Questions about Marriage and the Resurrection—Lectionary Reflection for Pentecost 22C (Luke 20)

Luke 20:27-38 New Revised Standard Version UpdatedEdition

²⁷ Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him ²⁸ and asked him a question: “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. ²⁹ Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman and died childless; ³⁰ then the second ³¹   and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. ³² Finally the woman also died. ³³ In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”

³⁴ Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, ³⁵ 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. ³⁶ Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. ³⁷ And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. ³⁸ Now he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.”

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                In certain spheres of Christianity, you will hear talk of “biblical marriage,” which often ends up being nothing more than 1950s-style family makeup. You have mom and dad, along with two kids (preferably a boy and a girl). You will have to look hard to find that model in the Bible because there isn’t such a thing as “biblical marriage.” There are several marriage formats present in the Bible, including polygamy, none of which most Christians practice today. Remember all those marriages that Solomon and his father entered into? Then there’s that thing called levirate marriage. I wrote a Bible study guide titled Marriage in Interesting Times that explores some of those “interesting” passages, including the one we have before us. 

                The practice of levirate marriage comes up in Luke 20 because a group of Sadducees questioned Jesus about the resurrection, pointing out the problems created for proponents of resurrection theology by the practice of levirate marriage. Jesus’ opponents posed what they thought was a damning question when it came to the resurrection. Consider for a moment the possibility that due to a biblical statute, which stipulated that if a man died without leaving a child as his heir, the next brother in line was to marry his widow to produce an heir for him. What if this woman were required to marry seven brothers, none of whom produced a child, in the resurrection, whose wife would she be?  We’ll get to the practice of levirate marriage in a moment, but the point of the question was the implication that the practice called into question the doctrine of the resurrection. Now, Jesus had a response to their test that defended the resurrection and addressed the question of whether there is marriage and family in heaven.  

                Before we go too much further, I need to set the context. At this point in Luke’s story, Jesus has entered Jerusalem. He has continued teaching, and he parries attacks from various opponents, including both the Pharisees and the Sadducees. In this case, it’s the Sadducees, a conservative party that was comprised mainly of the aristocratic elements of Jewish society, and whose priestly members controlled the Temple. They were known for limiting their Scriptures to the Torah, which, in their view, did not allow for any form of resurrection. On the subject of the resurrection, Jesus was in line with the Pharisees. This group of Sadducees may have also been motivated to embarrass Jesus because he had caused a ruckus in their Temple (Luke 19:45-46).  

                When it comes to the practice of Levirate marriage, the practice is stipulated in Deuteronomy 25:

⁵“When brothers reside together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage and performing the duty of a husband’s brother to her, ⁶ and the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. (Deut. 25:5-6).

We see this practice embodied in the story of Tamar and Judah in Genesis 38, as well as the story of Ruth and Boaz (Ruth 4:10). The key point here is that last phrase in verse 6, “so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.” Immortality, you might say, is defined in terms of line of descent. Of course, there was also the practical concern of keeping the family property within the family. Even today, many men want a male heir to carry on the family name into the next generation, perhaps for the same reasons. The practice also exhibits the patriarchal nature of the ancient world, in which the wife was the property of the husband.

                Now, the point of the question posed to Jesus by the Sadducees wasn’t the legitimacy of the practice of levirate marriage. It simply served as a case study for the larger question of whether Jewish tradition allowed for the possibility of the resurrection, something they rejected.  So, by posing their question regarding the relationship of levirate marriage to the resurrection, they hoped they could demonstrate that the doctrine was rather silly. While they hoped this would be an unanswerable question, Jesus found a way to respond by simply declaring that when it came to the resurrection, marriage and family ceased to exist. So, their case study lacked merit because as to whom a woman belonged to in the afterlife was moot because marriage did not exist in the afterlife, because we will be like the angels. I know that this might disappoint some Christians who look forward to reconnecting in the next life, but Jesus doesn’t seem too concerned about such things.

                Because we often hear talk of biblical or Christian family values, it is worth noting that Jesus did not seem to believe that marriage and family had eternal value. As far as we know, he never married or had children. Family is rarely mentioned in the Gospels, and in one episode in the Gospel of Mark, when his mother and siblings came to get him because they thought he might be demon possessed, he rejected their intervention, telling the crowd after his family called out for him:  “And he replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ ³⁴ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! ³⁵ Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mark 3:31-35). When it comes to the implications of this passage for marriage, I take them up in my book Marriage in Interesting Times (Energion, 2016) in the closing chapter titled “Beyond Marriage and Family.”

                The heart of the question here wasn’t marriage but the resurrection. While most questions today about resurrection involve intellectual issues, that was not true of the first century. For modern people, the problem of resurrection involves our inability to prove its existence scientifically. However, many people still embrace the idea of the afterlife, whether they embrace the idea of bodily resurrection or some other form of continuation of life after death. Emotionally, we want to believe that in the afterlife, we will be reunited with our family members. Of course, Jesus sets that aside as we have seen.

               So, unlike the Sadducees, Jesus, like the Pharisees, embraced the idea of resurrection. In his debate with the Sadducees, he sought to ground his argument in the portion of the Hebrew Bible they embraced, the Torah. They had turned to Deuteronomy 25 to prove their point. Jesus responded by pointing to the story of the burning bush in Exodus 3. In Exodus 3:6, God reveals God’s self as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In Jesus’ view, this word from God meant that the three Patriarchs still lived. That is, if Yahweh is (not was) the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then they had experienced the resurrection. If this is true, then God is the God of the living and not of the dead. When Jesus gave this answer to the question posed by the Sadducees, the scribes in the audience acknowledged that he had spoken well, and no one dared to ask him a question.

                This passage offers readers an opportunity to discuss how Christians might think about marriage and family. Jesus doesn’t seem to put a high valuation on either one, though that doesn’t mean we should set them aside. It also offers us an opportunity to think more fully about the resurrection. We might find Jesus’ turn to Exodus 3 less than definitive, but it seems to have quieted the critics for a moment. When it comes to the nature of the resurrection, we might want to turn to Paul’s writings for more information. Passages such as 1 Corinthians 15 go into depth on the centrality of the resurrection to the Christian message. In Paul’s view, because of the resurrection, death has been defeated and has lost its sting. This is because Jesus conquered death in his resurrection (1Cor. 15:54-55). 

On matters of the resurrection and the possibility of life after death, see my book co-authored with Ronald Allen titled Second Thoughts about the Second Coming: Understanding the End Times, Our Future, and Christian Hope (WJK Press, 2023). Section 5 covers the variety of Christian perspectives.