When as a nine-year old I heard Jesus deny the reality of marriage in the resurrection, I heard an elimination of family. But now I simply hear a challenge to the Sadducees’ self-interest. Jesus effectively responds, “You marry in order to preserve your name and your kingdom, but in the resurrection there is no need to preserve these things. The resurrection is about more than self-preservation” (cf. 20:34-35).
If the resurrection isn’t about the survival of the self and everything just the way we like it, then what is it about? Knowing that the Sadducees are students of the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible), Jesus alludes to a passage in the Torah, where God confronts Moses as a burning bush and refers to Godself as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (20:37). Now, when Moses was alive, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were long dead. Yet here God claims to be in relationship with them. Why, Jesus asks, would the God of the living claim these relationships unless “to [God] all of them are alive” (20:38)?
What grabs my attention here are Jesus’ examples. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. These are the ancestors of Israel, and all three of them lived as landless sojourners. It all began with Abraham, who left his house, his homeland, and all that he knew. Why? Because God promised that Abraham would be blessed in a way that would bless all the families of the earth. The paradox of faith, is that by giving up his life, Abraham multiplied life. By letting go of the life that he knew, he lived a fuller life than he could have known. By giving up all that was familiar, the little kingdom he had spent decades building, he and his became a blessing to all the families of the earth.
“Alive to God”
Consider the saints in your own life, the individuals who bore witness somehow to the way of Christ. How did they bless you? Was it through the possessions they accumulated, the name that they made for themselves, the little kingdoms that they built? Is that why you remember them? Or is it because they set all of that aside and gave themselves to you?
This past year, I lost a good friend, Jim. To make a long story short, I’ll say only a few things. Jim lost most of his sight seven years ago. When that happened, he retreated from much of his life. He lived alone and became a bit of a survivalist. Even so, he would occasionally venture outside his home to be with friends and family. And when he did, he was a blessing. He had a way of listening and conversing that made you feel like you were the only person in the world. This was how he loved, how he gave himself to others. Here, in the moments when he let go of survival and risked life, he lived in God. I believe that he is, as Jesus says, “alive to God,” because his love lives on in my own life. His love continues to give me life—to multiply life. In the few months that I have been here, I have heard you speak similarly about Anne, Catherine, and Jean, all of whom were a blessing to you and others by the way they gave themselves in love. And as their love lives on and gives us life, we know also that they are “alive to God.”
Never Lost, Only Multiplied
As a child, I had hoped that heaven would mean the survival of my family and all that was mine. Today’s scripture had terrified me that it would be the opposite. With no marriage, I would lose my parents and therefore my family. But now, I believe that Jesus was inviting the Sadducees and all of us beyond a life of survival, whether that’s through posterity in this world or in some heavenly immortality. Life and resurrection are not about me forever and ever amen. They are about a self-giving love that defies death and multiplies life.
If I could go back in time, what would I say to my nine-year-old self, worried about losing his family in heaven? I would say this: What lives in love is never lost, only multiplied.
Prayer
Living God,God of Anne, Catherine, and Jean—
When we settle for survival,
May we remember the example
Of the saints who have gone before us
…
Inspire us by their self-giving love
And lead us more deeply
Into your life and resurrection.
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