More Love Than We Can Know. . .
Matthew 22:23-33, The Message - That same day,
Sadducees approached him. This is the party that denies any possibility of
resurrection. They asked, “Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies childless,
his brother is obligated to marry his widow and father a child with her. Here’s
a case where there were seven brothers. The first brother married and died,
leaving no child, and his wife passed to his brother. The second brother also
left her childless, then the third—and on and on, all seven. Eventually the
wife died. Now here’s our question: At the resurrection, whose wife is she? She
was a wife to each of them.”
Jesus answered, “You’re off base on two counts: You don’t
know what God said, and you don’t know how God works. At the resurrection we’re
beyond marriage. As with the angels, all our ecstasies and intimacies then will
be with God. And regarding your speculation on whether the dead are raised or
not, don’t you read your Bibles? The grammar is clear: God says, ‘I am—not
was—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.’ The living God
defines himself not as the God of dead men, but of the living.” Hearing this
exchange the crowd was much impressed.
Once
again, Matthew includes a discussion between Jesus and religious officials that
provides a contrast between this world and the Kingdom of Heaven. Today the sparring partners are the Sadduccees,
a religious group that denied much of what we would call the supernatural world
- spirits, demons, angels, or any kind of resurrection (life after death). Matthew notes this to point out the disingenuous
nature of their question; they like the Pharisees before them, are only trying
to make Jesus look bad in front of his followers. And like the Pharisees, the plan backfires. The followers are even more amazed and
endeared to Jesus because of His answers.
The
question they ask concerns one Moses’s laws.
In a culture so patriarchal it’s hard to imagine these days, Moses’s
remedy for caring for widows was to give the responsibility for their care to
the dead husband’s brother. The
Sadducces present Jesus with a preposterous “what-if…” scenario; what if all
seven brothers are dead and then the poor widow finally dies.” If there is a resurrection of the dead, whose
wife will she be in the afterlife?
There
is no good technical answer to the question, which is the Sadducces’ reason for
asking it. Of course Jesus knows this
and doesn’t step into the trap. Instead,
He pivots to a much deeper issue, the nature of the Kingdom of God. “Who was married to who?” is an irrelevant
concern in the life after this one. Though
it’s hard to imagine a reality where such would be the case, somehow, in the
eternal presence of God, we just won’t worry about such things. Jesus pulls the rug out from underneath the
Sadducces by pronouncing the whole basis for their religious order to be false. God is a God of the living, a God of resurrection. Matthew includes this exchange because Jesus
is about to prove this truth by being resurrected Himself!
Most
commentaries I have read on this passage focus on the marriage question; will
we still be married to our spouses in heaven.
I believe that is falling into the same trap as the Sadducces. Jesus
is trying to present a new vision.
Imagine a reality where the relationship between souls and the relationship
between souls and God is so much better than we know now that who we were married
to before seems like a silly question. The very best we’ve experienced in this life
pales in comparison to the love we will know in eternity.
I’ll be honest; I struggle to imagine such things. But I have heard first-hand witnesses from
people who “died,” spent a few moments in the perfect presence of God, and then
rejoined us here on earth. They always
struggle to find language to describe the love they felt surrounding them. Some do report recognizing those who had died
before being there with them, which is comforting to me and many others. But in almost every case, the one thing the
eyewitnesses to “the other side” want to make clear more than anything else is
the Love present there.
I do my
best to hold on to their witness. I can also
add to their witness that the Love that they struggle to describe sounds like the
deepest longing of my soul. A Love that
will make all that has come before just melt away. A Love with power to heal all the
imperfections of the past. A Love that
becomes the only currency that matters.
The perfect and complete Love of God.
We get tastes of it but when the Kingdom reaches it’s fullness, it will
be the only reality we’ll know. I hold as
much of that vision in my heart as I can.
I pray that you will too. Because
to the extent that we can, we can be part of that vision becoming reality right
now.
Question: What do you
really believe about the coming Kingdom of God?
Prayer: We long for
so much to be different than we experience right now. No more tears. No more pain. No more brokenness. No more strife. Plant the seeds of your Kingdom in our soul
and helps us nurture the growth of Your Kingdom within us. Help us experience the fullness of Your
Love. Amen.
Prayer Focus: Spend
some time today reminding yourself that our God is not a God of the dead. The people that we see no more are not really
gone. They are waiting for us in the
life to come.
Song: Perfect Love –
Planetshakers
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