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“What Comes Next?”

Sermon by Dr. Greg Knox Jones
on Luke 20:27-38
given November 11, 2007

What happens to us after we die? Is death simply the end of our existence, or is there something else? We know that when we die, our conscious, physical existence on this planet comes to a close, but is there another dimension where we live a spiritual existence?

Such questions have hounded humans since the earliest times. Some have concluded that there is only this life and nothing more, while others have believed in some form of afterlife. Those of us who believe in an afterlife are dismissed by those who think we are naïve. Do we stubbornly cling to the belief that a wonderful place awaits us just to quell the anxiety that the reality of death evokes in us? Or could it be that God plants the thought of such a place in our imaginations by whispering to our subconscious?
This morning’s passage from the Gospel of Luke presents an occasion when the question of afterlife was put to Jesus. A Jewish sect - the Sadducees - presented Jesus with a conundrum about a woman who had been married to seven husbands. They wanted Jesus to tell them whose wife she would be in the resurrection.

Before leaping ahead to Jesus’ response, a little background data helps.
The Jewish sect we encounter most often in the gospels is the Pharisees. They are the devout believers whose observance of the law is sometimes taken to such extremes that the word “Pharisee” has practically become a synonym for legalism. They were often the antagonists of Jesus who sought to undermine his popularity with his followers, and eventually wanted him eliminated.
The Sadducees are another group and we know very little about them because they left no writings and they are rarely mentioned in Scripture. In fact, today’s passage is the only time they appear in Luke’s gospel, and they are mentioned in only four of the 66 books of the Bible.

The early Christians must not have known much about them either, because Luke prefaces this story with a sidebar comment. He informs his readers that the Sadducees do not believe in the resurrection.

When I was growing up, I was led to believe that it was not until the resurrection of Jesus that people began to believe that humans would also be resurrected following death. When I was older, I learned that belief in the resurrection existed at least two centuries before Jesus lived. You can find it in the final chapter of the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament.

When Jesus walked the earth, a lively debate raged regarding what happens to us after we die. The Sadducees, who accepted only the five books of Moses as divine Scripture, did not believe in a resurrection. However, they also did not believe that when they died, that was it, nothing more, turn out the lights. Sadducees believed that people gained immortality through their descendants. You live on in your children, grandchildren, great grandchildren…And they were right. We do live on in our descendants, and we pray that it is mostly the fine parts of our character and not our ugly traits that live on in them. However, the Sadducees stop there. To them, immortality only comes through their descendants. They reject the notion of resurrection.

Their belief is codified in the Book of Deuteronomy where it states that if a man dies without a son, his wife is obligated to marry his brother. Remember, this was a patriarchal society in which everything was understood from the male’s perspective. There was a slight degree of concern for widows who ended up with no means of support, and so this law provided a means by which someone would take care of them. However, the primary reason for the law was so that the deceased man could gain immortality through an heir.
In the 25th chapter of Deuteronomy we read that if a man dies without a son, his brother must marry the deceased man’s wife and “go in to her” so that she will bear a child. And it says that “the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother” – not the biological father – “so that [the deceased man’s] name shall not be blotted out.”

One reason the Sadducees rejected the notion of resurrection was because of the bewildering predicaments it could create. In this morning’s passage, they lob one of these dilemmas to Jesus. They say, “There are seven brothers. The first one gets married, but before his wife has a child, he dies. Brother number two steps up to do his duty and marries the widow. However, before the new wife has a child, he dies. The same scenario is repeated for brothers three through seven. Each of them dies before the woman has a child.” Personally, I’m thinking this woman should be booked on suspicion of murder. It sounds just a little too fishy!

But, that’s not the point of the Sadducees’ riddle. They say to Jesus, “This woman had seven different husbands; if there is a resurrection, whose wife will she be?”

Several commentators on this passage say that the Sadducees are simply inventing a preposterous story to embarrass Jesus and to ridicule belief in the resurrection. Perhaps; but I’m thinking that people such as Elizabeth Taylor want to know the answer to this quandary! We can imagine other situations that make us wonder how this can work out in the next world. What about a soldier who lost his legs in combat? Will they be restored in the resurrection? How will we recognize people in the next life? Will we appear as we did at age 15 or fifty? Since at least the time of the Sadducees, people have struggled to make sense of the resurrection in light of the perplexing puzzles it produces. And in our own time, when a secular worldview dominates our thinking, there is widespread skepticism regarding life after death.

