The film "Amadeus" ends showing the funeral of the great musician Mozart. He was taken to his grave in a blizzard. There was a trap door in the end of his coffin. They dumped his body through that trap door into a giant hole in which there were several other bodies.
The film takes several liberties with history, including the account of his death. Scholars have found that the weather reports for that day don’t mention a blizzard in Vienna, and they doubt it was a pauper’s grave - although Mozart did have trouble managing money. But no matter what his funeral was like, he did die at the age of 35. A genius, who never re-copied his compositions because he never made corrections; the first copy was always right. A genius, who started at the age of four playing several instruments, who’d written several symphonies by the age of eight. A genius, whom one authority calls "one of the brightest stars in the musical firmament," who created at least 528 musical compositions - and dead at age 35. What a waste, that he should have died so young. It makes you wonder: is this life all there is?
The pictures on television of starving children in Ethiopia and the Sudan: so dispirited, so lacking in energy, they don’t have the urge to brush the flies off their faces, the flies that are almost walking on their eyeballs. We see the bodies of those out of whom breath has gone altogether. What was the meaning of their existence? What a waste, that they should die so young. It makes you wonder: is this life all there is?
A beloved spouse, a darling parent or grandparent, a close friend, lying cold in the coffin. Is this life all there is?
I
So you try to comfort me with the doctrine of the resurrection. You tell me: the genius of people like Mozart - that’s not going to be wasted. The precious lives of starving children - the promise of freshness and productivity they offered - that promise will be fulfilled. The love of a dear one - the squeeze of their hand and the music in their voice - that love will be enjoyed in even greater intensity. In my despair I might say, "I don’t believe it; the doctrine is absurd." That was the point the Sadducees wanted to make. There was this law in Deuteronomy that said when
brothers dwell together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead shall not be married to a stranger; her husband’s brother shall go in to her, and take her as his wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his brother who is dead, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.
(Deuteronomy 25:5-6)
The Hebrews had divided the Promised Land into family properties. The Law of Moses was intended to preserve the family estate. The Sadducees make no mention of the purpose of the rule; they simply use it to construct a situation they felt would show the absurdity of the doctrine of the resurrection. One by one, seven brothers all had the same wife, all trying to have a son, all dying without children. The sticky question now, Jesus, is this: "Whose wife will she be in the resurrection? Ha, ha. Because they were all married to her."
The Sadducees were probably out to get the Pharisees with the same shot. The Pharisees did believe in the resurrection and some of their ideas were silly. They taught that the resurrection would take place only in the Promised Land and that if any of God’s Chosen Ones died outside the country, there were tunnels in the earth through which their bodies would roll until they returned to Palestine so they could come out of the ground in God’s country. Foolishness.
Questions that could lead to absurdities still abound. This globe is already in danger of overcrowding; if God raises everybody who’s ever lived, where will we all find room? Then too, if I die when I’m old, will I be wrinkled in the resurrection? Will my baby who died at six months always be a baby?
Were the Sadducees right? Is the doctrine of the resurrection absurd? Is it true that this life is all there is?
II
I usually don’t stay long with this opinion because I can see what ridiculing the resurrection leads into. Because if this life is all there is, then why not let starving children die? We have too many people anyway. So my second point in this message is this: Living without the doctrine of the resurrection cheapens this life.
See what it did to the Sadducees. Look at the corruption with which they were infected. This laying of a trap for Jesus, this took place on Tuesday of Holy Week. The day before, Jesus had driven the money changers out of the Temple. The high priests were Sadducees. The high priests got a good cut from the profits of the money changers. It was a racket, both from the din of the sheep as well as from being an easy way for the high priests to get rich. Pilgrims from all over had to pay the Temple tax in Temple money and the money changers had a monopoly and charged a hefty markup. Pilgrims had to bring sacrifices and the animals had to be approved by Temple inspectors. You could buy your animal elsewhere but you still had to get it inspected for a fee. It was simpler to buy it at the Temple where all the animals were already approved, again at a hefty markup, and again with a good cut going to the high priests - who were Sadducees. So when Jesus broke up their cozy little business arrangement, he was in trouble. It was the high priests who arranged his crucifixion, and the high priests were Sadducees. There’s nothing in Scripture that draws a direct line between their ridicule of the resurrection and their corruption. It’s an inference I’m making because we can see how this works - that when people say this life is all there is, they can be tempted all the easier to regard others as things, objects to manipulate for their own advantage.
Dramatic and horrible proof comes from the record of Nazis and Communists. When this life is all there is, then if some objects are in the way, get rid of them. If the objects in the way happen to be made of skin and bones, get rid of them. Cows and chickens are skin and bones - and we butcher them, don’t we?
III
So whenever I’m inclined to think the doctrine of the resurrection is absurd, I consider the consequences of living without that hope. I have to conclude that to live that way would cheapen this life. Now I want to deal with the third section of this sermon, that the resurrection promises an even richer life to come.
I have to admit I find this hard to accept. I believe it only because our Lord Jesus says it, and I have confidence in him. He was cutting through the trickiness of the Sadducees by showing them it’s not the doctrine that’s absurd but their question. They were assuming the life to come would be just like what we know now. Not so. He said:
The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.
It’s not easy for me to imagine that the resurrection life will be better than married life. Yes, when people don’t die any more, there’ll be no need to beget more children. But married life is more than procreation. Perhaps the support and openness and trust I get from my wife, perhaps that’s just a preview of the support and openness and trust I’ll get from all the saints in the resurrection. There are single people now who are content in their estate, not least because they’re open and trusting and trustworthy, able to enjoy the company of many people. It would be great, wouldn’t it, to live in a society where there was no pretense, no need for covering up, no reason to be ashamed. That’s what the society of the resurrected saints will be like, when the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier will make our souls and bodies new.
Now I suppose Jesus could have ended his answer here. But he went on and took the attack. The Sadducees based their dennial of the resurrection on their claim that the books of Moses said nothing about it. The Sadducees didn’t accept the authority of the rest of the Old Testament, just the first five books. So our Lord met them on their own ground:
But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him.
He was quoting from Exodus where the Lord says, "I am the God of Abraham," the passage where he gives himself the name we’ve come to know as Jehovah, a name which in Hebrew probably means, I am. If God always is, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob still are. In the Hebrew Scriptures the soul and the body are a unit; if the living God is the God of the living, then this life is not all there is.
Someone has said if the baby in the womb had a choice, it would probably elect to stay where it was: warm, comfortable, and taken care of. It has no idea what life is like after birth. Perhaps that’s similar to this: we have no idea of what’s coming, no way to imagine how the resurrection will bring us an even richer life than we now enjoy as we live forgiven. The genius of people like Mozart will flower still more. The unfulfilled promise of the shortened lives of starving children will be realized. The love of our dear ones will be enjoyed in still greater intensity.
The Sadducees - in spite of their craftiness - sometimes strike a responsive chord because the doctrine of the resurrection (on the face of it) seems absurd. Sometimes it sounds reasonable that this life is all there is. But living without that hope cheapens this life, tempting people to use one another as things. Our Lord shows us that the resurrection life will be grander beyond anything we can conjure up, a richer life of support, openness, and trust enjoyed by all the saints. And so we make the words of Paul to the Philippians our own:
I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord ... that I may know him and the power of his resurrection ... that if possible I may attain the resurrection of the dead.