There came to him some Sadducees, those who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the wife and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and died without children, and the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife."

And Jesus said to them, "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 from 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. 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."

When the United States government got ready to launch the space program, some of the people who were opposed to the project asked, "What are we going to do when we get 10,000 of those things up there flying around?" That may have been an intelligent question, but those who asked it had stretched the whole space program out of proportion in order to make a point. In an effort to thwart the space program and make it look ridiculous, they imagined the heavens filled with space capsules.

The Sadducees did not believe in the theory of resurrection, and in an effort to present an argument against it, they reduced the doctrine to the point of absurdity by telling an imaginary story of seven brothers who in succession married the same woman. Then they wanted to know who would be her husband in heaven. Jesus tried to help them work through their confusion by suggesting something new and something old.

Something New

Jesus 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 from the dead neither marry nor are given in marrage, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection." (Luke 20:34-36)

Immediately, Jesus reminded the Sadducees that in heaven there would be new forms, structures and relationships. Those who were resurrected would neither marry nor be given in marriage. The relationships they had enjoyed in this life (marriage, family, etc.) would be replaced. People would relate to one another, but not in the same ways they related to one another in this life.

This is where the Sadducees had made their mistake. They could not see beyond the structures and relationships of this life. They thought that the present family relationships of husband and wife, sisters and brothers, and sons and daughters would have to be maintained in the next life, heaven. Jesus did not accept this premise, and he tried to lift their imaginations beyond their present day structures.

Isn’t this one of the problems we have with the resurrection and the concept of life after death? Like the Sadducees, we are tempted to want to force the next life into the structures of this life. A grieving mother who had recently experienced the death of her son in a tragic automobile accident called her doctor’s office to make an appointment because she was having headaches. She and the doctor were close personal friends, and they shared together in a prayer group in their church. She had great respect for him as a doctor and as a Christian who practiced his faith daily.

Later that day she sat in a chair in his office wringing a handkerchief that was already wet with her tears. She explained to the doctor that she could not endure her bereavement. She talked without stopping, and he let her talk. After a while the anxious, rambling questions ceased, and with a new clarity she asked, "Will I ever see my son again? Will I be with him in heaven? Will I know him, and will he know me? Will we be mother and son?"

All her questions were set in the concrete of the present family structure. She was not asking about whether or not she and her son would be raised up after death but whether or not the two of them would know one another and relate to one another as mother and son. Our unwillingness to let go of today’s relationships and trust God to give us new relationships limits our ability to accept the good news of resurrection and life after death. We have difficulty seeing life in any structure other than those experienced in this life.

Jesus encourages us to see beyond the molds in which we are cast today and to think of new relationships. If we can do this, the whole concept of life after death will have a new ring of authenticity.

Last spring Maya Ying Lin stunned the architecture world when she won the nationwide design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial which is to be built on the Mall near the Lincoln Memorial. In an interview with Phil McCombs of the Washington Post, she shared some insights about death and our uneasiness with it. It is interesting to see ourselves through the eyes of this twenty-two year old Asian. She said:

We are supposedly the only creature that realizes its mortality ... Man reacts to that by denying its existence. We don’t tell children about it.

We say someone "went away, passed away." We can’t admit it to ourselves. That’s always disturbed me. If you can’t be honest about something that fundamental, if you tell little kids, "He’s just gone away," it’s just an unbelievable lie.1

If the whole idea of resurrection is an unbelievable lie, perhaps a part of the reason is that we refuse to break out of the molds, relationships and structures that we currently find meaningful but which can be a stumbling block when we try to carry them forward into another life. If we can think beyond these potential restrictions and see the next life as one in which we will relate in ways other than parent/child, husband/wife and brother/sister, then the good news of the resurrection becomes more believable. God will not only give us a new life but also a new lifestyle. Jesus was trying to give the Sadducees and us a new vision of life in heaven.

Something Old

Jesus went on to remind the Sadducees of something old; God is alive. "Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him." (Luke 20:38) The God whom they celebrated was not the distributor of death but the creator of life. God lived! Specifically, Jesus reminded these questioners that even Moses showed that the dead are raised up when he referred to Yahweh as "the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." (Luke 20:37) These fathers of the faith had died, but they had not gone beyond the love and care of their creator. The living God had given them life. In reminding the Sadducees that Yahweh was the God of these three successive generations of Patriarchs, Jesus taught them that God was not confined by any temporal limitations but was a contemporary to human beings in every stage of life.

Some of this must have struck a note of authenticity in the lives of the Sadducees. God had always been a source of life for them. It was their people who had told the story of God forming Adam and Eve out of the clay of the earth and breathing into those bodies the breath of life. Their fathers and mothers had told them how the God of life came in the man Moses to lead their people out of a slavery existence to a new life in their own land. The God of life had enabled them to survive in the wilderness and to come at last to the promised land flowing with milk and honey. Jesus was reminding them of something old, something they already knew. God was alive and giving life on this and the other side of death.

This reminder is good news to us also. God is alive and giving life. In the fullness of time God sent us the light of life. Christ was born, and in the birth of Christ, God proclaimed the importance of life. Jesus made it clear when he said, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." (John 10:10) In the wake of the death of Jesus his followers seemed to "die" with despair and again God sent the Spirit of life. Paul, filled with this spirit, wrote to the church at Rome: "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you." (Romans 8:11) In our own journeys we have experienced the God of life. That’s the good news we proclaim.

Not many people have struggled more with their faith in God than Tolstoy. His life was full of questions, but he knew above all else that God was life. One spring day he was walking in the forest, and he thought of God. He realized that he always felt sad when he rejected God with his reason, but he always felt cheerful and alive when he accepted God like a child. He wrote:

At the thought of God, happy waves of life welled up inside me. Everything came alive, took on meaning. The moment I thought I knew God, I lived. But the moment I forgot him, the moment I stopped believing, I also stopped living ... To know God and to live are the same thing. God is life.2

We, like the Sadducees, are encouraged when we are reminded of this old truth: God is alive and giving life. If God has been our source of life on earth, then God will be our source of life in heaven. That’s good news!