The secular worldview chips away at religious belief because it reduces reality to what can be verified scientifically. This way of seeing the world has convinced many that if they cannot verify the existence of something through the five senses, then it does not exist. The modern secular worldview creates “doubts about anything that cannot be accommodated within its framework, including religious phenomena such as prayer, visions and extraordinary healings.”1

For decades I was captive of this way of seeing, and I held serious doubts about anything that did not fit neatly into the modern scientific worldview. However, as I became aware of how this view of life draws boundaries around what can be accepted as reality and what can not, I began to realize that simply because some phenomena do not fit into this worldview, it does not mean that they do not exist. No longer do I doubt some extraordinary and unexplained events, simply because the current worldview makes no room for them. The world is a much more mysterious and enchanting place than I once thought, and it is simply a severe case of arrogance that makes us think we can explain everything.

Most of you know that my father died five weeks ago. Last Monday, as I was talking to my mother on the phone, she shared something extraordinary with me. She said that Dad had been visiting her since his death. My mother, the consummate realist and frequent skeptic of anything that sounds supernatural, said that Dad had visited her several times early in the morning. He did not say anything, but somehow gave her the feeling that everything was all right and he was doing fine.

For much of my life, I would have been polite and not argued with her, but in my mind I would have made sense of her experience by defining it in psychological terms. I would have said to myself, “This is probably a good example of wish-fulfillment. She was probably dreaming and because she has experienced a recent traumatic loss, her mind is making the suffering more bearable.”

However, these days I stop myself from knee-jerk reactions to things that sound as if they are outside the bounds of normal experience. Over the years, a number of people have told me that they experienced the presence of a loved one who had died. Who am I to say, “No, you didn’t really. You just imagined it.” It is impossible to prove one way or the other what actually happened.

In this morning’s passage, the Sadducees had fallen into this trap, arrogantly imagining that because they could not resolve the dilemma over the woman with seven separate husbands, it made no sense to believe in the resurrection. However, Jesus’ response exposed the hole in their logic. He said that we cannot imagine heaven to be simply an extension of this world. Some categories that are important for earthly life, will not apply in the next.

Jesus said, “‘Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place…in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die any more, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.”

The words of Jesus about life after death encourage us and make us hopeful that this life is not all there is. Yet, for those of us who are blessed with a loving marriage, and yearn to be together in God’s heavenly kingdom, the words can be unsettling. However, we need to keep in mind that Jesus is not saying that in the world to come, God is breaking up marriages and separating loving couples. He’s saying that the world to come is not simply a continuation of this one. Some relational attachments that are necessary in this life are no longer needed in the next. In the first century, marriage was deemed essential for populating the world, for protecting women and for gaining immortality through one’s descendants. Jesus says, “That will not be necessary in heaven.”

Episcopal minister Barbara Brown Taylor had a woman in her congregation “who was dying of cancer when her husband suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack. At his funeral, people leaned over her wheelchair to console her by reminding her that it would not be long until she and her husband were together again. Later, when the woman was alone with Taylor, the woman, tears streaming down her face, and asked, “I am never going to get away from him, am I?”2

Whenever we talk about the next life, we are wise to be cautious. So little is known and the Scriptures, which say remarkably little about it, only dare to speak in images and metaphor. However, I believe we can say that it will be a wonderfully liberating existence where we will be freed from anything in this life that has controlled, dominated or limited us.

Charles de Gaulle, and his wife Evonne, had “a daughter with Downs Syndrome. They cared for her deeply, but Evonne often said to her husband, ‘Charles, why couldn’t she have been like the others?’ Sometime later, the child died and at the graveside, Evonne could not pull herself away. Finally, Charles went to her side and said, ‘Come, Evonne. Did you not hear the blessing of the priest? She is now like the others.”3

Our faith teaches us that this life is not all there is. There is life beyond our earthly existence. And it will be a freeing experience filled with an intensity and harmony of love we can scarcely imagine.4 Jesus promised that the Creator of heaven and earth is not God of the dead, but rather God of the living. In God, we are - and always will be - alive forever more.

NOTES

1. Marcus Borg, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999), p.10.
   
2. Barbara Brown Taylor, Home By Another Way, (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1999), p.204.
   
3. Thomas W. Walker, quoting Thomas G. Long, in Lectionary Homiletics, October – November 2004, p.54.
   
4. Paul Nancarrow, “Lectionary Commentary,” on Process and Faith website for November 2, 2004.

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