Text: Luke 20:27-38 (RSV)
The Question about the Resurrection
27 There came to him some Sad′ducees, those who say that there is no resurrection, 28 and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man[a] must take the wife and raise up children for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and died without children; 30 and the second 31 and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. 32 Afterward the woman also died. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”
34 And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; 35 but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36 for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. 37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him.”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen
One thing that we often miss when we talk about Jesus is that he was most definitely a Torah-observing Jew. That is to say that he loved the Law of his people and was deeply concerned for the traditions of his ancestors. We miss that because we focus on passages like Matthew 5:17 – “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (NIV). We gloss over the first part of that statement and concentrate our attention on the second.
This argument that Jesus has is about how to interpret the Torah. We know this, because those who ask him the question about the Resurrection start by saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us…” Right there we know that they aren’t asking an idle question – the Law was the foundation of their society, and so arguing about the Law, while enjoyable, was also existential; it was part of their very being. So even though the question about whose wife that woman would be in the afterlife might strike us as ridiculous, for these people, it was as serious as could be.
The people asking Jesus about the Resurrection were from a sect known as the Sadducees who did not believe in the Resurrection in the first place, so – despite the seriousness of the question – it is clear that they were trying to set him up. They figured that it was a question that Jesus would not be able to answer; he would be humiliated, and they would be justified in their assertion that there was no such thing as a Resurrection.
Besides being a way to perhaps take this Jesus down a peg, there might have been some other motivation on their minds. Their assertion that there was no such thing as a Resurrection put them pretty far outside the mainstream of Judaism – they were Jews, of course, but some Pharisees, and apparently Luke also – did not consider them so. So maybe stumping the rabbi was a way to assert that they, too, had a place at the table. “If even one of your rabbis can’t answer the question, who are you to say that we’re wrong?”
But when Jesus answers the question, he does so in such a way that shows he simply assumes that there is a Resurrection: “[B]ut those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection…” There is a Resurrection; it is a given, as even Moses made clear.
But, why would resurrection be so important to Pharisees and other Jews? Part of the answer lies in which books in the Bible they considered most important. The Sadducees worked only with the first five books of the Bible, called either the Pentateuch or the Torah; but the Pharisees and others also considered the Prophets and Psalms as scripture. In those books the Pharisees found justification for trusting in a resurrection of the dead. But even this sounds too much like an internal squabble, so why does Luke report it at all?
To answer this, we have to step back and take a look at what was going on in Palestine at the time Luke wrote his gospel. The concept and the fact of resurrection was, as we’ve seen, of vital importance; yet far more important was the matter of the ultimate justice of the world. The Sadducees understood this world to be the only world in which God would act as a keeper of covenantal promises; how they reconciled this with the obvious injustices of the world we don’t know. The Pharisees, on the other hand, believed that God would keep promises and enact justice even, maybe especially, beyond the boundaries of this world. This was good and necessary, because it was abundantly clear that Rome controlled this world and was not likely to face justice.
This was a very big deal for Luke, both because he is telling the story of Jesus, who was, after all, killed by the Romans, and because he is telling his story around the year 100 A.D. Many of the people hearing his gospel remember, and were perhaps victims of, the Roman abuse of power when the Roman war machine crushed the First Jewish Revolt that happened between 66 and 70 A.D. They remember how Rome destroyed Jerusalem and razed the Temple to the ground.
Some of those listening to Luke’s gospel probably had friends and relatives who lost their lives during that time. The defeat was devastating, so it’s hardly a wonder that Luke would insist that it would take a general resurrection of the dead for accounts to be settled. Rome held this world under its heel, and Luke was not willing to let Rome have the last word when it came to God’s Creation and God’s promises. Neither were the Pharisees. Neither was Jesus.
So the Sadducees, who by rejecting the concept of resurrection made themselves deniers of God’s ultimate justice, approach Jesus with a contrived and absurd case meant to make resurrection look ridiculous. “Jesus just brushes them off with a theological shrug that simply rejects the premise of their case, and they vanish.”[1] In the next scene, we read that some scribes, who presumably were mostly Pharisees and who believed in both justice and resurrection, appear and warmly approve of Jesus’ argument. At that point, all questioning ends. This is the first and the last time we hear from the Sadducees.
But there’s something else to note. In that day and age, women were considered property, belonging first to their fathers, and then to their husbands. So this question by the Sadducees is also about the transfer of property in the world to come. Jesus says that in the age to come, this will no longer happen. Marriage will be unnecessary; women will no longer be passed along as property. This is because, as Jesus says in Luke 20:36, in that age, people “are not able to die.” That matters, because Jesus understands that, in the coming age of resurrection and restitution, the old patriarchal structure is gone. In God’s Kingdom, total freedom and total justice reign.
For us who follow Jesus, resurrection is the core concept of our faith. Simply put, without the fact of Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead, there can be no atonement. Without atonement, there is no salvation. And without salvation, there is no hope.
But the facts are on our side. Jesus died, and rose again, and indeed sits at the right hand of the Father, from whence he intercedes for us.
Glory be to God and to our Lord Jesus Christ!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Swanson, Richard, “Commentary on Luke 20:27-38,” Working Preacher, November 10, 2013, https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1852