Not of the Dead: Luke 20:27-38

Based on this week's lectionary, Andrew and I are thinking of starting a Christian band
with 1 woman and 7 men called "The Levirate Marriage." See below.

Greetings from my current home, buried under a mountain of work. I have much to tell you- about my 3rd triathlon of the year, the Baltimore Half, and Marine Corps Marathon- but right now building up my caseload at my new office is taking nearly every waking moment.

While you wait, here's a sermon I preached this morning at my home church, St. Andrew's UMC in Edgewater. Enjoy!

Luke 20:27-38

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him 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. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; 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. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 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. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” 

Not of the Dead:
Luke 20:27-38


Whenever I hear this text, I think about visiting my Grandma Cleo’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery. Grandma Cleo grew up in the remote mountains of southern Virginia. She and her family burned wood for heat, used wells for water, and hunted for food. As a young adult, Grandma Cleo met and fell in love with a local boy named Parley. They dated for a few years, and then got married. After Grandma Cleo died, we found poems and notes she had written about her courtship with my grandfather. Her writings make it clear that they loved each other dearly. They had two children together, my father and my uncle, but they also had a big problem. My grandfather suffered from severe mental illness. Eventually, it got so bad that my grandmother took her young children and moved all the way to Annapolis in order to seek help for my grandfather. Among my grandmother’s letters, we found correspondence between her and a doctor at Johns Hopkins, proposing treatments for my grandfather. Once the treatments were arranged, Grandma Cleo sent for my grandfather, but he wouldn’t come. They got divorced, and my grandmother wound up raising her children as a single, working mother back when such a thing was virtually unheard of.

Years later, when Grandma Cleo was in her mid-40’s and her kids were all grown up, she had a job at the local Safeway. A regular customer started to notice her. His name was John, and he became my grandmother’s second husband. John died before I was born, but my family tells me that he and Grandma Cleo had a fairy tale romance. John adored her and treated her like a queen. She was just as in love with him. Over 16 years of marriage, they never stopped acting like newlyweds. Even though I never met John, I knew how much my grandmother loved him because she always talked about him. I think she missed him every day for the rest of her life. When I got engaged, I asked Andrew not to buy me a new ring, but to ask my parents for a ring that belonged to Grandma Cleo. My mother had this ring specially made for Grandma Cleo, combining her engagement ring with stones from a necklace that John gave her. Using this ring for our engagement represented the hope that Andrew and I will share the same kind of love in our marriage that Grandma Cleo and John experienced in theirs.

Grandma Cleo's ring.

At the end Grandma Cleo’s life, she took comfort in the thought that she would be reunited with John. Even talking about her burial did not upset her. She knew she would be buried in Arlington National Cemetery with John, and she cherished the idea of being close to him forever. But there was a complication: John had also been married before. He had a wife who died young, leaving him a widower. John’s first wife is also buried in Arlington. I don’t know anything about her, but I have no reason to believe that John didn’t love her too. 

When I visit Grandma Cleo’s grave, I can’t help but think of all of them. I wonder about John’s first wife, buried right alongside John and Grandma Cleo. I wonder about my grandfather Parley, who never remarried and is buried with his family in Virginia. Are John and Grandma Cleo reunited in heaven? What about my grandfather and John’s first wife? If they are all in heaven, how are they relating to each other? In the resurrection, who is married to who?

In this morning’s Gospel text, a group of religious leaders called Sadducees test Jesus by asking a similar question. In order to understand their question, we need to understand two pieces of Jewish history. First, we need to know that the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. This was a major difference between the Sadducees and other Jewish groups like the Pharisees. Second, we need to understand something called Levirate marriage. Levirate marriage was a Jewish law designed to address situations like the one in this text- times when a woman was widowed before she could give birth to a son. Under the Levirate marriage law, if a married man died childless, his brother was required to marry his widow. Then, the first-born son of the widow and her brother-in-law would be considered the child of the man who had died. This custom probably sounds strange and a little unappealing to us. I love my two brothers-in-law, but I would not be very happy if Andrew died and I was forced to marry one of them.

To us modern Westerners, Levirate marriage might sound like just another example of women being treated as property in the ancient world. But there’s more to it than that. In the ancient Jewish community, Levirate marriage was actually a way of protecting women and children. In a society where women were forbidden to work or own property, a childless widow was in a terrible situation. With no husband or children to care for her, she could easily find herself in desperate poverty. The Levirate marriage law ensured that a woman would be cared for by her husband’s family, even if her husband died. It also solved problems of inheritance. If a man died with no heir, the Levirate marriage could provide an heir for him. Finally, the Levirate marriage was a way of protecting Jewish identity. It prevented widows from getting remarried and having children outside of their tribe or community. For these very reasons, Levirate marriage is still practiced in certain tribal cultures all over the world.

The situation that the Sadducees propose to Jesus is an especially tragic one. The woman in the story loses her husband before they have any children. According to the custom, she marries her brother-in-law, but he also dies before they have children. One by one, she marries all six of her brothers-in-law and all six die without producing a single child. Then, the woman herself dies too. The people in this story have followed the Jewish law perfectly. Still, in an era when the purpose of marriage was to produce children and continue the Jewish community, they have failed.

