Solve this riddle, if you can. According to the Bible should men or women make coffee? You will find the answer to this riddle in the book of He-brews. Get it? How about this one, what kind of man was Boaz before he got married? He was rather Ruth-less. Here’s another, how long did Cain hate his brother? As long as he was Abel. O.K. O.k. one more, how many of each animal did Moses take on the Ark? None. Moses didn’t take any animals on the Ark, Noah did. My wife’s uncle tripped me up with that one. I was still in the Seminary at the time and he thought it would be funny to test me with a riddle.
Truth be told, riddles irritate me. Unless of course I can figure them out and you can’t then I think they are hilarious. --Who was the smartest man in the Bible? (Solomon? Wrong!) Abraham. He knew a Lot. Get it? Lot, Abraham’s nephew. Abraham knew his nephew Lot. I must not be telling it right.-- We like to try to trip each other up with questions and riddles. We enjoy testing each other’s wit and wisdom. Most of the time we do it in a playful way but in our lesson for today the Sadducees are anything but playful as they present Jesus with a riddle.
Riddle me this riddle me that the Sadducees like a group of super-villains once taunted Jesus. They did not look villainous. Actually, they looked quite respectable. The Sadducees, often mentioned in the same breath as the Pharisees, were religious leaders of the Jewish people. They did not take part in the actual running of the temple; they didn’t offer sacrifices or hold services. Instead, like the Pharisees, they were “experts in the law”, that is they spent their time studying the scriptures and interpreting them for the people, often with a heavy legalistic emphasis.
Though they were often heavy handed with their own people, the Sadducees were rather chummy with the Roman governors and had a tendency to compromise their teachings to accommodate the popular opinion of the pagan. As a result, they dismissed the providence of God, that is His rule in our lives, and instead believed and taught that all that happens in this life is a result of the good or bad that you have done. The people were told, the reason you are a poor slob instead of a prominent Sadducee is because you are a bad person. Finally, once your miserable guilt filled life had run its course, the Sadducees had very little comfort to offer. They denied the existence of angels and demons and further, they rejected the hope of a resurrection from the dead. That is how they are described in our gospel lesson for today. In verse 27 we read, “27 Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question.”
The Sadducees are not fans of the prophet from the podunk town of Nazareth. His message of grace did not fit well with their legalistic teachings. His message of humility threatened their status. His message of salvation challenged their authority. The Sadducees hated Jesus and desperately wanted to get rid of Him, but they recognized how wildly popular Jesus was among the people, so they first sought to discredit Him. To that end, they present Jesus with what they believe to be an impossible riddle. 28 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and have children for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. 30 The second 31 and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. 32 Finally, the woman died too. 33 Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?” These Sadducees thought they were so cleaver. They thought they could make the teaching of the resurrection, as well as Jesus himself, look ridiculous by asking a ridiculous question about the resurrection which they thought could not be answered. People like this irritate me. I can almost see their smug faces and hear their sickening sweet voices filled with patronizing condescension. Jesus, “at the resurrection whose wife will she be?” ugggg.
The brute in me wants to slap the Sadducee out of them. But it is probably more productive for you and me to think about how we at times act just like them. As I was studying this text, I thought about that for a while. How do I act like a Sadducee? Do I, like them, deny the resurrection? My first instinct is to say, “absolutely not!” Fifty three seconds after I put an “Amen” on this sermon we are all going to confess that we believe in “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.”[1] But, If I am really honest with myself and if you are really honest with yourself, I am not so sure our belief in the resurrection is so absolute.
The Sadducees denied the resurrection and as a result, they focused their time and attention on the things of this age. They were very concerned about the things of the here and now; things like power, position, and pleasure. Sound familiar? The Sadducees were focused on many of the same things we are focused on. Don’t believe me? Compare the amount of time you spend planning for an event with the amount of time you spend praying about that event and then ask yourself, whose power are you depending on for a successful outcome? Or compare the amount of time you spend positioning yourself for your retirement with the amount of time you spend positioning yourself for THE RETIREMENT and ask yourself, witch position means more to you? Ask yourself, are you are as excited about the paradise of tomorrow as you are about the pleasures of today – do you get as excited about worship as you do about college football? With so much focus on the things of this age doesn’t it suggest that our belief in the resurrection is less than absolute? It sounds as though we could all stand to have the Sadducee slapped out of us.
I know how I would have answered the Sadducees ridiculous riddle, but thankfully we have a vastly superior response to this riddle provided for us by Jesus. “34 Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 But those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, 36 and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection.”” Jesus answers the Sadducees ridiculous riddle by point out there are two types of people. On the one hand you have the people of this age and on the other hand you have the people of the age to come. The people of this age, like the Sadducees, have made themselves unworthy for the age to come, and if Jesus’ rebuke in our gospel lesson for today doesn’t slap the Sadducee out of us, we too will be unworthy. But if by the working of the Holy Spirit we confess our subtle yet sinful denial of the resurrection and instead focus our time and attention on the matters of the age to come then we will be “considered worthy” of the age to come. I like that phrase, “considered worthy”. I like it because in the Greek it is the passive voice; it is something that is done to me. This verse assures us that our worth does not come from us or from the things that we do. Rather, our worth comes from outside of us and the things that Jesus has done on our behalf. Jesus makes us worthy participants in the age to come.
And the age to come is different than this age. The people of this age hold to and are bound by the things of this age. They marry. They die. With their ridiculous riddle the Sadducees were attempting to restrict the freedoms of heaven with the limitations of earth. But Jesus says in heaven people are not bound by such things. In heaven people will “neither marry nor be given in marriage”. The fictitious woman in the Sadducees’ riddle won’t be bound in marriage to any of the seven men because in heaven there is no marriage.
Now, this used to bother me. I know I am going to be accused of cooking with a crockpot for saying this, but as it turns out, I like my wife, I think she is rather swell, I enjoy spending time with her. I know I promised I would love her till death do us part but honestly, I was kind of thinking I would love her even longer than that. The notion that in heaven I will no longer be married to my wife is an unpleasant one. At least it was until I realized that this is not a passage about what we have to give up in heaven. Rather, this is a passage about what we have to gain in heaven. In heaven it is not that we will love our spouse less, rather, in heaven we will love everyone else more. Our relationships with all the saints will be angelic in nature that is our relationships with each other will be pure, wholesome, and unending. In heaven the relationship between husband and wife will not be downgraded. In heaven all our other relationships will be upgraded.
In heaven we will be like the angels, but we will not become angels. Better than that, in heaven, we will be children; children of God. In heaven, God our Father will wipe every tear from our eyes, He will shield us from pain and suffering, He will provide us all that we need. In heaven, God our Father will fill us with joy in His presence and give us eternal pleasure from His right hand.
The Sadducees were trying to trap Jesus with a riddle about relationships. In so doing they overlooked the most important of all relationships. They overlooked their relationship with God and made themselves unworthy of the resurrection. Unlike the Sadducees, our relationship with God must be our top priority. It is our relationship with God that makes us able to face death; either the death of someone we love, or our own death. By the grace of God death isn’t much of a riddle for people like you and me. It might have been a riddle for the Sadducees, but it is not for the children of the resurrection. Amen
[1] Apostle’s Creed