Luke 20:27-38; All are Alive to God, Second Essay

The Sadducees are "next up" in challenging Jesus in Luke 20. They give Jesus what we in law call a "hypothetical." When lawyers make arguments before appellate courts, judges are famous for trying to test the validity of the lawyer's argument by giving "hypotheticals"--an extreme example of the point the lawyer is making. Sadducees, who focus on the Torah and thus on law, are using here a technique that is common to legal argumentation in all cultures--by giving an extreme example of the principle, you see if the other side still wants to hold its (ridiculous?) belief.

The issue here is the resurrection of the dead. Sadducees believe the doctrine to be, as I argued in the previous essay, harmful to the community. So they spin out a hypothetical to Jesus, based on the law of Levirate marriage in Deut. 25. Under that law if a woman became widowed without bearing a child, the unmarried brother of the deceased would be required to marry the woman, thus assuring that the man's name would not perish from Israel. It was a very interesting way to handle the problem of family continuity. But instead of focusing on the family issue (even though they will assume "continuity" for the sake of argument), the Sadducees in this passage spin out a hypothetical relating to resurrection.

I don't have to repeat it here, but it is given in such detail and ridiculous extension so as to try to make a belief in resurrection look funny. 'Yeah, which one of the seven will get her in heaven?' You could imagine the Sadducees rolling their eyes suggestively as they might lead the hearers to imagine joint orgies in heaven as each of the seven brothers fought with his siblings over "his" wife. The Sadducees no doubt had great fun spinning out this hypothetical, but it does have a serious point. Since they were concerned with continuity on earth, those who believed in resurrection ought to be concerned with continuity in the afterlife. So, if the basic rule of continuity applies, whose wife is she? A nice tableau is given to Jesus and to the reader.

III. Jesus Responds--Turning the Tables (vv. 34-36)

A whole book could be written on Jesus' method of arguing in the Gospels. Sometimes he will turn an academic point into an ethical point (who is my neighbor?); sometimes he initiates the discussion (the authority of John). But here Jesus responds to the interlocutors through subtly attacking the unspoken assumption of the Sadducees. That assumption is that the doctrine of resurrection implies a "continuity" between here and "there." Jesus disagrees. Actually, his argument in these three verses is often dropped out of the lectionary readings because, in my judgment, it isn't a very persuasive argument, but here goes.

Jesus questions the Sadducees' assumption regarding continuity of life from here to the resurrected state. In fact, he argues, there is neither marriage nor consenting to marriage in the world to come. People are "like the angels," which means both that we never die and that we are sort of genderless. Jesus never uses the word "gender" or says explicitly that sex difference is eradicated in heaven, but his comments tend in that direction. I really don't know how far we want to carry this argument because it isn't a very powerful one. Indeed, I think that if you did a sort of "survey" among Christian people that most would think that there is some kind of recognizable continuity between this life and the next and that gender is one thing that might be transformed but would probably be preserved. We tell people that you will see grandma and grandpa in heaven. And, to speak quite frankly, I would think that most people would want heaven to be a place of "GREAT SEX" with their partner. Maybe my frankness offends, and maybe we will be so transformed that sex will no longer be "on the brain." But Jesus hasn't really made a powerful point--yet.

IV. Jesus Responds II-Arguing from Scripture (vv. 37-38)

Jesus' second argument against the Sadducees is that the OT, and specifically the Pentateuch, argues for the resurrection of the dead. Actually, I think Jesus' argument here is tremendously creative and powerful. He points the Sadducees to the passage from Exodus 3, where Moses has just encountered God through the burning bush. Here is what God says, by way of self-identification to Moses:

"I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (3:6).

Lest Moses have a short memory, God says the following a few verses later:

"Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you" (3:15).

What Jesus then proceeds to do is to hoist the Sadducees on their own petard. They believed in the Pentateuch. And what happens with people who focus all their belief on a farily small unit of text (a few hundred pages) is that every word of those few pages becomes alive with meaning. Experts comb the words for spiritual insight that may come not simply from the words themselves but from the number of letters in the word, from the arrangement of words, etc. A short text means that each word of the text takes on a comparatively greater significance.

Thus, the Sadducees should have been accustomed to the kind of exegetical "move" that Jesus made in vv. 37-38. God is the God of the living. Indeed, since the Sadducees had argued for the principle of continuity in their argument, Jesus here takes them seriously in that argument and plays with the idea of continuity. We saw how in vv. 34-36 Jesus avoided the Sadducees' argument of continuity by positing discontinuity between life here and in the state of resurrection. But now Jesus decides to accept their premise. There is continuity. And how? They all are alive. Then, he finds "proof" of that in the very words revered by the Sadducees. God would not be proud of being the God of dead people. God stands for the living. Thus, the Sadducees are answered on their own terms in a stunning but immediately believable argument. Indeed, I might even say that Jesus deliberately used an unpersuasive argument first so that he could really come at them hard with his second argument. Such is a useful rhetorical strategy at points.

Conclusion--All are Alive to God

This story also appears in Matthew and Mark, but it ends differently in each of the Gospels. In Mark, for example, it ends by Jesus bluntly telling the Sadducees that they were mistaken (Mk. 12:27). But here he drops in words that are potentially so suggestive that I can't leave the passage without mentioning them. Literally, the last words of the text read:

"For all live to (or "in") him (i.e., God)."

Another way of translating it is in the title of these essays: "For all are alive to God." We can read these words on two levels. On the one hand we can say that it refers only to the immediately preceding example that Jesus gave. "All" then would simply refer to the patriarchs--Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But there is also the interesting possibility that the words might have a broader application. Then the idea would be that "all" refers to all people, and Jesus is, possibly subtly, trying to say that the life of every living creature is in God's hands, and that resurrection, therefore is a human issue in general and not simply an intramural Jewish concern. Thus, Jesus would be quietly trying to steer the debate ultimately to the issue of the responsibility of all of us to God. If it is true that all of us live to God, then Paul's words are readily understandable:

"If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's" (Romans 14:9).

It would be quite characteristic of Jesus to end with such a note, for it forces us to examine our lives and try to figure out where we stand with respect to God. Not a bad idea.

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