Let us pray: O God who makes us your children and heirs of eternal life, send your Holy Spirit today speak of the great mystery and joy of resurrection. In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, One God. Amen.
Today’s gospel reading continues a series of religious leaders trying to catch Jesus and trick him into saying something they can use against him. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t work, again. Jesus takes their ridiculous question and turns it into a teachable moment. From the beginning, the Sadducees question is bogus. They pose a question about resurrection life and relation to Mosaic law, but they don’t evn believe in the resurrection! Umm, so you guys have a question about how something you don’t believe in will work, ok. It’s true that a part of Mosaic law gave a prescription for a brother to marry his sister-in-law. While complicated to say the least, and quite foreign to us in this time and hemisphere, it did serve the purpose of caring for widows and carrying on family lines and inheritances in this patriarchal system. With no husband and no male children, women had no real rights or means of support. But, for the Sadducees to come up with this scenario where brothers kept dying leaving no heirs and marriage after marriage happening, is a preposterous extreme.
And so how does Jesus handle this outlandish question about whose wife this woman will in the resurrection? What are you talking about? None of that is important! You’re asking the wrong question, he says. And then Jesus proceeds to lays out for them the nature of God, and resurrection life. He explains there is no such thing as marriage in the resurrection. Marriage is an earthly thing NOT an eternal life, resurrected body thing. In the resurrection, like Jesus and thanks to Jesus, we have conquered death. As Jesus says, we cannot die anymore because we are like angels, children of God, and children of the resurrection. He goes on to declare that God is NOT the God of the dead, but of the living. These earthly bodies and earthly relationships, the powerful and wonderful loving relationships shared by some partners, will be eclipsed. Through Jesus Christ, the perfectly divine human example of love, our bodies and relationships, the way we are able to live and love will be transformed into a state that surpasses our human, earthly capability to comprehend. Crazy, right?
Remember these words from the prophet Isaiah:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9).
We rarely talk about the resurrection or eternal life. But it seems quite appropriate this month when we celebrate All Saints and All Souls. As we look around the sanctuary and see the physical reminders, names and photos of loved ones who’ve died. This Great Cloud of Witnesses surrounds us, encourages us and shows us they way to life. And someday, we will be with them in everlasting joy, surrounded by the light and love of God’s presence within, all around and in between us. What an amazing vision!
During our Wednesday morning bible study this week, we tried to understand this scripture together. We wondered and struggled with the idea that those of us who are married or who had been married, might not experience this same relationship with our partners in heaven as this scripture says. But we also wondered about what possible new, unimagined form of love, as of yet unbeknownst to us, we might experience. Could it be a different level of intimacy, love, and joy that we’ve only glimpsed here on this earth? Yes, I think so. I think Jesus is telling the Sadducees and us, that there will be life, love, and joy beyond our wildest dreams.
In John’s Gospel Jesus proclaimed to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-28).
Our lives, caught up together with Jesus, will never end. We, like Jesus, will be resurrected. These human bodies will be transformed. Every Sunday we say together in the Nicene Creed: “… We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come” (BCP, p. 358). Jesus is the model for us of life, death, and resurrection. When we are baptized, we are baptized into his life, death, AND resurrection. Just as Jesus was raised from the dead, so will we be raised again.
In our collect for All Saint’s Day, we pray: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you (BCP, p. 245). Indescribable, unimaginable, marvelous, wonderful, breathtaking, staggering, astounding, astonishing, amazing joys, are what await us and our loved ones in the resurrection. It’s not clear what our lives will be like after we die. Some have tried and continue to try to explain or paint pictures based on scripture. But we can’t, we just can’t know. It’s not in our human capacity. And yet, we CAN wonder in awe and imagine what it will be like. God is love. God made us to be in loving relationship. It stands to reason that when our lives on this earth are over, we will enter into the most amazing, perfect form or relationship with God, humankind, and creation beyond our imagination! I don’t know what my resurrection body and life and relationships will be like. But I DO know that they will be amazing and wonderful and love soaked. And in that I take hope and for that I give thanks to God.
Amen.
