Luke 20:27-38 – We belong to God
I know I am meant to be speaking about life after death or resurrected life, but I am going on a brief tangent because the more I read this passage in Luke this week the angrier I became.
I know the question this religious group, the Sadducees, put to Jesus is just a hypothetical, but thinking about the attitude behind it, the attitudes underlying it, made my blood boil.
Here is a woman whose husband dies, and they are childless. That would be devastating enough. But in this time, in this culture, it means she has no means of survival. Jewish law responded to this by requiring her husband’s brother to marry her, to provide for her and to produce children who would carry on their father’s name. (This was all important because for people like the Sadducees this was how life after death worked. You lived on in your children. No children – no future life.) So, she is married to her husband’s brother, but he also dies. And the next brother. And the next. And the next. In all, seven brothers die.
And, last of all, they say, the woman dies. Of grief? Of shame for being childless? Of hunger because she is destitute? Of despair at what life has offered, at what death now offers? None of that matters to the Sadducees. She is just a punchline – a punchline in their clever story designed to humiliate the Pharisees, their religious rivals, and use Jesus to do it.
Aron and I have been listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast recently, specifically to his three part series on casuistry, a method of moral reasoning developed by Catholic ethicists in the 16th century, associated particularly with the Jesuits, which states that rather than approaching new problems – novel problems – with a set of broad principles, you should proceed on a case by case basis; you should descend into the particulars and from there move to an understanding; that you must listen closely because only then can you fulfill one of the most important human obligations, to offer consolation to those who are suffering.
In the series he interviews Jesuit priest and writer, James Martin who has criticised the Catholic church’s treatment of LGBTIQ+ people.
After the terrible shooting in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Martin says, at the time, the largest mass shooting in US history, 49 people killed, he was appalled as everyone was, and waited for a response from the US Bishops Congress. “Because in every other instance,” he says, “[they] would come out immediately with a statement, ‘We stand with our brothers and sisters,’ wherever – in Texas, in this Methodist church, in this shopping mall, wherever. ‘We are with you.’ [But there was] nothing,” he says. “Radio silence. I really couldn’t believe it and I thought they can’t even rouse themselves to say they’re sorry.”
Martin relates that in theological college he was taught that, for Jesus in the Gospels, sin is not usually those situations where people are weak but trying to do what it right. Rather it is where people are strong and not bothering. For example, he says, in the story of the Good Samaritan, “the priests and the Levite simply don’t bother. They just don’t bother…. For Jesus, sin is a failure to bother to love…. After Orlando the bishops just didn’t bother…and I thought that was sinful and I was really angry about it.”
How should the Catholic church respond to LGBTIQ+ people? First, he says, we should remember they are also just regular Catholics. “It’s their church just as much as the Pope or the bishop or me.” Secondly, if they are behaving in a way that is contrary to church teaching why are we more concerned with this than other infringements of church teaching? “Why don’t we fire people from their positions who aren’t generous to the poor?” he asks. Finally, he says, he is not tackling this issue at the level of theological doctrine. He is simply saying that, as followers of Jesus, we are called to encounter people where they are and accompany them; because this is what Jesus would do.
Coming back to the Sadducees here in Luke, when it comes to the question of resurrection, they, it seems to me, are also working only from broad principles.
The Sadducees came from the aristocracy and priestly elite. They maintained that the only fully authoritative Scriptures were the original five books of Moses, the Pentateuch, and for this reason, they did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, because, according to them, it was not referenced in the Pentateuch. It was a version of: “The Pentateuch doesn’t say it. I therefore don’t believe it. That settles it!”
The Pharisees, however, despite their mostly negative portrayal in the gospels, had a much greater understanding of the lives of real people and the lives of the poor. As commentator Bill Loader says, “The Pharisees embraced the idea of resurrection from the dead. It was a way of putting flesh on hope… in days when justice in this world seemed irretrievable. The righteous would surely be rewarded…raised from the dead…. Those who perpetrate injustice …brought to account. Otherwise, life does not make sense…. Jesus and his movement belong[ed] in the circles which espoused such notions.”
And this is what lies behind Jesus’ response. Jesus understood that the lives of many were, to quote English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, “nasty, brutish and short”. He was passionate about the injustice of that. The waste of that. He had also been raised by women – a mother and a great aunt – who had experienced vulnerability, shame, the shame of being childless. And, above all, Jesus knew God – who God is, how much God loves us, how much God values every human life and every living thing. Drawing on these particulars, Jesus tells the Sadducees that their vision of the world going on as they know it, is not God’s vision. In God’s new age, all relationships will be transformed. In the resurrection, all life will reach fulfillment.
