Freeing the Sadducees - 32nd Sunday in OT (C)

Throughout the year, we have heard many times when Pharisees have approached Jesus and asked questions. Today, we see a Sadducee approach. For context, Pharisees and Sadducees were rivals. Pharisees concerned themselves with the Law of Moses (although they did not care enough about the Law to follow it themselves). While the Sadducees were concerned with political law: they were oftentimes friends of the Romans and often held political power. Yet, despite the animosity that the Pharisees and Sadducees had towards one another, today they act as friends: they are united in their attempt to end Jesus' ministry by forwarding a very peculiar question.

The question is about a woman who is widowed seven times here on earth. (Poor thing!) The Sadducees ask who she will be married to in heaven. This question-- and we do not know whether it is asked cynically or genuinely-- was meant as a way to stump Jesus. The Sadducees denied the possibility of eternal life through the resurrection and thus pose a question to score a political point, not to gain wisdom per se but to show that the resurrection and the Mosaic Law, which upheld the marrying off of a widow seven-times over, were absurd. The Pharisees, in the background at this point, quietly reveal their hypocritical disregard for the Mosaic Law by assenting to this line of questioning. Both the Sadducees and Pharisees await an answer.

Before we arrive at Jesus' response, it is important to put this moment in its proper context. This is happening during Holy Week. Jesus has arrived on a donkey and to much acclaim ("even the stones would cry out!") through the city gates of Jerusalem. Shortly after that moment, he purifies the Temple by turning over the money changers tables and driving them out with whips. After this, His daily routine was to teach in the Temple courtyards (where rabbis would debate and draw disciples to themselves) and then, in the evening, to depart from the city, descend the valley, and sleep on the slope of Mount Olives (which is where both the Agony in the Garden and the Ascension will take place). In the morning, Jesus would rise and ascend the valley into Jerusalem again and walk up the Temple Mount to enter the courtyards there to again teach, disciple, and answer questions. 

That is all to say, at this point, Jesus has been doing what He did when He was twelve: teaching in the Temple. But now, His time of public ministry in the Temple is about to come to an end. As the Sadducees ask their question about heaven, Jesus is about to go to His death. This is one of the last questions Jesus will publicly answer.

So, what does Jesus say? His answer is twofold: 

First He says, "The children of this age marry and remarry, but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age... neither marry nor are given in marriage." 

Now, you and I take it for granted that this is true. But for the skeptic, it would be fitting to ask in reply to Jesus, "Hey, how do you know that?" ... How does Jesus know what it is like in heaven and whether or not there is marriage in the celestial realm?

Pontius Pilate would ask this directly: "Where are you from?"

Jesus knows because He is from heaven. That is His home. And heaven is His home because He is God.

Perceiving the Sadducees skepticism, Jesus gives the second part of His twofold answer. He says, "That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush..." That is to say, "If you don't believe that I am from there, believe what your own scriptures say about the resurrection. Don't you believe those anymore?" This point should have also cut the background Pharisees to the heart.

It is important to note here that Jesus isn't condemning them. He is treating the question with sincerity, straightforwardness, with clarity, and with charity. He wants to free the Sadducees. ... free them? Free them from what? ... 

Remember that the Sadducees were twisted up with the Romans and the political powers. They were absorbed by it -- in much the same way as the Pharisees were absorbed by religious power. The problem is, when they were absorbed in such powers, they lost sight of greater realities. The Pharisees lost sight of true love of God and love of neighbor. The Sadducees lost sight of heaven.

It's amazing to think that anyone could lose sight of heaven, but it happens all the time.

I'll give two brief instances.

First, I don't think I need to mention the current political climate. But I simply ask this: if our entire family cannot gather around the dinner table on Thanksgiving, then how are we all going to be friends in heaven? Didn't Jesus eat with sinners and didn't He tell us that our eternal salvation is dependent on whether we forgive others? If we do not forgive, we are -- using Jesus' words here, not "deemed worthy to attain to the coming age" (ie, heaven). Repent and forgive, dear friends. To repent and forgive is to remember and reclaim the vision of heaven!

Second, there is a current in our culture that tries to define a person simply in terms of their sexuality. But in heaven there is no giving or receiving in marriage. So, what then? How are we to be defined then -- especially if the one thing, whether a person was L or G or H or whatever-- how are we to be defined then when it seemed the one thing that defined us here below has disappeared? And I mean not to simply focus on our brothers and sisters that struggle with same-sex attraction. I also say this to those who are married and who wonder how it will happen that they can still love each other without the marital embrace. ...  We all become celibate in the end, dear friends!

You see, the pleasures and obligations of this earthly life are transformed by the reality of heaven. Even the most holy Sacrament of Marriage is transformed. 

Thus, in this earthly life, there are some who do not marry precisely as a radical choice so as to let the heavenly life enter into their hearts and into the earthly world right now. Some will be unable to marry in this earthly age (see Matthew 19). And those who are married are called to see that, in the end, who is the widow married to? -- When the Sadducees ask: this woman married seven brothers and they all died -- in the resurrection, to whom will she be married?

"Me."

That is Jesus' point. The Marriage par excellence, the Consummation of All Marriages is found in the Church, the Bride, united to The Bridegroom, Jesus Christ. All marriages find their source and their fulfillment in Jesus Christ. And you know this too in that you know you cannot be everything for your spouse. Only God can be everything.

This is why people give their marriages, their sexuality, and even their lives away for God. The seven brothers in the first reading; the martyrs of the Church; the person who bears the Cross and fights against temptation; the older man who realizes "to everything there is a season" and that certain seasons in marriage pass -- they all are freed because the heavenly realm has transformed their earthly existence.

It is on that note that Jesus finishes His answer -- and descends into the valley one final time and goes to Mt Olives. Where He will be arrested. And then killed.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.