Now, the Sadducees ask Jesus what will happen to these people in the resurrection. They propose a scenario so ridiculous that it sounds like something from a comedy. All 8 of these unlucky people meet in the next life. The woman has been married to all 7 of the men. So, whose wife is she now? We can almost picture them all, standing at the pearly gates and saying “Well, this is awkward.” 

Presented with this bizarre situation, Jesus gives a startling answer: “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; 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.” On first reading, it sounds like Jesus is dismissing the very idea of marriage. Is Jesus telling us that marriage is somehow beneath the whole idea of resurrection? This statement from Jesus makes me think of Paul. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul suggests that single people should stay single and wait for Jesus to return. Paul, who was unmarried himself, seems to think that being single is somehow holier than being married. Does Jesus agree? As a happily married newlywed, that idea makes me uncomfortable. I certainly believe that a person can live a happy, fulfilling, and holy life without getting married. But I also believe that being married can enhance a person’s happiness and even their holiness. Sharing my life with another Christian has certainly enriched my own faith. In fact, most of the better ideas in this sermon came straight from my husband! 

Just when I started to worry that Jesus doesn’t believe in marriage, I focused on the rest of the text. Later, Jesus tells the Sadducees “…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.” Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are all considered fathers of the Jewish faith, but they are also fathers of actual children. They were all married family men. In fact, their marriages are important parts of the Biblical story. We never talk about Abraham without also talking about his wife Sarah. The story of Abraham and Sarah leaving their home to journey to Canaan is one of the most well-known stories in the Bible. The story of Isaac finding his wife Rebekah is also a beloved Biblical story. Jacob had two wives, Leah and Rachel. Between them, they gave birth to twelve sons who are the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel. Marriage and family are essential to the stories of the patriarchs. I don’t think Jesus would invoke the names of the patriarchs in order to dismiss marriage and family.

So, if Jesus isn’t condemning marriage and family in this text, what is he saying? I think the heart of Jesus’ argument is in the final part of the text, when he tells us that God is “God not of the dead, but of the living.” Jesus is telling us that, in the resurrection, there is only life. Death will be no more. Take a minute and really think about that. Our existence in this life is defined by all kinds of boundaries. We all have limits on our physical abilities, and we grow more and more limited as we age. We all have limits on our intelligence and our other abilities. We all experience limits of time and resources. Finally, we all experience the ultimate limit of death. Whatever we may accomplish in our lives, none of us will live forever. However close we are to our loved ones, we all know that they could be taken from us at any moment. Even when we’re not thinking about it, this boundary affects every aspect of our lives. 

In the resurrection, the ultimate boundary of death will be gone. I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine what that will be like. I’m not sure what I would do if I had no limits on my time or my abilities. I don’t know how I would relate to other people if I knew we would never be separated. The truth is, I can’t know. I think that’s what Jesus is telling the Sadducees. The idea of a woman being reunited with her seven deceased husbands is strange and uncomfortable if we think about it happening in our world. But in heaven, things will be different in ways that we can’t even imagine. 

I’ll be the first to admit that this idea isn’t exactly comforting. We tend to think of heaven as a place like Earth, but without all of the problems. Many of our great hymns and works of art imagine heaven as a great family reunion in the sky- a place where we’ll see everyone we lost throughout our lives and get to be with them forever. I like that idea, and I don’t necessarily like Jesus saying that heaven might not be what I imagine.

But then I remember Grandma Cleo. If there’s one lesson I learned from Grandma Cleo’s life, it’s that happiness might not come in the way you expect it. Growing up, Grandma Cleo probably expected to spend her whole life in the mountains, close to her friends and family. She expected to marry someone from her community and raise a family with him. When she fell in love with my grandfather, she believed that she would be with him for the rest of her life. She never imagined that she would lose him to something as terrible and mysterious as mental illness. She never imagined that she would move hundreds of miles away, live in a city, and raise her two boys by herself. I never asked her much about that time in her life- something I regret now- but I can only imagine that she went through some lonely and difficult years. I’m sure she grieved for the loss of her marriage and the family life she had envisioned. But then, something unexpected happened. Later in life, after she raised her children, she had her fairy tale romance. Grandma Cleo’s life with John was not the happy ending she dreamed of as a child, but it was certainly a happy ending. In many ways, meeting John was like a resurrection for my grandmother, and I imagine that it felt that way to him too. And even though Grandma Cleo lost John, their relationship became an inspiration to her children and grandchildren. I hope that a part of them is alive in Andrew and I, and will be passed down to our children.

Jesus is talking about the resurrection this morning, but I think he’s also telling us something about this life. To those who are going through dark and difficult times, grieving the loss of a person or a dream, Jesus is saying “Hold on. Have faith. I have wonderful things in store for you, more wonderful than you can even imagine.” To those of us who are happy, who feel like we are living our dreams, Jesus is saying “Don’t get too comfortable. Dream even bigger. Find ways to live as if there are no boundaries.” Jesus is reminding all of us to keep our minds and hearts open and to allow the possibility that happiness might come to us when we least expect it, in ways we never imagined. It’s not be the good news we are used to hearing, but it certainly is good news.

Amen.