"Marriage in Heaven?," a sermon by the Rev. Richard H. Schmidt, editor and director of Forward Movement Publications,, given on November 15, 2007,
in Christ Chapel

Luke 20:27-38

Today’s gospel recounts an encounter of Jesus with the Sadducees. The Sadducees are not so well known as the other party Jesus often ran up against, the Pharisees. Most of his invective in the gospel accounts is directed against the Pharisees---it was the Pharisees whom he called white-washed tombs, said were clean on the outside but filthy inside, hypocrites; “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees,” Jesus said. The Sadducees were just as opposed to Jesus as the Pharisees, but they didn’t come in for so much criticism. Why not?

Well, they were less numerous for one thing; one didn’t bump into them as often. But also, the Sadducees were a bit like the modern secularists. They were educated, urbane, cosmopolitan, well-spoken, and familiar with the philosophical ideas of the day. They were Jews but wore their religion rather lightly. When the Sadducees did encounter Jesus, they were usually trying to debunk what they saw as some bumpkin religious idea that sophisticated people had long since rejected (as in today’s gospel). Jesus didn’t say a whole lot about the Sadducees, reserving most of his sarcasm for the Pharisees, who were very serious about their religion and sought to live faithfully in every detail of their lives. Those were the ones, the religious people, with whom Jesus most often tangled. Why he Jesus had it in for religious people is a fascinating (and for us perhaps a disturbing) thing to ponder, but we shall not ponder it this morning, because in today’s gospel Jesus tangles with the Sadducees.

One of the differences between the Pharisees and the Sadducees is that the Pharisees believed in the resurrection, the next life, while the Sadducees (like modern secularists) didn’t. And on this point, at least, Jesus was on the side of the Pharisees. In today’s gospel the Sadducees try to trip Jesus up with a trick question that they thought would land him in a sea of logical absurdities. It all hung on the ancient custom of levirate (LEV-i-rit) marriage, whereby you would be obligated to marry your brother’s widow if he died without an heir, so that you could then provide him an heir. That was to make sure your brother’s name continued and that his property would stay in the family. So the Sadducees concoct this theoretical scenario in which seven brothers all marry the same woman (God help her!), each having done so after the brother before him had died without producing an heir. So in the next life, whose wife is she going to be, since they had all been married to her in this life? The idea, of course, was to show that the whole notion of a next life is ridiculous. And Jesus says that in the next life there isn’t any such thing as marriage because in that life people will be like angels, children of God.

Let me just pause for a moment and point out what Jesus did not say. He did not say that we would love one another any less in the next life. I had a parishioner once who grieved over this verse when his wife died, fearing that it meant he would never see her again. But that’s not what Jesus said. He merely said that marriage, as we know it in this life, would not be found in the next life. Maybe something better, something fuller, something more refined, maybe a relationship with our beloved that is all that we dreamt it would be in this life but which we never quite were able to reach. Jesus didn’t actually say what would be found in the next life, only what would not be found there. Why did Jesus stop at that point? Why did he not go further in discussing the next life?

Now, I think, we’re getting close to the point of this passage. The Sadducees had tried to trip Jesus up by assuming that the next life (which the Jesus and the Pharisees believed in) would be pretty much like this life, a continuation of what we experience now, with maybe some improvements. This is actually a quite common assumption even among believers in the next life. The Indian tribes in the area where I grew up in Kentucky, for example, believed that in the next life they would still be hunting for game, only the game would be more plentiful. The Vikings, who loved to massacre unsuspecting coastal tribes from the British Isles, believed in a next life that would be one battle after another because Vikings who had been killed in battle today would be made whole again overnight so they could do it all over again the next day. There are Muslims today who believe that if they commit suicide against the infidel in the name of Allah they will be invited to deflower hundreds of vestal virgins in the next life. And it’s from the Book of Revelation that we take most of our images of heaven, including white-robed figures with harps walking along streets of gold. What do all those visions of heaven have in common? They’re based on some particulars in this life which the believers or the authors in question especially liked. Heaven would be more of the same, only better.

But Jesus’ point here is that heaven, though very real, is not just a hyped up version of what we know here in this life. Whatever else heaven will be, it will be different. And no attempt to explain it in terms drawn from this life will even approach the reality. As with God, the only things you can say about heaven with complete truth are negative things. We say God is invisible, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omni-this and omni-that. And that of course says nothing positive about God, but only that God is not limited in any of the ways that we are limited. And it’s the same with the next life. You can truthfully say that it is not this or not that, but you can’t say what it is, because human language is incapable of expressing what is entirely beyond the range of human experience. Marriage, Jesus says, is a relationship in this life, determined by the limitations of this life. It is, or is at least intended to be a glorious thing, but we must not try to transplant it out of this world, which is the world it is designed for. The next life will be different---not this, not that, not anything you know. The Sadducees probably weren’t the only ones who didn’t grasp that. Probably most of the Pharisees made the same mistake, and religious believers have been making that mistake every since. And it’s really not surprising that we do, because how can we relate in any way to something that’s utterly, totally other than anything we’ve known?

Let me give you a quick analogy. I assume everyone here has seen “The Wizard of Oz.” Dorothy and Toto begin their lives in black-and-white Kansas. That’s what they know; it is their reality. Words like yellow and pink and blue have no meaning for them, for everything is some shade of gray. If you were to visit black-and-white Kansas and try to tell Dorothy about the Land of Oz, filled with every color of the rainbow, how would you do it? “The maple leaves in October are gold,” you’d say. “Gold?” Dorothy would say. “Yes, bright, radiant, warm, colorful!” And Dorothy would say, “Oh yes, brighter, more radiant---I know, more like white than black.” And you’d say, “No, no, not even close. I’m talking about something entirely different.” But as long as Dorothy remained in black-and-white Kansas, you might as well not even try to tell her what gold is. Dorothy had to be transported to Oz to understand that. And any talk in this world about heaven is like that. We simply lack the capacity to get our minds around it, and the smart thing is not to insist that’s it’s like life here only more of something we like, but to acknowledge our ignorance. It leads to a humility that one rarely sees these days, even in the church.

And now we come to the reason why it is such a blessing to be a Christian. It’s all true---we can’t say anything positive about the next life because it’s in another realm, another dimension, another whatever. Except that there was one moment and one place where heaven pierced through into thisworld. It is as if, just for a brief moment, Dorothy’s Kansas had burst out in greens and pinks and blues and reds, and people said “What is that?” That’s pretty much what people said about Jesus---“What is that? Who is that? Where does he come from?” And they didn’t answer that question the same way, of course. Some thought he was of the devil. Some thought he was a lunatic. But some thought he was the Son of God.

And that is of course what we say, what Christians have always said. Jesus was the Son of God. Never mind all the discussion of substance and person and only-begotten and logos and all that. You’ll need to know that stuff, probably, to get through three years here at the seminary and to pass your G.O.E.s, so I suggest you study it sometime. But the main thing is to understand that heaven has burst through into this world in the person of Jesus Christ. You want to know what heaven is like? You want to know ow the saints spend eternity? Then get to know Jesus. Spend time with him. Clear away all the clutter that distracts you, maybe including even some worthy things if they distract you. Invite Jesus into your life, and expect to be transformed.

It is at this point that we begin to realize how wonderful it is to be a Christian.