Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ + Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I think it is important to address the elephant in the room. We just had All Saints’ Day last week and talked a lot about the saints who have gone before us, and now Jesus is talking about the Resurrection in our Gospel reading so here it goes: the afterlife we will be given in Christ is probably not going to be how you imagine it. It might not even be like how you would want it to be.
Now, I know that might sound a little jarring so hold on and hear me out: there are a lot of popular thoughts about the afterlife that get tossed around in sacred and secular circles and so it’s important to address these things and clear them up and let Jesus’s words guide us toward a truer understanding of the resurrection.
I think it is very important to address the fact that heaven is not our final destination. Christians talk a lot about heaven, and we are told that when we fall asleep in Jesus we will join Him there. Yet, heaven is not all that is planned for us. Heaven is given to us as a gift in that time that we are separated from our earthly bodies in death until the day that Christ comes again and raises us, body and soul, from the dead. Then, we will join our Lord in the new heavens, but also the new earth, a restored home for us free from sin and death. We will not spend eternity floating aimlessly in clouds. We will live again eternally in an embodied world. The bodies we have right now are important gifts from the Lord because they are the same bodies that Christ will raise from the dead. When we substitute ideas for what eternal life will look like with the common pop culture view of heaven, we actually end up distancing ourselves from the truth we believe about the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.
We also do not “become angels” when we die. When people fall asleep in Jesus we might often hear well-meaning Christians remark “heaven has received another angel.” Yet this is simply untrue. God created you as a human being, and He created the angels as angels. In God’s eyes, if we were to become angels in death, that would actually be a demotion! Angels are simply the messengers of God, where we are the ones whom the Father calls dear children who receive the message of love and redemption from the Lord.
These are common misconceptions that we ought to put to rest, but I think they’re actually the easier things to stomach. If we actually take to heart what we believe, teach, and confess, we know that the Lord promises to raise and purify our bodies and that we will live embodied, perfect lives for eternity. But some things still might not sit right with us. I know in my own conversations with those who don’t believe, I’ve encountered in others a lot of discomfort and uncertainty about what “eternity” actually means. Those who do not know the Lord often look at the concept of an eternity as “boring,” or in some cases “terrifying.” They cannot comprehend an eternity being eternally good, or even interesting. Likely as a result of the “have it your way” philosophy of American society, people sometimes worry about whether eternal life is a good thing if it can’t be exactly how we want it. One point like this that people often find themselves confused or concerned by is the topic of whether or not there is marriage in the resurrection.
In our Gospel reading we hear the Sadducees confronting Jesus on the Resurrection. The Sadducees were a group of theological scholars in Israel that did not believe in the resurrection. These scholars had come before Jesus not because they wanted to ask him about the truth, but because they wanted to humiliate Jesus.
The Sadducees construct this strange hypothetical scenario in which a woman marries seven brothers in succession, marrying the next after each one dies. It was a custom that if a man died, his wife would then become his brother’s wife. So this bizarre constructed story is meant to catch Jesus in how, if living in accord to the Law of Moses, the idea of the resurrection seems ridiculous. If there is really a resurrection, Jesus, then whose wife is this woman in that resurrection? It is as if the Sadducees were a]saying “Surely if there was a resurrection Moses wouldn’t have given this as the Law, right Jesus?” But, as is often the case, Jesus is not interested in their traps. He’s interested in truth. These men are trying to take the Law of Moses and put it against the resurrection, but Jesus doesn’t have time for that absurd claim. In fact, these men are not even interested in the question they are asking, as much as they are simply desiring to catch Jesus and prove their point of “anti-resurrectionism.” So Jesus, the Word made Flesh, points toward the Word of God that can do nothing else but testify the truth. Jesus quotes the passage from Exodus where Moses encounters the burning bush, in which the Lord God introduces Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
It’s extremely important to recognize here that in this passage from Exodus, God says He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is not in the past tense, but in the present! God speaks of these men as if they were living all the way back in Exodus because, in the resurrection, they are living, even now! The Lord never stopped being their God because they did not truly die, but were granted new life in the resurrection.
While the Sadducees try to use the Law of Moses to disprove or discredit the Resurrection, Jesus opens the scriptures and shows that there is not a conflict between the two. In this reading from the Gospel, we are just days away from Christ’s crucifixion, and then of course, just a few more to the Resurrection. While the Sadducees struggle with Jesus’s teachings and fail to recognize the truth even as Christ invokes the books of Moses, they will see in a few short days the truth. In Christ’s passion and rising from the dead the truth of the resurrection will be revealed, unable to be debated.
Jesus ultimately does give an answer to the Sadducees on the subject of marriage in the resurrection, even if it isn’t the point. Simply put, there is no marriage in the resurrection. That might be a shock to some, I know it doesn’t alwats sit comfortably with me, I love my wife, and the idea that we won’t be married in the resurrection is a little odd and sad for me, but that’s thinking exclusively from an earthly perspective. Just as it is for those who are scared of “not enjoying eternity” I think we give the Lord and the plans He has for the new creation too little credit. When we join our Lord after death or Christ’s return, whichever comes first for each of us, we will be in the presence of the almighty God forever. We will be perfected, and the world will be perfect as well. Marriage is given to us here on earth as a gift that symbolizes the relationship between Christ and His Church, a small taste of that love that God has for us in our sacrifices and love for one another. But in heaven, we will know that relationship fully. We will be with Christ. In the new creation, we will all be with the Lord, and we will all be able to love one another perfectly. I know of a pastor, a professor of mine from seminary, who has said that the lack of marriage in heaven will not be bringing us down from marriage to some lower estate, but elevating all relationships in our life to that sort of unconditional love that marriage is meant to point toward. When we contemplate the scriptures and find things about the resurrection that might not sit right with us or might make us uncomfortable, it’s important to remember that there is nothing for us to worry about. The eternal bliss God has planned for us is beyond our human understanding. We cannot comprehend its goodness. When we try to, we are only able to do so with our limited understanding as earthly creatures. We can rest easy knowing that no matter what God has planned for us, it is not only good, but infinitely better than anything we can imagine.
Dear friends in Christ, we must believe what God has revealed to us in the scriptures. There is an eternal, resurrected life ahead for us who believe. This isn’t just some spiritual, ghostly, ethereal life floating around in heaven forever, but a true, physical resurrection. The bodies you have right now are the very same ones Christ will raise from the dead and restore to eternal life. When we consider the life eternal that lies ahead and think of it as “scary” or “unsettling,” we must repent from calling evil something that God calls good. But, all the same, God forgives. He prepares a place in the resurrection for you where you will be blessed beyond comprehension. While there will be things different than life on this earth, like the absence of marriage, God has an even better life planned for us.
Take heart, brothers and sisters. Our God is a God of the living, not the dead. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the rest of the saints who have come before us are not dead, but are alive in the Lord of life. You and I will join them and our Lord Jesus one day in this blessed resurrection. Trust in the Lord that a new, blessed, joyful life is coming, just as He has promised from the beginning.
In the Holy Name of Jesus + Amen.