Who’s Wife Is She Anyway?

One of my spiritual devotional practices is just straight reading scripture that day. On a day like that I’ll read an Old Testament passage, something from the Wisdom literature, a New Testament passage, and a Gospel reading. Currently that would be me reading through Genesis, Psalms, 1 Thessalonians, and Mark (the Gospel for 2027).

Today though, I decided to look at what the Bible readings would be for today if I was trying to read through the Bible in a year. The gospel reading for today was from Matthew 22 and I was particularly drawn to the story of the Marriage at the Resurrection in vs. 23-33.

The setting is really quite like a game show. The show hosts in this case are the Sadducees.  The Sadducees were a sect of Jewish leadership. They would be considered the orthodox crowd. The kind that just maybe always wore a Yakama and sported those curly sideburns.  In addition to being strict they were known for one other thing. They were adamantly opposed to entertaining any belief in the concept of resurrection. Once you die that it. You are kaput, kablooey, you’re gone.

Thus you will understand the irony of the situation they propose to Jesus. They tell the story of a man who marries this lovely young Jewish woman. Mazel tov! They headed off to their honeymoon and to fulfill their duty of inhabiting the earth. As misfortune would have it, man dies before they can fulfill their duty.

The Sadducees are all to happy to educate Jesus on “levirate marriage”. This is where the brother of a deceased brother must marry his wife to carry on the family name. And in our story, we do not need to worry, because the deceased brother has brothers. Seven of the to be exact.

This is where the plot thickens. You see the wife has very bad luck. Every single brother that marries her experiences the same fate. (Black widow much?)

They’ve cleverly baited the trap, now for the snap. Who’s wife is she in the resurrection. Rat scent activated because wait…they don’t believe in the resurrection. What kind of game is this?

Boy are the Sadducees smug. They really got him this time. They were going to show him just how silly this whole resurrection thing is.

Enter Jesus. Can’t you hear him cracking his knuckles?  First he insults them by telling them they don’t know scripture. The nerve of him! They study scripture all day long!  But their unwillingness to consider the possibility of resurrection means they are uneducated about all the ways that a heavenly existence is described, and just in the New Testament. If the Sadducees would open their eyes, their ears, and most of all their hearts, they would understand that rue faith requires regular, humble immersion in God's Word. It is this that corrects our false assumptions and aligns our hearts with ultimate reality.

Then Jesus adds salt to the first insult by telling them they don’t know God’s Power. Their unwillingness to read scripture by the guidance of the Spirit limited their imaginations. They couldn’t possibly see a world beyond their own human limitations.

He throws down the final card showing why belief in the resurrection was not just a pipe dream. He quotes the words the God speaks to Moses in Exodus 3:6. ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” God is speaking in the present tense. At this point Abraham, Issac, and Jacob have long since died. The only way God could speak about dead men in the present tense is if they are, in fact, still alive. This is why Jesus can confidently add. “He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

And yes, that shut up the Sadducees. But what does this mean for us today? Like Jesus, we never know when we’re going to confront ideas based on limited human perspective. We never know when we are going to need to remind someone of the true power of God. Times like these may cause us to have doubts and confusion about how to respond.

Where humans fail, God does not. Our human bodies on this earth are mortal. We’re constantly reminded of that. But Jesus has promised us everlasting life. We can rely on God, through the Holy Spirit, to lift us up with answers when we call upon the Lord.