The Saducees had a question for Jesus. They were probably curious and apprehensive about this teacher and healer from the countryside who had just arrived in Jerusalem for the Passover. He had already caused a stir. The day before, he had marched into the temple and overturned the tables of the moneychangers, calling it a den of robbers. He had gotten the better of the Pharisees in a few arguments and had made no secret of his disdain for them and the chief priests. He also had a following. Children in the temple called out to him, "Hosanna to the Son of David." A large crowd had laid their cloaks on the ground when he entered the city on a donkey. What kind of stuff was he made of, they must have wondered. What did he know, what did he teach? What did he believe about those points of theology that Pharisees, Saducees, and Priests argued about—passionately—with each other and with the crowds?
So they had a question for Jesus. A hard question. We might even call it a trick question. It was a question about the resurrection. The Saducees didn't believe in the resurrection. They thought Pharisees and other folks who believed God would raise the dead at the end of time were wrong. There was nothing about the resurrection in the Torah, the book of Moses. It's true the prophet Daniel talked about it, but Saducees didn't consider the prophets Scripture. Moreover, the resurrection didn't make sense. Think about it, and take marriage as an example. In a law given by Moses, it said that if a man died, leaving his widow childless, his brother was to marry her. This kept property in the family, guaranteed care for the widow, and allowed the dead man's name to be continued through children. In the case of such marriages, the Saducees asked, what happens in the resurrection? Imagine a woman for whom this happens not once but seven times. Whose wife would she? She couldn't be married to more than one man at a time. A resurrection with all her husbands alive again would be an insurmountable problem. An impossible situation God would never create for life everlasting. Proof, surely, that the idea of the resurrection was ridiculous. So Jesus, they asked, what about that?
Well, Jesus said, you are wrong, because you understand neither scripture nor the power of God. In the resurrection, no one gets married. They neither marry nor are given in marriage. They are like angels in heaven—who don't get married, either. Matthew tells us this answer silenced the Saducees. (Matthew always shows Jesus winning the argument). It also astounded the crowd. Life without marriage? Even resurrected life?
That would have been mind-boggling. Although there were plenty of unmarried people in the ancient world—slaves, prostitutes and Jesus being among them—marriage was central to everyone's life. There were no swinging bachelors or single professionals. Marriage organized households and ordered society. It told you who you were and where you belonged. It allowed property to be passed down in families. It provided for the raising of children and the farming of land. In Jewish society it was decreed by God, arranged by families, and shaped by the law of Moses. Marriage was and always would be. Life without it, even resurrected life, was unimaginable.
But Jesus said, "imagine it." Life in the resurrection will be so different it won't even include marriage. We may wish that Jesus described that life in more detail, but he simply turns around the example of marriage that he was given. Even marriage, says Jesus, that institution so important, so central to being human, was not eternal. Resurrected life was of a totally different order. But that attachment to the idea of marriage, the necessity of it and the assumption of it, was one of the things that kept the Saducees from believing in the possibility of resurrected life. It kept them from understanding scripture and the power of God.
It's 2,000 years later. It's the United States, New York City, Gay Pride Sunday. In so many ways we look at marriage differently than the ancient Jews or Greeks or Romans. The strangest thing to the ancient mind would be our insistence that marriage is for people who love each other. Nearly everyone, from the most conservative Federal Marriage Amendment advocates to gay couples getting married in San Francisco, claims that people should marry for love. Although there have always been married people who love each other, this romantic ideal of marriage is a new one. We also have a more egalitarian view. The Southern Baptists have ruled that wives should submit to their husbands, but they stop short of saying her property should become his, or that she becomes his property, which would make it a truly traditional marriage. Religious leaders of various stripes still insist that procreation is the main purpose of marriage, but few would deny marriage to those who don't want, or can't have, children. Single parents and their children face huge challenges, but they're not stigmatized as they were in the past. The unmarried life is a more viable one. Although marriage to a man is still the surest ticket out of poverty, legal and economic independence for women is possible. Most people spend a good part of their lives as single adults or live together without being married. Finally, support for the right of gay men and lesbians to marry is growing. Marriage, and our understanding of marriage, has changed.
