Proper 32, Year C

This week on my day off I went to see the Titanic exhibit in Toronto with some friends.  As we were looking at the grand staircase, one of my friends commented that she had really liked the movie about the Titanic with Kate Winslett and Leonardo DiCaprio, but there was one thing about the movie that still bothered her.  We know from the beginning of the movie that after Jack’s death, Rose has gone on with her life, fallen in love again, married, and raised a family with her husband.  This is what Jack had urged her to do as he was dying.  Rose lives a full live to the age of 100, and then, and in the final scene of the movie, as she is sleeping, she dies, and she enters the ship in all its original splendor, and, in her youthful body with all her beauty, she ascends the grand staircase where she is reunited with Jack in a romantic kiss, as all the passengers applaud, and we hear the Celine Dion song “My heart will go on and on”.  My friend said, “The part that bothers me, is while she’s kissing Jack, what about her husband?”

I, of course, said, “Well, as a matter of fact, that’s the question that comes up in the gospel passage we’re going to read on Sunday, when the Sadducees bring up a woman who’d been married seven times, and the Sadducees ask Jesus, “In the resurrection, whose wife will she be?”  And Jesus says, “The resurrection isn’t like that.  In this age on earth people marry and are given in marriage, but in the resurrection they don’t need marriages.  Everyone in the resurrection is like angels.  There’s no death there, and everyone is alive to God.”  

The difficulty we run into is that we tend to think of heaven as an existence that’s just like earth, but maybe without the traffic jams.  There are two reasons for this, one logical and one emotional.  The logical reason is that earthly existence is what we know, and what heavenly existence is like we don’t know, so when our mind tries to picture heaven or talk about heaven or understand heaven, our mind doesn’t have anything other than pictures of earthly life and words about earthly life and concepts of earthly life that it can use.  It’s the only vocabulary we’ve got.  Jesus, the apostle Paul, and others in our scriptures use metaphors drawn from earthly life to talk about heaven too.  They say that it’s like joy in community when they use the metaphor of a wedding banquet.  They say it’s like being where you most truly belong when they use the metaphor of being at home.  They say it’s like your heart soaring with beauty when they use the metaphor of music and singing.  Each metaphor helps give us a different sense of heaven, and none of them are meant to be taken literally.  Literal language about physical objects is useful for earthy things, but heavenly things are way beyond ordinary physical objects and the words we use for them.

In addition to the logical reason we have difficulty thinking of heaven, there is also the emotional difficulty, which is that we really like earthly existence.  It is what we are used to, and what we are comfortable with.  It provides happiness, pleasures, adventures, and caring relationships.  The idea of leaving behind those things for an existence that is new and unknown can feel really scary, or it can feel like an overwhelming loss.  

Jesus understands our difficulty with this.  And when Jesus teaches us in today’s gospel, and frequently in his ministry, his goal is not so much to give us additional information.  These are two key points here.  First, what Jesus does is to teach us to have an open mind that what we already understand is only a tiny fraction of what exists in earth and heaven.  Second, what Jesus does is to teach us to have an open heart, that the way we already love is only a tiny fraction of the love that exists in earth and heaven.  To have a mind open to what’s beyond what we already know is a form of faith.  To have a heart open to what’s beyond the way we already love is a form of faith.  

I particularly appreciate the way the Bible uses the metaphor of seeds.  When we’re on earth, we’re like a little brown, dry seed.  Then when that seed is buried in the ground, it goes through a process that transforms it into something that looks totally different from a seed, much more magnificent, a complete transformation, and also what that seed was always meant to become.  In the resurrection, we emerge from the little shell of the seed and leave it behind, and we are transformed into something much more magnificent as our true nature blossoms and comes to fruition.  Those flourishing plants that are basking in the sunshine, waving in the breeze, wafting their perfumes or bursting with peaches, do not wish they could go back to being a little brown, dry seed again.  They are thriving way too gloriously for that. 

And how could they explain all that to a frightened little seed who hadn’t experienced it?  That the loss of the seed body is the gain of something so different and so, so, so much fuller?  What if the seed refused to consider that anything other than its seed body would be possible, and that the whole idea of something called a root or a sprout or a flower or a fruit was just crazy?  The seed would have no hope.

That’s the mentality of the Sadducees.  A bit of background about the Sadducees.  After the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, were written down and compiled, an oral tradition developed with commentary and interpretations of those scriptures.  The Pharisees accepted the authority of the oral tradition as extensions and proper interpretations of the Law.  The Sadducees did not.  The Sadducees accepted only the written tradition as authoritative.  The doctrine of a life to come, based on belief in a physical resurrection, arose after the Torah was compiled, and is not reflected in it.  As a result, the Sadducees did not believe in it.  If you want a memory device, you can remember that the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, so they were sad, you see.  There is a law in Deuteronomy 25:5 about what’s called levirate marriage, a term that comes from the word for brother-in-law.  The goal was to make sure a man’s DNA was carried into the next generation.  So if a man died before begetting a child, his brother had to marry his widow, whether either or them wanted to marry each other or not, so that the brother would try to beget a child with the widow.  As you can imagine, people wanted to choose their own spouses rather than having to marry their in-laws, and this practice was in abeyance by the time of Jesus.  But the Sadducees want to trap Jesus, so they offer a hypothetical situation in which it happens seven times.  And they ask, “In the resurrection, whose wife will she be?”  

Jesus rejects the whole premise of the question, which is based on dying and begetting, marrying and giving in marriage, and none of those things apply in the resurrection.  There is no need there to worry about who is carrying on your DNA after you die or about who is obligated to marry who.  In the resurrection, we are like the angels.  We love without limits.  In the resurrection we love our spouse completely and limitlessly, and we love every other soul in heaven completely and limitlessly, and we love every soul on earth completely and limitlessly, and we love God completely and limitlessly.  A marriage contract would be useless and meaningless there.  In heaven, we will not miss our old earthly marriage contracts, we will be too caught up in infinite bliss and infinite love.  

If Rose were in the resurrection, she would love Jack limitlessly, and she would love her husband limitlessly, and she would love each grasshopper in heaven limitlessly, and she would love God limitlessly.  That’s too much to fit into the final scene of a movie.  But it’s not too much for God.  It is a gift from God so lavish that it’s beyond our comprehension.  But Jesus tells us about this incomprehensibly lavish gift because it shows us how magnificent our God is, and how generous.  Jesus also tells us about it to give us a sense of hope, that the problems of the past and the present are not all there is, that God has something so, so much better to give us.  If we keep trying to fit the infinite and the eternal and the limitless into the old categories we’re used to on earth, they won’t fit.  If we want the plant to look just like the little brown seed we were accustomed to, we’ll be resentful that it doesn’t. The plant won’t fit back into the seed anymore.  The good news is, we don’t have to be stuck in the past, or stuck in the present.  The future God grants us will blow our minds.  And our hearts.  

We won’t really know or experience heaven until we arrive there.  However, we can start today in opening our minds, with faith, and hope, and love, to a future of infinite and eternal love, as a gift from a God whose love for us is already infinite and eternal.  We can start today in opening our hearts, with faith, and hope, and love, to a future of infinite and eternal love, as a gift from a God whose love for us is already infinite and eternal.