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Wallingford Presbyterian Church February 18, 2007 |
Rev. Ken Sunoo |
This is the final sermon in a series I’ve been preaching on and off on the Gospel of Mark. I started this series last year on Easter with the resurrection passage from Mark. Today, we’ll end this series with another story related to resurrection.
The structure of Mark 11-12 is absolutely fascinating – I love the way Tom Long describes it. The way it’s set up, the Jewish authorities are interrogating Jesus, trying to trap him in his own words. They ask him three of the toughest, nastiest theological questions they can possibly think of, each one nastier than the one before. In a sense, this is Jesus’ ordination exam.
The first question is something of a fastball – by what authority do you do these things? He knocks it over the fence. The second question is a bit of a sneaky slider, “Great teacher, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?” He puts that one in the bleachers as well. So they go to the bullpen and call for the Sadducees, who are definitely throwing smoke. Listen… – [READ TEXT]
Matthew ends this story by saying that the crowd was astounded at Jesus’ teaching, while Luke says that the scribes no longer dared to ask him another question.
Built into every question are the assumptions of the questioner. The question, “Where were you last night at 9:00 pm?” means different things when a parent asks a child, or when a friend asks a friend, or when a police officer asks a suspect. “Whenever anyone asks a question, the assumptions, the prejudices, the biases, the world of the one asking the question is built into the question. You can’t get away from it.” (Tom Long, Princeton Seminary Chapel service, 12/15/92)
Tom Long tells a story of a kid who was starting a new Kindergarten class at a new school – the little boy looked around at the artwork on the wall and screamed, “Who painted all these ugly pictures?” His mother was humiliated and shushed him up, “Don’t say that, these are beautiful pictures.”
But the teacher understood the assumption in the question: a frightened child moving into a strange environment, wondering if he would be able to measure up, so she knelt down beside the child and said, “In here, you don’t have to paint pretty pictures. You can even paint angry pictures.” Built into the question is the assumptive world of the questioner.
You can see that very clearly in the text that was just read from the Gospel of Mark. Some Sadducees, in the hope of discrediting Jesus, pose a difficult theological question. Before we get to the question, we need to understand who the Sadducees were.
The Sadducees were of the priestly class, many of them aristocratic and wealthy. They considered as authentic Scripture only the first five books of the Old Testament, the books of Moses (the Pentateuch). They did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. The Pharisees, on the other hand, not only included the prophets and the writing in their Scripture but also believed in the authority of the oral tradition from Moses. In that oral tradition and the other writings of Scripture was the basis for belief in the resurrection. (Fred Craddock, Interpretation, 238) So it’s not surprising that the Sadducees frame their question to Jesus in terms of Moses’ teaching.
The question is this: Suppose there was a woman who married a man who had six brothers. Now, the man died before they had any children, and as you know, the law of Moses requires that one of the other brothers should take her as his wife so the family line will continue, and brother #1 did that. But unfortunately, he also died before they had any children, so brother #2 took his place, and unfortunately he died, and so on and so on… they all died, then she died. “One bride, seven brothers, eight funerals, and no children.” (Long) Now whose wife will she be in the resurrection?
So there you have it. Well, it’s a multiple choice question, really, and all of the options the Sadducees think Jesus has are poor. Answer “A” was: well, in the age to come she’ll be married to one of them – she’ll be the first brother’s wife, or the last brother’s wife, or the fourth brother’s wife; pick one. This is a bad choice because each brother was equally her husband. Why, in the resurrection, would one brother have more of a claim than any of the others?
This first choice is indefensible, it’s absurd, but it’s no better than answer “B” which states that in the resurrection, she will be the wife of all seven brothers. Lamar Williamson, Jr. notes that this evokes the ludicrous image of an overcrowded bedroom in the afterlife.” (Williamson, Interpretation, 223) This answer is “too confusing, conflictual, and finally absurd to deserve serious consideration.” (Long)
That tilts the whole thing toward answer “C,” which is where the Sadducees wanted to go in the first place: in the age to come, since she can’t be married to one of them or all of them, then, there is no resurrection.
A, B, or C? Jesus chooses…D. He doesn’t answer the question; instead he challenges their basic assumptions. He will not be trapped by their limited choices. What are the assumptions in the question?
Well, to begin with, there is the assumption that if there is an age to come, this woman is going to be somebody’s property in it. Rachel Wahlberg in one of her books imagines that if this hypothetical woman was real and she overheard this interrogation, she would hear the Sadducees say, “She was the property of seven men, now which one of them will own her in the age to come?” (as referenced by Tom Long, Matthew, 253)
And Jesus says, “In the age to come, she belongs to no one but God. She will be like the angels, the very child of God.” He overturns their assumptions.
Another assumption that’s overturned is that “the afterlife, were there to be one, would be simply an extension of the present tense, that God’s future would simply be an eternal version of the status quo.” (Long. 253) In this age, people belong to people, so they will in the age to come. In this age, people marry, so they will in the age to come. Jesus challenges and overturns this assumption.
In this age, people marry, but not in the age to come. In this age, people die, but in the age to come death and pain will be no more. In this age, this woman belongs in an oppressive system, but in the age to come justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream. Tom Long says that “the resurrection power of God does more than preserve; it transforms.” (Long, 253)
Even in our own age, too many women are still treated as property, taken in and cast out by man after man, but in the age to come, there’ll be none of that. Even in our own age, we have war and rumors of war, but in the age to come, the wolf will lie down with the lamb. Even in our own age, men, women, and children all over the world go to bed with an empty stomach, but in the age to come, everyone will feast in the Kingdom of God. In this age…oh, but in the age to come…something new will overturn our assumptions, and we will be transformed. Amen.