And as affirmation of God’s life-giving, death-defying relationship with us, Jesus quotes the Pentateuch (one of their five books) back at them. The story in Exodus, of God revealing Godself to Moses, Jesus says, assures us that God, not death, is our ultimate reality; that God’s relationship with human beings – as with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – cannot come to an end. God is our ultimate everlasting reality.
For a fuller and more eloquent exposition of resurrection life, please read chapter 12 of Thorwald Lorenzen’s book, Yes: A Christian vision of life. There he writes: “While our skin and bones disintegrate, God’s relation to us will not cease. God ‘loves the world’ (John 3:16) and has reconciled us and the world with God’s self (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). Therefore, we do not die into Nothing, but into God, [we die into God], the same God who raised Jesus from the dead and incited faith in us.”
It is interesting to look at how the early Christian community wrestled with what it meant to die into God and the nature of resurrected life – how they interpreted Jesus’ words in Luke.
Reading Paul’s letters, it appears some in the early church took this verse about not marrying or being given in marriage in the age to come as a broad principle, as being authoritative for the present age as well. In 1 Corinthains 7:1 Paul quotes one such slogan, “It is well for a man not to touch a woman!” but Paul and other New Testament writers are careful not to make this option a requirement for everyone.
We are currently in a situation where we are being required by our Association to adopt a broad principle – the Association’s new proposed Position on Marriage. “Marriage is a covenant relationship ordained by God as a lifelong faithful union of one man and one woman. Sexuality intimacy outside such a marriage relationship is incompatible with God’s intention for us as his people.”
At the Q and A session we held last Sunday, someone asked, what then are people who are LGBTIQ+ meant to do?
If you are operating from this kind of broad principle you give answers like this one that I read this week – https://fervr.net/teen-life/homosexuality-and-christianity-part-2 “The gospel asks all of us to deny ourselves and follow Jesus. For the homosexual, it will mean to stop having sex with others of the same gender. For the heterosexual, it will mean, to wait until marriage for sex, and only having sex with their husband or wife…. Some things may be harder to give up than others, but all of us are asked equally, to deny ourselves.”
To me this sounds a lot like the Sadducees’ clever argument. It does not sound like Paul or Jesus saying there is not one broad principle here. It sounds a lot more like people who are strong and not bothering. People who will not bother to love. People who will not descend into the particulars, take the time to listen closely and to offer consolation to those who are suffering.
In the letter I helped write, that has been attached to our bulletin the last few weeks, that opposes the motions Assembly will consider next Saturday, we debated whether we should descend into the particulars, whether we should include an LGBTIQ+ voice, or whether that would weaken the strength of this letter, lessen its appeal. We decided in the end it was too important to actually listen to people and to hear them speak about their faith, so we invited Martin, who many of you know, to add his voice. He wrote this:
Like other Baptists, I know I have been saved by faith. I live out that salvation in my baptism, deep love of Jesus, commitment to scripture and the Great Commission. Where I differ is, that for all of my life, my sexual orientation hasn’t been heterosexual. When other Baptists learn of this, the response has rarely been a desire to listen to my story or understand my faith journey. Instead, I’ve usually been shunned, rebuked, or condemned. Many LGBTIQ Baptists leave our churches. In some cases, Baptists have committed suicide because of the deep anguish and rejection…. Every time we close the door to LGBTIQ people, we don’t show the love of Jesus who sat with, ate with, and called as disciples those on the margins.
What will life in the age to come be like? What will resurrected life be like?
It will be a place where we are not defined by relationships, but where relationships are transformed. It will be a place where every human life reaches full fulfilment. It will be a place where we know that God’s love is our ultimate reality – our ultimate identity. It will be a place where we – as Winter, a trans woman, who attended our church a few years ago, said – and as Jesus says here in Luke – where we are simply children of God.
Paul writes in Romans 14: “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. 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. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.
Why do you pass judgement on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister?” For we will all stand before the judgement seat of God. For it is written,
‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
and every tongue shall give praise to God.’”
When we are living, we are in the Lord,
when we are dying, we are in the Lord,
we belong to God.