Hag 1:15b-2:9; Ps 145:1-5, 18-22; 2 Th 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38
So many physical, emotional, and spiritual transitions in a human life for those who are lucky enough to live a full life. But none is greater than that final transition, the one that takes us through the valley of the shadow of death and into… whatever comes next.
Some of you may recall that paragraph was from my sermon last week. I reuse it here because we are continuing the discussion of transitions as they affect relationships.
Relationships also endure transitions. In our reading from the prophet Haggai, God speaks to the exiled Israelites, who have begun to feel like the walking dead. They have come to accept that their relationship with God is dead. They have begun to think that their life in Judah, their time in the Holy City of Jerusalem, their celebrations in the temple, the time they spent as God’s chosen people is long over, dead and buried.
Haggai comes to speak God’s word to the exiles and to tell them that God still remembers them. Haggi comes to speak God’s word to the exiles and to tell them that their time as God’s chosen people is not over. Haggai comes to speak God’s word to the exiles and tell them that the transition they have lived through is not ended. Haggai comes to speak the reality of their present exile, but also to speak of a time when the transition they are living through will bring them back to their land, back to the Holy City of Jerusalem, back to worshiping God in the temple built to honor him.
“I am with you,” says the Lord of hosts, “according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you; do not fear.” God is basically reassuring them that “Our relationship has changed, it has surely not ended. What appears to be dead is not dead – you are still my people and I still love you. And one day you will again dance for me in the temple you have built for me with your human hands. What appears to be death is only a transition.”
Transitions. Our reading from the Gospel of Luke also speaks of things that are changing, and of things that will never change. The Sadducees attempt so show the “silliness” of belief in an afterlife using their very scholarly interpretation of scripture. They attempt to trip Jesus up by presenting Jesus with a conundrum concerning Jewish law and eternal life, two ideas they insist are mutually exclusive.
For his part, Jesus tries to teach the Sadducees that their logic does not take God’s mercy into account. They ask him: “Finally, the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”
I have to admit, I’ve wondered about the answer to that question myself many times. When I’ve thought about death and those who have multiple marriages, I’ve wondered how that would all be settled in heaven. We’ve been taught that you are only married to one person at a time, and that once death has parted us, we are free to marry again should we so choose. But what about the next married relationship we may be a part of? Whose spouse will we be in heaven?
At this point I went off on a three-page discussion of marriage and why it isn’t necessary in heaven. I talked about the fact that marriage is actually a transitional state, and that the “till death do we part” piece of the liturgy is proof of that. I spoke about the history of marriage, and how marriage in Jesus’ day was about obligation and subjugation, not love and mutual joy. I pointed out that in today’s gospel message, Jesus comes right out and says that marriage is for mortals, not for those who transition into the resurrection. I offered that marriage in this world is about trying to perfect love, and that in heaven love is already perfect so marriage has no point. I commented that there are no spouses in heaven, only those joined together by love. I spoke to the idea that marriage is about two working to become one flesh, but that in heaven there is no flesh to separate us because there we are all one. Besides, I pointed out, even Adam and Eve were not married in the way we understand marriage. I decided that marriage was worthy of a complete sermon of its own, and that I couldn’t do it justice here.
And then I realized that Jesus’ response was not about marriage, his response was about eternal life. Marriage was a distraction lobbed into the conversation about resurrection by the Sadducees, who hoped to use legalese to disprove something they clearly didn’t even understand. I grudgingly threw out my three pages on marriage.
Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; 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. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.”
Marriage, like death, is a transitional state. Marriage and death are not endings. Both are realities in this world, but according to Jesus they are not realities in the next. He never said that our relationships don’t continue on into the next world, just that marriage is not a part of heaven.
The Good News today is that Heaven will not be like our mortal world, thank God. Relationships in creation are not the same as relationships in heaven. Heaven is not about unequal equals. Heaven is not about women as subservient, not about women as property, not about which man a woman belongs to, not about women taking second place in a male-dominated, patriarchal society. Heaven is not about legal contracts or prenuptial agreements. Heaven is not about power and ownership and survivalism and selfish desire. Heaven is about relationships not weighed down by legal obligation or by tilted power dynamics, but instead is buoyed by true love and the freedom it brings.