Sally A Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary
After several weeks of Luke’s action-filled parables and stories, today’s Gospel text, Luke 20:27-38, may strike some preachers—and their listeners!—as odd or simply irrelevant. To open a pathway to the pulpit, a first step is to review the setting and timing of the debate presented in this text.
First, the scene has shifted to Jerusalem. Having at last completed the journey he began at Lk 9:51, Jesus rides into the city on a young donkey, surrounded by exultant crowds. Second, this occurs only days ahead of Jesus’ death. Wherever he goes now, tension is high. We recall that soon after his arrival, Jesus entered the Temple court and threw aside the tables of the currency exchangers doing business there. The Temple leadership is incensed. Now, they seize every opportunity to interrogate Jesus in public, hoping to catch him opposing Jewish Law or speaking against the power of the state.
Among Jesus’ opponents are Sadducees, custodians of the Temple who rely exclusively on the five books of Moses and deny that the dead are raised. Hoping to corner Jesus theologically (and thereby discredit him), the Sadducees spin an unlikely tale built on the Jewish law of “Levirate” marriage. The law asserts that if a man dies leaving his wife childless, one of his brothers must marry her to produce offspring to carry his name. “If a woman is thus married by seven brothers, each dying and leaving her childless,” they ask, “whose is she in the resurrection?” Jesus counters by setting aside their primary assumption—that resurrection life is merely an extension of life as we know it here.
Jesus enlarges on the nature of resurrection life in surprisingly clear terms here. First, those who have passed through death and are “considered worthy” (!) of the life to come will neither marry nor be given in marriage, because they have been changed, becoming “like the angels … children of God” (v 36). Death has no further claim on them. Second, Jesus cites one of the Sadducees’ most cherished texts, God’s self-revelation to Moses at the burning bush, as a source of evidence for resurrection. There, God self-identifies as “the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob” (Ex 3:15). Thus, as God of the living, not the dead, God testifies that these patriarchs are living persons.
We, who read Luke centuries later, have little stake in a debate about the post-death impacts of Levirate marriage. On the other hand, when Jesus speaks of an utterly different form of human existence awaiting us beyond death, we can’t help but lean in. Jesus’ reply to the Sadducees silences them, and it continues to challenge us: Who, exactly, are the ones “considered worthy” of the life to come? Some of us may be disturbed by Jesus’ description of that life to come; it calls seriously into question sentimental notions of blood-family circles reunited “just like it used to be,” bathed in heavenly light. That said, many of us indeed long for a world in which no woman shall be treated as property, and a world where anxiety and fear of death have no power over us. Jesus declares we shall live as “children of God;” yet he has already taught us to address God as “Father.” Jesus teaches us to live toward our promised future. We need not fear death; its claim is not permanent. Nor do we need to wait until after death to be less bound up in anxiety and fear of the other. We can turn, here and now, to each other—blood relative, friend or stranger—with deepened respect and generosity, choosing to recognize one another, already in this life, as beloved children of God.
Insights into Biblical Greek Grammar and Syntax 