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Luke 20:27-38
It all started with the cleansing of the Temple.
Now all the religious authorities have a major beef with Jesus and are out to get him.
Their underlying question is
“by what authority is this man defying our leadership, our authority”
in society, in our political and religious circles?
They all want him out of the way, and the easiest solution is to trap him into a conviction for sedition, rebellion, slander, or blasphemy.
So, according to Luke, they “watched him and sent spies”.
Since time immemorial, money and sex are powerful tools to make human being look like fools,
so first, we see how the Pharisees place in front of Jesus the stumbling block of taxes,
"Do we or don't we pay them? Does Roman law supersede Jewish law?"
As we all know Jesus gets quickly out of that particular quagmire.
You know, being Jesus and all...
Now the Sadducees want to trip him with a question about relationships in the afterlife.
To begin with, a word on the Sadducees – in case you don't remember who they are.
The Sadducees were a Jewish sect that belonged to
the upper socio-economic echelons of Judean society.
They had the extremely important responsibility of maintaining the Temple.
Which mean sthat they had a lot of power and a lot of financial resources.
And were friendly with the Romans.
They differed from the Parisees on an important theological point:
they believed that the soul is not immortal, and that there is no afterlife with penalties/rewards after death.
The Sadducees’ question was making fun of the idea of resurrection,
embraced by the Pharisees, and their purpose was to make it sound ridiculous
thus making Jesus look ridiculous through the use of simple logic.
Their question has to do with Levirate marriage as it is set in Deuteronomy.
According to Jewish law, if a man died childless,
his widow was to marry his brother (the one next in line to inherit)
and their first male child would be considered son and heir of the first husband.
In this way the family name would be perpetuated.
In Hebrew scripture – in the very genealogy of Jesus,
two famous women found themselves involved in such marriages.
Tamar with terrible results that led her to take radical and scandalous action,
And Ruth, who found in the practice a redeemer for herself
and her mother-in-law, Naomi.
The law of Moses was meant for two reasons: to perpetuate the family name, to insure a legacy, and to protect the widows, whose fate was potentially really grim if they didn't have a male relative (including a male child) to take care of them.
Now let's go back to the Sadduccees.
Their problem is a lack of imagination.
They are starting from the presupposition that if it even existed, life in the Kingdom of God
would be like life in this broken world of ours.
And why not? They belonged to an upper-caste, they were perfectly happy with life as they knew it, they had no interest in believing in a nebulous better place someday/somewhere.
Jesus disabuses them of the notion.
The rules of “this age” are for us in the here and now,
where the weak need the protection of law and tradition,
where we all need clear, codified rules of conduct that apply to everyone.
Pay taxes, get married: it's the way of the world.
But the Kingdom of God is not the world.
And eternal life, resurrected life, is not the life we know.
Human rules do not apply in “that age”.
When that age comes, all human bets are off.
It will be the Kingdom of God,
something so “other than” the world we know
that we cannot imagine it, let alone find words to describe it.
All human constructs will become useless.
There will be no need for a law to protect, and guide, and order.
God will be completely in charge
as all that we now see through a glass darkly
(as Paul says) will become clear.
God, who knows all, and sees all, and loves all,
already lives in that Kingdom, in that age.
God already lives the eternal life that we are promised
and will share when God's time comes for us.
God is already the God of the everliving joy, peace,
and love that we can barely, just barely begin to imagine.
The Sadduccees are unable to imagine the Kingdom and therefore do not believe in it.
The Sadduccees are unable to believe that Jesus is the emissary
and the promise of that Kingdom.
But we- the Church, the Body of Christ - are called to be better than that.
We are called to faith and to hope.
We are called not to limit our imagination,
so that we may bear all things, believe all things,
hope all things, endure all things (1Cor 13:7)
as we await the coming of Christ in glory.
OR, as somebody aptly put it:
imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect,
then be sure of one thing:
God has imagined it quite a bit better than you have.
Amen
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