Life And ? Life

November 11, 2007     Proper 27 C

Haggai 1:15b-2:9             Psalm 145:1-13

2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17      St. Luke 10:27-38

Life after death preoccupied the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, when they put their questions to Jesus. A man dies, leaving a widow. His brother marries her. This little scenario is repeated until seven brothers have married the woman. The Sadducees want to know who will be her husband in heaven. "Remember, seven married her."

Belief in an afterlife arose very late in the Old Testament, and even in New Testament times such a belief was not universal. The Sadducees in this Sunday's gospel reject the notion of survival beyond death.

The traditional view maintained that the human person is identified with the physical body that is animated by the breath of God (Gen 2:7; "breath" does not mean "soul"). Death is final: "When you take away their breath, they perish and return to the dust from which they came" (Ps 104:29).

The only thing that survives death is a person's name. Thus, one's only shot at "immortality" is a son who bears the father's name and can then himself pass that name on to another generation.

Therefore, Deuteronomy 25:56 provided for "levirate marriage": if a man died without a son, the deceased man's brother was required to marry the widow; the first son born of that union was considered the dead man's son who bore his name and inherited his property.

"Resurrection of the body" as the way to survive death is a logical consequence of Jewish belief. For Jews, the human body is identified with the person, there is no dividing up of the person into component parts. Thus if a person were to live beyond death, the body must be restored: hence, resurrection of the body.

By contrast, Greeks believed that a person is made of body and soul. The soul was immortal and was trapped in the body until death when it was freed and lived on. Both the Jewish and Greek solutions to the problem of death and immortality are found in the Bible.

The Sadducees propose to Jesus an extreme case: the pattern of childlessness and death is repeated seven times. If there were a resurrection of the dead, would the wife have seven husbands in the afterlife? They thought the very absurdity of the situation proved the foolishness of the belief.

Jesus routinely replies to opponents with an insult  (e.g., "hypocrites!" or "can't you read?"). Insult follows insult in Jesus' response to the circumstance described in the Sadducee's story and resulting question.

First, Jesus explains the facts of life and reproduction to mature, grown men (vv. 34-35). Immortal beings don't need to reproduce; only humans do that to ensure the continuity of the race. The next insult compounds the first. He tells the Sadducees that those whom God considers worthy of the age to come and worthy of resurrection are immortal, like angels. The Sadducees did not believe in angels, or spirits either (Acts 23:8)!

The shot from the second barrel is that Jesus identifies these immortals as "children [literally, sons] of God," a favorite Old Testament name for angels (Gen 6:2; Job 1:6), since they share in the resurrection, a life-giving act of God.

Finally, the crowning insult. Jesus quotes the Torah against its champions, who are so committed to its literal interpretation.

He argues that Moses himself proves the resurrection when he describes the Lord as "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," (v. 38). These patriarchs were long dead by Moses' time.

Since only the living can have a God, and God claims to be God of the patriarchs, God somehow sustains the patriarchs in life in the  "age to come."

We don't know how the Sadducees responded, but some of the scribes  (who are very likely Pharisees) publicly honor Jesus for winning yet another round against formidable opponents. "Teacher, you have put it well!"

Christ's response is that in the life to come there will be no marriage. "They become like angels and are no longer liable to death. God is not the God of the dead but of the living. All are alive for God."

But a question remains unanswered. What is the nature of the relationship between the resurrected life and this present one? What is the connection?

Some people (we may call them "supernatural dualists") seem to think there is a profound discontinuity between this life and the afterlife. We must choose between being happy in this world or in the next. It is hell, one might ironically think, all the way to heaven: misery, unhappiness, and unfulfilliment now, but big rewards later. This life is the pilgrimage, the vale of tears, the test. The next life brings the reversal of roles.

Others (we might call natural humanists) seem to agree that there is a radical difference between earth and heaven. But they say we should choose the earth. As the "Humanist Manifesto" proposed, we ought to live this life without heavenly crutches or the promise of reward.

In its stronger formulations, the naturalist approach looks upon heaven as "pie in the sky," or, as one well-known troublemaker put it, "the opiate of the people."

There is, however, a third option. What if there is no discontinuity between this life and the afterlife? What if there is just life, some of it eternal, some of it temporal? If that is the case, then the way we live now is the way we will always live. How we live is the promise of our destiny.

The debate ends with no further words from the Sadducees. Your eye or ear might have caught something about those who do get married and those who do not. "Those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry or are given in marriage."

These seem to be words of exclusion. It might mean that those who enjoy the heavenly experience of being married on this earth, during this life-experience will not receive eternal life. The single persons, because they are like "angels" will rise. These verses seem contradictory to other Scripture passages and to the sanctity of Marriage!

Jesus is speaking more clearly of the life to come and the life that leads there. Being married or single is not the question. All human beings are invited to live on this earth without making answers, ideas, other persons, any things, any relationships into ultimates or gods.

Married and unmarried, all humans, long for completion so deeply that we all can drift toward grasping greedily at any one or anything that will do as a substitute. What Jesus is saying is that this present life leads to the beyond and does not end in itself.

Our fate is a matter of either/or, a question of where our hearts find their final treasure. More precisely, heaven or hell is the result of how we define ourselves while on earth. There may be a great divorce between heaven and hell, but there is a great union between our life on earth and our eternal destiny.

As we have known life in a temporal sense here in this world, we shall also know life in an eternal sense when our time in this world comes to a close. The life to come, is not conditioned by an approaching end. The life to come knows no end and has nothing for which to prepare. It is the culmination of preparation. It is life, to be sure, but not defined by the limitations of this earthly life.