Before we hear from the gospel according to Luke, I want us to pause for a moment and do some imagining. I invite you to close your eyes, and I’m going to ask a series of questions. Don’t respond out loud, just imagine in your mind’s eye.
How do you imagine heaven? Or the kingdom of God, or whatever language you’re most comfortable with? How do you imagine eternity will look and feel? Who will be there with you? What will you do there?
Do you have some kind of picture for what you think eternity will look like?
Scripture: Luke 20:27-40
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.” 39 Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” 40 For they no longer dared to ask him another question.
To truly understand what just happened here, I need to give us a bit of a history lesson.
When Jesus was ministering in ancient Judea, there were several groups of religious leaders that were all vying for power and influence in the religious and political landscape.
Pharisees were a religious group who focused their attention on both the written law (Torah) and what they call the ‘oral law’, or ‘traditions from the Fathers’ – rules and practices that were passed down by word of mouth. Their main concern was bringing the theology and practice of the temple into the home, including eating regular food in a state of ritual purity that was normally required only for sacrifices in the temple. This led them to zero in on the legal minutiae of obedience to the rules as they saw them, including tithing, food laws, hand-washing, and sabbath observance.
Sadducees, on the other hand, accepted only the written law – the first five books of the bible – and not any ‘oral law’ or ‘traditions’. They also did not believe in life after death, any sort of resurrection, or angels. So when they ask Jesus about “whose wife will she be in the resurrection,” they’re not asking in earnest. They’re trying to discredit both Jesus and the entire idea of life after death, like “don’t you see how ridiculous this sounds?”
But Sadducees were also deeply connected to the priesthood, so they had some formal power in religious affairs. Because of the deep differences in beliefs and practices, and the power differential, they clashed a lot with the Pharisees – and both of them clashed with Jesus, who did not feel any need to take sides in their debates.
But this time, rather than take the question as a personal attack (even though it was meant as one), Jesus decides to seize the teachable moment to answer the bigger question: is death the end of all things, or do we simply pick up where we left off in a new immortal plane?
His answer is…neither. Things do not work in heaven the way they do on earth – thanks be to God! Instead, what we encounter in the kingdom of God is a new kind of life and living. As Dr. Nancy Lynne Westfield, a professor and scholar, puts it:
“Jesus answers the question by saying that in heaven even the lowliest of the society would be considered “like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection” (v. 36)
This radical statement of the gospel, that in heaven there are no sociopolitical strata, is good news even today. The mystery of the resurrection revealed by Jesus is that heaven is a place where those who have been dehumanized will be restored; those who have been oppressed will be set free; and those who have been treated as inferior will be raised up and called beloved.
Women will no longer be the property of men, treated as chattel— passed from man to man at will and whim. Women will be children of God, able to give love and receive love as they see fit. In heaven, those who are children of the resurrection will know the joy and peace that was kept from them on earth. Jesus says in verse 38 that God is the God of the living—the God of newness, forgiveness, and liberation. Oppression on earth does not dictate the rewards of heaven.”[1]
What I find fascinating about the Pharisees and Sadducees in this context is that their visions of the kingdom of God so heavily influenced the way their theology came to life.
The Pharisees did believe in divine reward and punishment after death, but they believed that holiness was the way to that divine reward, so they sought purity at all costs. They dove into legal minutiae and argued amongst themselves and some of them became jerks to the other people, who were not as holy as they believed themselves to be.
The Sadducees believed there was nothing more than what we can see and experience in the here and now, and any good we might do or joy we might experience needed to be done in this lifetime. So they sought power, through the priesthood and politics, so they could shape this world in whatever way they could.
Jesus does not offer the Pharisees and Sadducees a middle ground between their two very different visions of the afterlife, which I should note were two among many ideas of the afterlife floating around the ancient world.
But he does not play referee. Instead, he offers something new: the God of life and living, who does not just allow us to continue our bickering and shenanigans after death, but offers us a new and renewed life. It’s hard to imagine, I think, because we’re so deeply entrenched in our competing identities, social and economic hierarchies, and power games – but the kingdom of God is a life without all those complications.
One of my favorite seminary professors, Dr. Tom Boogaart, had this incredibly calm and compassionate way of dropping tactical nukes on everything we thought we knew about the Bible. He loved to read us the last few lines of Psalm 23, and ask us to draw a mental picture of the scene the psalmist is describing.
“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows.”
Then he would ask the class: “how many of you imagined yourself sitting at a table, being waited on with abundance by Jesus, while your enemies look on with jealousy?”
Inevitably, a few people who hadn’t heard this before would raise their hands, and he would ever so gently say: “it could be interpreted that way. But the Hebrew could also mean “across from.” As in, ‘you prepare a table before me, across from my enemies.’ That changes the picture, doesn’t it?
This psalm reminds us that our enemies are not necessarily God’s enemies. What if Jesus commands us to love our enemies because we’ll be sitting across from them in the kingdom of God?”
Throughout Scripture, there are dozens of images, metaphors, descriptions, and visions of what the kingdom of God will look like, feel like, sound like, and who will be there. From streets of gold and pearly gates in Revelation to the great banquet to the lion and the lamb napping together, there are so many beautiful and inspiring ways to imagine God’s kingdom.
The trick is remembering that our imagination affects the ways we live in the here and now. There is a balance to be struck, as we allow those images to inspire us and motivate us to seek to live into that kingdom today, loving our enemies and dismantling oppression where we can. When we need it, those reminders of the kingdom can be a comfort to our weary souls.
But we also can’t fall into the trap of being so heavenly-minded that we’re no earthly good. There is work to be done, beloveds, and each of us has a part to play – a divine call to follow Jesus into the mess, that all may know the God of life and living.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Bartlett, David L.; Taylor, Barbara Brown. Feasting on the Word— Year C, Volume 4: Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ) (Feasting on the Word: Year C) (pp. 748-749). Kindle Edition.