Luke 20:27-38

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him 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. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”

Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, 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. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 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. Now he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.”

Sermon Text

There are few things I cherish more in life than my marriage. My wife and I fell in love almost accidentally. We did not know that we were crazy about each other, at least not to the degree we were, until suddenly we could not deny it. We were engaged almost exactly a year after we started dating and married just a few months after that. We had been friends for years ahead of that time, so we were not strangers by any means, but when we fell, we both fell hard and quickly.

Our marriage is not perfect, like any relationship we have our problems. I’m grumpy and stubborn, she’s forgetful and stubborn, but we love each other and love our kid enough that we can work through anything that comes our way. Even if it means one of us has to sit the other down periodically and work through the mess that we have made. We aspire to really live our life so that we can be “flesh of flesh,” and “bone of bone,” one body in two persons, as much as possible. Yet, one day we will be parted by death, and this magnificent thing we call marriage will end.

Jesus gives many teachings that you do not usually hear ministers preach on, sometimes because they are complicated and sometimes because they’re unpleasant. Here, we have the latter. For many of us, the idea that marriage is something only for now, something that has a definite endpoint on this side of eternity, can be depressing. We spend our lives with our partners, we devote so much of who we are to them, growing alongside and into who they are. How can it be said that someday that amazing bond… is just severed?

I am not going to pretend to have a full answer, but I nonetheless want to try and give us some ideas to work with as we understand the way that our life continues from one end of eternity to the next. If we fall in love, if we devote ourselves to our family, and then we die… Does that connection cease to exist? I think the obvious answer here has to be no.

The people we love and who we live alongside shape our personality in ways that cannot be denied or diminished. This goes beyond who we choose to spend our life with, it bleeds into every relationship we have. I look like and share a (terrible,) sense of humor with my father. I talk and gesticulate like my mother. My personality grew up alongside my best friends Rose and Tara. My theology was shaped by dozens of teachers and colleagues, and the great enigmatic friend/foil in my life whom I call, “Tater.” We are the culmination of not only the entirety of our own life, but the life we live alongside other people.

When we die, if those relationships were suddenly voided, then we would cease to be who we are. “John,” cannot exist outside of the aspects of who I am that have been formed specifically because of the people in my life I have loved and who have loved me. I am not “me,” in isolation, I am only “me,” because of what has brought me here to the present moment. If in death, in the presence of God, I was suddenly turned into some kind of blank slate, then God has not saved “John,” God has only saved something vaguely “John,”-shaped.

When we enter into eternity, having died physically, we are not reset. There is no system of cosmic return that requires us to be broken into our constituent parts, we keep all the bits of us that we lived with. The difference which death makes, through God’s salvation, is that the bits of us that are rooted in sin are removed. The loves we feel, therefore, are transformed not such that they cease to exist, but so that they are now in their “perfect,” state. In the world to come, we are told that there is no marriage, and that those who are married in life will not be married in the resurrection – but that does not make their marriage unimportant, or erase its significance.

I am who I am in large part because of who my wife is. Likewise, knowing me has changed a great deal about her… Some things for the better even! When the day comes that we enter into eternity, we will not shed that reality of ourselves. Yes, we are told that we will no longer be “married,” and that our relationship will not continue on in the way it presently does. However, that does not mean that we will mean nothing to each other. When the present age ends, we will be perfected fully, and our love will likewise become perfect. We will have the capability to universally and fully love all people, with the same love that Christ felt. It will be different, it will be lived out differently, but it will be a definite improvement nonetheless.

When people ask me, “Pastor, do we get to see our family in Heaven?” I always tell them yes. Yes, you will see them, and yes, they will still be special to you. Yet, somehow, your definition of “family,” will be much larger. As you meet Christians from every era of history and every race and nation and creed, you will run into folks you never knew, and that you still love entirely. Whether our loved ones form a welcome party into glory, or we stumble upon them as we wander through perfection, as we meet again and as we reminisce once again, the path ahead of us is guaranteed to be better than the one behind us.

I love my wife, more than just about anything. Yet, I do not fear this teaching of Jesus. I do not fear it because I know that in the resurrection I will love as Jesus has loved, and Jesus has loved all people perfectly for all time. Just because I am told I will not be married to my wife forever, does not mean that she will not always be eternally important to me. God has better things in store for us than we can possibly imagine. Still, how blessed are we that we are given the gift of sharing our life with others. Whether that is through marriage, or friendships, or any number of other relationships we might have. God has given us each other, for this moment, and for eternity. Praise God, who gives us an eternal love. – Amen.