Job 19: 23-27

²³ “O that my words were written down!  O that they were inscribed in a book!

²⁴ O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever!

²⁵ For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;

²⁶ and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God,

²⁷ whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.  My heart faints within me! 

           

Luke 20: 27-38

²⁷ Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him ²⁸ and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. ²⁹ Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; ³⁰ then the second ³¹ and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. ³² Finally the woman also died. ³³ In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” ³⁴ Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; ³⁵ but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. ³⁶ Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. ³⁷ And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. ³⁸ Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”

 

“Thou Shalt Not Whine”

The Sadducees were putting a question to Jesus in accordance with their belief that there is no resurrection, this life is all there is.  In no uncertain terms, Jesus affirms resurrection and eternal life.  These questions came to Jesus following a number of arguments that the Sadducees had with the Pharisees on the topic of “resurrection.”  In this situation the Sadducees stood on the side of the primacy of the ancient Torah, while the Pharisees stood on the side of interpreting the torah through the experience of the prophets.  The Hellenistic culture and the rise of the Christian movement made it difficult for Sadducees.  The Pharisees used Job to support their argument.  The author of Job believed in some sort of resurrection, but not of a spiritual sort.  So the argument over the resurrection became a battleground for power in the Sanhedrin.  It often disrupted the efficiency and peace within the Council.

Belief in an afterlife was developed very late in the Old Testament, primarily because of the influence of the Babylonians and the Greeks.  The Sadducees, in this Sunday’s Gospel, take their case to Jesus in an attempt to make him look foolish.  It would help them build support for their case against resurrection.

The Deuteronomic code and the Psalms of David supported the Sadducees side.  Our physical body is alive because of the breath of God.  Psalm 104 states:  “When you take away their breath, they perish and return to the dust from which they came” (Psalm 104:29).  According to this belief the only thing that would survive death was a person’s name.  That’s why the Sadducees were so consumed by the question of the resurrection and marriage.  They believed that your only chance at “immortality” was to raise a son.  According to Deuteronomy 25:5-10 if a man died without a son, the deceased man’s brother was required to marry the widow; the first son born of that union was considered the dead man’s son and would inherit the dead man’s property, thus insuring the continuance of the name and the estate.  It’s a rather humorous code:

(Deuteronomy 25:5-10)   ⁵ When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage, and performing the duty of a husband’s brother to her, ⁶ and the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. ⁷ But if the man has no desire to marry his brother’s widow, then his brother’s widow shall go up to the elders at the gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to perpetuate his brother’s name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.” ⁸ Then the elders of his town shall summon him and speak to him. If he persists, saying, “I have no desire to marry her,” ⁹ then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, pull his sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and declare, “This is what is done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.” ¹⁰ Throughout Israel his family shall be known as “the house of him whose sandal was pulled off.”

A lot was at stake for the Sadducees here.  They were desperate.  When desperation hits we often resort to manipulation, proclamation, pontification, scheming, and whining.  “It’s not fair...”  “This is what I’ve learned from childhood, now your telling me there’s more to the story.”  “Is it true that the Greek word for “Virgin” could also mean “young woman?  But the scriptures were infallible, and the Historic Doctrines of our faith immutable!”

“Round young woman, mother and child.  Holy infant so tender and mild?”

Wait a minute, it must be a liberal plot!  Those Pharisees!  Why would the laws and the prophets give us mixed messages about resurrection?  Why would God make the interpretation of Hebrew and Greek be so ambiguous?  And, why would a common carpenter, like Jesus, contradict a learned Sadducee regarding the interpretation of the Deuteronomic Code?  It’s just not right!

The Sadducees were becoming desperate to find ways to prove their point.  Arguments about the resurrection could not be resolved because of the different ways the scriptures were being interpreted.  Sound familiar!  These arguments regarding the resurrection continued until the fall of the temple in 70 A.D.  They were taken up again at the re-establishment of the Sanhedrin around 80 A.D.  The topic of resurrection may have continued until 425 in the Sanhedrin until Roman decree made the Sanhedrin illegal.  It is still part of the theological debate today.  Today, resurrection is a central belief of Orthodox Judaism, but not necessarily a belief for everyone in Reformed Judaism.  

Things were changing in the first century.  The Greek concept of soul, as being separate from the body, was new.  The belief in resurrection began after the return from Exile to Babylon.  It is first recognized here in Job, but not nearly as developed as it would become by the first century.  By the time of Jesus the soul was understood, by many, to be the immortal part of a person, but not completely separate from the Body.

Greeks believed that a person was composed of body and soul. The soul was immortal and was set free from the body at death.  The Pharisees believed in a bodily resurrection, like that described in Job.  Today, Christians seem to have no problem with the idea of the resurrection of the soul over and against the concept of the resurrection of the body. 

So, the Sadducees knew that Jesus taught about the resurrection of the body.  They attempted to trap him with an impossible puzzle.  They brought their fabricated case to Jesus.  If there was a resurrection of the dead, who would be her husband?   They thought the very absurdity of the situation proved that resurrection was impossible.

Jesus dismissed the Sadducees’ argument.  Resurrection means life, not death.  The dead are like the Angels of God.  They neither marry nor are given in marriage.  God makes marriage after death unnecessary.  It was enough to drive any Sadducees to whining.