The other day I was giving a climate scientist a ride to the airport where she was to catch a plane to attend a conference at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Over the half-hour journey, I quizzed my passenger about the impact of climate change, possible solutions for the future, and both the benefits and limitations to the scientific endeavor. As our conversation meandered here and there, we eventually stumbled upon the topic of faith. I explained that I am 100% open to what science may teach us, but that I also hold to a faith in a creator God. Theology and science both ask and seek to answer important questions, but they are not necessarily asking the same questions, nor are they seeking to answer them in the same way. She agreed with this general statement, though it became obvious to me that we were not singing from the same hymn sheet and probably not even humming the same tune. I love these kinds of conversations. I learn so much and I also hope to plant a few seeds along the way.
As we neared the terminal, I explained how the central tenet of my faith is not something that can be verified by science, or even standard historical analysis, though I do believe that history as we know it would not have unfolded the way it did, if this event had not taken place. The central tenet of my faith is the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. I believe that the creator of the universe entered into our time and space in the person of Jesus and that on the third day after dying on a Roman execution instrument, he was raised from the dead and was thus proclaimed to be the Son of God and the Lord of all. But this is not simply a one-off event. The resurrection of Jesus is the first fruits of God's plan for all humanity. What happened to Jesus on that first Easter morning will one day happen to all the faithful departed. The Christian hope for eternal life is not rooted in some ethereal, non-physical, non-bodily existence in heaven, but is eternal life lived in a resurrection body in this present creation renewed. Sadly, many modern followers of Jesus are ignorant of this hope. I guess that shouldn't surprise us. Though resurrection of the dead into God's new heavens and new earth was the standard, mainstream eschatological belief for many, if not most 1st Century Jews, not all Jews believed. The Sadducees were one such sect who denied the resurrection (as well as any kind of "after-life"). Jesus confronted their unbelief in Mark 12:18-27 (NRSV).
"Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, saying, 'Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no child, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. There were seven brothers; the first married and, when he died, left no children; and the second married the widow and died, leaving no children; and the third likewise; none of the seven left children. Last of all the woman herself died. In the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had married her.'
"Jesus said to them, 'Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story of the bush, how God said to him, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is God not of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong.'"
The Sadducees were the religious conservatives of their day. They only acknowledged the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures as divinely authoritative, and in those five books, known as the books of Moses, there is not one mention of the resurrection of the dead. In fact, there are very few mentions of resurrection in the whole of the Hebrew scriptures, namely Daniel 12, Isaiah 25-26, Ezekiel 37 (metaphorically speaking), and a few other scattered indirect references in some of the other writings. To embrace the theology of resurrection, one would have needed to not only have scoured the entirety of what Christians call the Old Testament, but one would also have needed to open oneself up to the possibility that the God of the patriarchs was not only still involved in his creation but would continue to be so in the future. It would require not only faith, but maybe just a little bit of imagination too.
In this conversation with Jesus, the Sadducees believed that their invented scenario pointed out the absurdity of the concept of resurrection. If the same woman had married seven different brothers in this life, who gets to be her husband in the age to come? Good question. And Jesus had the answer. The Sadducees had failed to understand that though there would be continuity in the age to come, there would also be discontinuity. In the resurrection, some of the relationships that we enjoy in this life, will be transformed. The "institution" of marriage, that is the bedrock of human community in the present world, will no longer hold the same function in that society of the future. Jesus does not go into all the details of why this is or what that future will exactly look like, but he acknowledges that there will be changes.
But more than anything else, he calls out the Sadducees for their lack of imagination. He criticizes them for their lack of faith in the power of God! If the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is in fact the creator of all that we see and enjoy in this life, then why is it hard to imagine that he might extend that life - even to the dead? If the living God is also the giving God, then one day, life will conquer death! Blaise Pascal put it this way. "Which is more difficult, to be born or to rise again; that what has never been should be, or that what has been should be again?"
There has been no figure in all of human history who has impacted our world as much as Jesus of Nazareth. And I believe that if he had not been raised from the dead, then most, if not all of us would never have even heard his name. He would have been nothing more than a buried footnote in the forgotten annals of history. But he is not buried in history because he is no longer buried in his tomb - the tomb is empty! And I believe with all my heart that what is true of Jesus will one day be true of all God's people. The gospel of John says it like this. "Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out - those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation." Imagine that! - Shay
