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November 7, 2004
The Sadducee's Question
Luke 20:27-40
The plot in Luke is beginning to thicken.
Since chapter 9 when Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem, all the events have been leading up to Jesus' last days in that holy city. Our story this morning is from chapter 20. In chapter 19, Jesus made his entrance into Jerusalem on a colt, with crowds waving branches and shouting to him (19:29-38). Jesus wept over the city (19:41-45), and went to the Temple and drove out the buyers and sellers (19:45-46). With that act alone, Jesus made himself enemies among the chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people. Chapter 19 ends this way: "The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him; but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard." (19:47-48)
Luke has done a masterful job of heightening the tension by placing Jesus between the authorities who despise him and the crowds that surround him, hanging on to his every word. Chapter 20 is set smack dab in the middle of this tension. Set entirely in the temple, it contains accounts of Jesus teaching the people, and the authorities who try to set him up, trying to trap him into saying something that will allow them to have him arrested.
Chapter 20 begins with the chief priests and the scribes asking Jesus by what authority he does the things he does (20:1-8). Then comes a parable of a vineyard owner and his tenants that is clearly told against the scribes and the chief priests (20:9-19). Next, the authorities sent spies who pretended to be honest, but who try to trap Jesus with the question of whether or not it is lawful for Jews to pay taxes to the emperor (20:20-26).
It is a constant onslaught, and despite their efforts, in every instance, Jesus outsmarts his attackers, besting them easily in a game of wits.
Into this ongoing offensive come the Sadducees.
This is the only place in Luke's gospel where the Sadducees are mentioned. The Sadducees were a Jewish sect who aligned themselves with the wealthy families of Jerusalem, and through that power alliance, operated the Temple. They were some of the religious conservatives of the day, limiting their beliefs to what was contained in the five books of the Torah, refusing to validate any of the oral traditions or the prophets. Thus, unlike the Pharisees, they did not believe in the resurrection (or angels or spirits), as Luke tells us in verse 27.
As the Sadducees watched the chief priests and the scribes fail to entrap Jesus, they decide it is their turn. Their intent is to not only trick Jesus, but to show up the Pharisees and others who believe in the resurrection.
"Teacher," they ask, "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." (20:28)
The Sadducees here are referring to a law from the book of Deuteronomy 25:5. This practice, although it sounds horrible to us, had two purposes. First, it provided security for the brother's widow; women who were without a husband or a son were vulnerable. Second, the Israelites (at the time of this law's writing) believed that a person lived on in the memory of their descendants. So a man's descendants ensured "that his name may not be blotted out of Israel." (Deut. 25:6)
The Sadducees go on to describe a hypothetical case where a woman marries into a family with seven brothers. Her first husband died childless; the second brother took her as his wife and he died without children, too. And so on and so forth until all seven brothers had married the woman and died childless, and finally the woman herself died.
So, ask the Sadducees, in the resurrection, whose wife will the woman be?
The Sadducees ask this question, certain that they know what the answer will be — that the messiness of one wife with seven husbands in the resurrection is too much for it to be true. The Sadducees are entrenched in what they believe. They are entrenched in the way they think about who God is and what God can do.
In their way of thinking, there was no room for the resurrection. For the Jews at this time, the resurrection was "a future event that had not yet happened, as a result of which the dead would be alive again in a way they weren't at present, and all the wrongs of the world would be put to rights."1
For the Sadducees, people of power and privilege, this understanding of resurrection was hardly good news. When you're the one on the top of the heap, the last thing you want is change, to risk losing that position of privilege. You want things to remain exactly the way they are.
So they ask their question, to put Jesus in his place, and disprove, once again, this misguided notion of there being a resurrection.
In response, Jesus says, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; 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. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection." (20:34-36)
Basically, Jesus says, you're keeping your focus on the wrong thing. Marriage, for example, is a concern in this lifetime, but life in the resurrection is entirely different. Resurrection does not mean life as we know it just continues forward. Jesus distinguishes between this age and the age to come, but, of course, he is vague about the specifics. When death is no more, he says, there is no longer a concern with things like marriage, or carrying on the family name in future generations. When we are children of the resurrection, nothing will be the same. None of the things that preoccupy us here will matter any longer.
Then Jesus continues his argument for resurrection, this time appealing to the Sadducees through the scriptures they hold so dear. Since they believe all they need to know about God is in the first five books of the Bible, Jesus uses the burning bush story found in Exodus 3.
Speaking through the bush, God tells Moses that "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." (3:6) If the Sadducees believe that God is the God of the living, not the dead, and God says that he is the God of the patriarchs, then they must somehow continue to be alive in God.
The Sadducees aren't the only ones standing around Jesus. Among others, some of the scribes were in the crowd. They also believed in the resurrection and say to him, "Teacher, you have spoken well." (20:39).
But what about the Sadducees? Luke tells us that "they no longer dared to ask him another question." (20:40). We don't know, however, why they're not asking questions. Are they upset that their ploy didn't work? Or silently indignant because they were the ones who were made to look absurd here, in their Temple, not Jesus? Or are they shaken, considering the possibility that Jesus is right, allowing that to sink into the consciousness, contemplating new ways of thinking, new ways of believing?
My guess is, this encounter did little to change their minds. I suspect they had too much invested in being right on this point to allow even the Son of God to make a difference in their belief.
It's always easy to shake our heads at the poor, misled Sadducees, but as I have reflected on this passage in the last week, I have developed great empathy for them. I have come to the sad conclusion that they are not so different from me, or from any of us.
The Sadducees were entrenched in their beliefs and the ways those beliefs influenced their thinking about God. These beliefs allowed them to size up the world into who was right and who was wrong, what was righteous and what was displeasing to God.
Don't we pretty much do the same thing? I know I'm guilty of it. Just like the Sadducees, we circle the wagons around what we believe and how we think, and have difficulty considering new ways of thinking and being, even when it comes to God.
In fact, especially when it comes to God, we divide ourselves into us and them, and put God in the middle.
The word "entrenched" certainly came to mind as I watched the election results this week and the analysis of red and blue voters that so closely resembled the 2000 election, from the principle values that determined our decisions in the election, and (my personal favorite) the television shows we prefer to watch. (The good news—or is it?—is red and blue voters find common ground in Survivor.)
What has been most disturbing to me, however, is the way God seemed to be co-opted by one party, and ignored by the other, at least until the very end.
But then, I think that's unfortunately what we do with God. I'll confess a tendency to create God in my own image, to keep God in a box of my own making. This way, God is more convenient.
Even the church does that. Our denomination, like many others, is caught in the tension between groups that have opposing views on everything from the ordination of homosexuals to what our policies toward Israel and Palestine should be. And guess what? Everybody in the argument believes they speak for God.
How often am I—how often are all of us—like the Sadducees, guilty of trying to contain the God of the Universe in beliefs that suit us and our purposes best? How much of our lives do we spend domesticating God, rather than looking for signs of the One makes all things new?
I've heard the axiom that if something isn't growing, it is dying. If we are too entrenched in our beliefs to allow for change or growth, perhaps we have a faith that is dead. And our God is God not of the dead, but of the living.
How sad it would be if you and I, like the Sadducees, missed out on an encounter with the Living God because we were too busy defending and protecting a notion about God.
This story points to that danger, and reminds us that God is beyond our understanding, God transcends the concerns that occupy us in this life, God does things we simply cannot imagine.
God cannot be contained by any political party, any political platform, any theological concept, any particular ideology.
God is bigger than anything the human mind can come up with.
And thanks be to God for that. Amen.
1 Wright, Tom, Luke for Everyone. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2004. p.245 go back
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