Yet, like those folks of long ago, marriage is still central to each of our lives, married or not. It still tells us, to a remarkable degree, who we are and where we belong. We all fill out forms asking about our marital status. The state regulates it. It confers legal benefits and responsibilities. It still orders society and distributes wealth. In the United States about 2.3 million people marry each year, collectively spending about 75 billion dollars on the wedding alone. But beyond facts, figures and legal issues, marriage seems to belong to the natural order of things. Until you're 40 or so, or they give up or you come out, relatives always want to know when you're going to get married. It's considered the gateway to adulthood and confers the seal of normality. The Presbyterian Church calls it a gift from God. For some people, it's an ideal to long for; for others, a wonderful blessing and the center of their life; for still others, a trap. For some, it's a right and privilege that's being withheld; for others, marriage—or the end of a marriage, or not being married—is a source of shame. But whatever our marital status or attitude, our passion about it runs deep.
How deep can become clear when people feel that marriage is threatened. Take gay marriage. It could be argued that gay marriage would not dramatically change life in this country. Men and women would still marry each other. It wouldn't involve a major re-distribution of wealth, even if it helped gay couples financially. It wouldn't raise taxes or threaten the environment or instigate terrorism. Yet it's one of the fiercest political debates in the country and in the church. From some of the rhetoric, you'd think gay marriage was a greater threat to civilization and family life than nuclear warheads or global warming or alcohol and drug use. Many people fear that gay marriage will shake their world at its foundations, that once gays are allowed to marry, "anything goes." On the other side, some supporters of gay marriage hope it will shake the world at its foundations, that it will lead to a new social order of justice and liberation. Others hope it will gain them acceptance, that gay people will finally be granted the status and respect that other married people have. People fear or hope for it as a revolutionary action. And it would be, considering the hold marriage has on our lives and in our psyches.
Now I'm a supporter of gay marriage and think it's a fight worth fighting. But do we—on all sides of this issue—think too much of marriage? Are we like those Saducees, whose allegiance to marriage kept them from understanding scripture and the power of God? Certainly our idealization of marriage can keep us from understanding scripture. The Bible has many rich and wonderful stories of marriage and lots of contradictory advice. But we find few descriptions or prescriptions for marriages most people think of as "biblical," marriages like the Cleavers or even the Bradys. Our attachment to marriage can also keep us from understanding the power of God, the power of God working in all kinds of relationships, from gay partners to friendships and families of all kinds. And doesn't this idealization—even idolatry—of marriage put a terrible burden on married people? Isn't it hard enough just to stay together, without having to uphold western civilization or prove you're a grown-up? We put a lot of weight on an institution that's not eternal. An institution, as David Kelso reminded us in that wonderful song, that is very human, full of imperfections and insecurities from the get go. Marriage can be a wonderful support for people who love each other, for their children, and for the people around them. Jesus even chose a wedding as the site of his first sign in the gospel of John—and it wasn't a healing miracle, it was a miracle that prolonged the reception. But even heavenly marriages aren't made in heaven, they're made on earth. And we can't let these earthly marriages get in the way of our love for God or for each other.
One final thought on the woman and those seven brothers. What if she really loved her first husband? In fact, what if she married into an exceptional family and loved all seven of her husbands? Is Jesus saying that won't matter in the resurrection, that her relationship with them ended when death parted them?
Marriage may not be part of life everlasting, but the love of Christ that brings us together in the communion of saints, is. We can hope and believe in reunion with people we love after death, inside and outside of marriage, inside and outside the church. We don't know what that reunion will look like. We shouldn't expect it to involve sharing the mortgage or cooking for the kids or going out to dinner like it did on earth. But it will happen. Marriage may not be eternal, but love is, and for that difference we can be grateful.