Whose Wife?

Luke 20: 27-38

This story isn’t about marriage. It isn’t really about death, either.

But it sure sounds like it’s about both of those.

The Sadducees come to Jesus with a deliberately ridiculous story:

A woman marries a man; he dies.  His six brothers, all taking seriously the biblical injunction to raise up children for their dead brother, each marry her, then die, in turn.

While you and I might stop to wonder about just what goes through the woman’s mind at these weddings – and what the youngest brothers were thinking by the time it was their turn! – the Sadducees have their own concern:

Whose wife will she be in the resurrection????? (Hmmm?)

The Sadducees want Jesus to say it’s ridiculous, and dismiss the resurrection because it’s inherently illogical, or impossible.  Or they want him to try to solve the problem until the logical impossibilities prove that same point.

But, as usual when you try to trap Jesus, he pops out somewhere unexpected: Marriage is a matter for this life, he says.  In the resurrection, there’s no marriage.

And while the Sadducees are trying to sort out that blanket statement, Jesus goes on to something that sounds quite different:

In the resurrection, no one dies.

(okay, yes, that’s what we hoped, here),

And, he says, resurrection is demonstrated when Moses encounters a burning bush, which introduces itself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

(huh? I remember that, but what’s that got to do with resurrection?)

So, Jesus concludes,  God is God not of the dead, but of the living, who are all alive to God.

You all followed that, right?

So you can explain it to me?

Yes, the logic in this story is a hot mess.  And Jesus’ explanation might sound even more confusing than that poor woman with seven dead husbands. But that confusion makes sense in its own way, I think, because nothing on earth – or beyond earth – is less logical than resurrection.  Nothing is less bound by predictable logic than heaven.  And the one thing that’s sure to get us into difficulties when we start to ponder life after death is trying to pin down the practical details.

I heard in the Bible there will be golden streets, harps and singing. But what if I don’t like singing? 

Will I see my loved ones? How, and when? 

Will we have the same body?   

Or will it be the body I always wanted to have?  With wings????

And it hardly stops there.

Which is why Jesus’ answer is probably the only answer, after all:

God is God of the living, not of the dead.

And if it sounds as though he’s saying there’s no such thing as life after death, well, it’s actually the opposite:

Life with God – right now, right here, and life eternal – life is a matter of relationships, not rules. Even, and maybe especially, if the rules in question have come from God.

Jesus points out that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are alive to God long generations, centuries, after their deaths. That’s relationship for you.

So relationship with God is eternal life.

Relationship trumps the rules of nature. 

And therefore, even more certainly, relationship trumps biblical or cultural rules about marriage – or nationality, or baptism or anything else you want to offer.

That’s not a promise of a comfortable heaven.  It’s not an explanation of resurrection.

Instead it’s a simple, fundamental truth: Relationship trumps rules. With God; now and always.

And, oh, how that matters.

On Monday I talked with my Aunt Ellen, as she recovered from the funeral of my Uncle Wayne and began the long, slow “now what?” stage of life and grief.  And I learned that she’d been haunted recently by this thing about no marriage in heaven.  We trust Jesus, she and I, but….!

Will Ellen and Wayne be married in heaven?

What would you have said?

If you said yes, your heart and your gut have given you the same actual answer that Jesus gave the Sadducees: Relationship is what matters most.

The “union [of two persons] in heart, body, and mind,” to quote the Book of Common Prayer, is the core of the sacrament of marriage.  It is, above all, a sacrament of relationship, though legislatures and courts and churches may argue about the rules until the day of resurrection itself.

Which is what Jesus meant, when he pointed out that there’s no marrying in heaven. In heaven, the tax benefits and legal distinctions – ancient or modern – of marriage are gone and irrelevant, but the union of hearts and souls – with God, and with one another – can’t be broken that easily by death.

Think about the relationships you know; the relationships you have:  marriages, family bonds, even friendships. Think about the depth and strength those relationships give us.  Think about your relationship with God.

Think about that, and I know you will share my own certainty that Ellen and Wayne are married in God’s eyes, and in their souls and hearts.  Now in spite of death, and in heaven and resurrection, and all else that might come to pass.

Because relationship trumps rules.

Every time – with God, with Wayne and Ellen, you and me.

It’s true right here and now, just as much as beyond death.  And it’s true for good and for ill. Rules won’t save us when a relationship goes sour, with God or with one another.  Which is a good reason to invest in our relationships. Because Jesus insists that relationships are the truth that gives us life.  Life right now, and life eternal.

So this story isn’t about death, or about marriage.

Not the Sadducees story or Ellen’s story, in the end, though both sure sound like they are.

This story, these stories, are about relationship. About heart and body and soul, and most of all, about the life-giving power of relationship with one another, and with God.