A Bigger Imagination – Luke 20:27-38

A text – 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 a woman 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.”

A reflection:

I’m not sure how interested we would be in this exchange between Jesus and the Sadducees, but I’ll bet a hush came over the crowd around Jesus at the time. They believed they were setting Jesus up to give the wrong answer and get him into trouble or at the least make the Resurrection look like foolishness.

I like Jesus’s answer, nonetheless. While we are alive on earth, people marry. In the next world, marriage is not needed. The rules the Sadducees were quoting were in place to protect a woman if her husband died so she would not become homeless and without support, human beings being what they are. But in the next world we are all in God’s care, alive in our Heavenly Father’s house – no worries.

Bible scholar Dr Kyle Brooks of the University of San Diego says about this passage: “What won’t be resurrected are the petty squabbles and theological quandaries of our times. They will be relegated to the realm of dead things. Resurrection does not come without death, but it leaves dead things in its wake. It does not fret over dead husbands and wives. On the contrary, it rejoices that the dead can die no more.” He says that the Sadducees lacked an imagination for what life could be like after we were resurrected. That’s why they didn’t believe in it. But he feels we all have the capacity for a better imagination than that. His prayer: “May the God of the living continually draw our attention to this life beyond the limits of our imagination.”

Job said, “I know that my Redeemer lives.” You and I know that our late ones are in that Redeemer’s arms and that we will join them. Hallelujah.

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for the arguments Jesus had with religious leaders in part to open their imaginations. Help us always to know that you are bigger and more wonderful than we can ever picture, but that we can keep on trying.  Amen.