Jesus said to them, “Isn’t this the reason you are wrong,
because you don’t know either the scriptures or God’s power? When people rise from the dead, they won’t
marry nor will they be given in marriage. Instead, they will be like God’s
angels. As for the resurrection from the
dead, haven’t you read in the scroll from Moses, in the passage about the
burning bush, how God said to Moses, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob? He isn’t the God
of the dead but of the living. You are seriously mistaken.”
To
understand this third consecutive challenge to Jesus by the religious leaders
(this time the Sadducees), we need to understand that the question posed to
Jesus is particular kind of a question.
It is called “boruth,” literally translated “vulgarity.” It is a scoffing question meant to mock the
person questioned. Even to us, it seems to
pose a ridiculous situation where one woman is married to seven brothers as
each brother passes away and leaves her a widow. Mark points out an additional detail that betrays
the disingenuousness of the Sadducees.
They don’t even believe in resurrection of any kind, yet they are asking
Jesus about it. They aren’t even trying
to get Jesus to say something wrong or controversial. They are trying to shame Him publicly with a
question that has no relevance to anything important.
As
Jesus always does, he turns the table on them.
He flatly calls them wrong in their disbelief in resurrection and uses
the only scripture the Sadducees acknowledge as authoritative to point out
their error. If God is called “the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” by those scriptures. The tense used is present, assuming those named
patriarchs are among those that still live.
God is the God of the living, not the dead. Furthermore, the issue of marriage in heaven
is put in proper perspective, for our heavenly lives transcend earthly matters
such as marriage. The relationship that
holds all together in heaven is the relationship we all have with God. While the truth of this is partially experienced
here on earth, the full glory of this incredible unity available through our
shared relationship with God awaits us on the other side of this life. While who we were married to on earth will
not be unimportant, it will be gloriously surpassed by the relationship all
will share with Christ.
As a
pastor, I have often offered the comfort to surviving spouses that their separation
from their primary partner in life by death is not permanent. I believe that with all my heart. We will be reunited with those we love in
eternity that we all share in Christ. I
have also had the opportunity to speak to those who have lost a spouse to death
when they find themselves, as an appropriate time later, wanting to marry again. I assure them that they are not forsaking
their departed spouse in marrying again.
It will not be awkward when someone who has outlived multiple spouses
when they are all together in eternity.
The Love that holds all of them transcends all the previous conventions in
a new reality where marriage is no longer necessary. Angels don’t marry in eternity and neither
will we.
I get
that this concept is more than a little bit difficult to wrap one’s mind around,
for I struggle to wrap my little mind around it. But the point that I try to hold onto as I
struggle with it is that God has got how eternity works all figured out. While I find it hard to imagine a reality
without marriage, God does not. God has
something even better worked out. I work
to trust God for those things that will forever be beyond me in this life. I invite us all to do that as well.
Question: Are there
other matters of eternity that you are aware of that defy human understanding
and yet invite us to trust God anyway?
Prayer: God of all,
Your love, grace, and provision is enough to sustain us for eternity. Help us to trust in that truth in the midst
of our incomplete human understanding of true reality. Amen.
Prayer Focus: Pray
for people who have been affected by the multiple mass shootings in the last
month.
Song: We’ll
Understand It Better By and By – Bishop Carlton Pearson
