And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection -Luke 20:34-36.

In the Gospel reading from Luke 20, the Sadducees, with their flawed assumption about marriage and the resurrection, approached Jesus with a trick question. The Sadducees tell Jesus a hypothetical story to pit Him against His own religious tradition. Beyond the intellectual concerns of the Sadducees, their story, with incorrect and flawed assumptions, resonates for 21st-century Christians. The Sadducees in us have questions, just as the ‘first generation of sophisticated folks find life after death implausible.’ The Sadducees in us, as the 21st-century Christians, want to know Jesus without walking with Jesus in the light of His Word; we want to witness resurrection without suffering death to sin and flesh.  God is calling 21st-century Christians to see life on earth as a temporary assignment, a wisp of smoke. Indeed, ‘our days on earth are as transient as a shadow.’

Brennan Manning’s statement on the single cause of atheism aptly describes the Sadducees in us as the 21st-century Christians. He said, “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” The Sadducees in us, as the 21st century Christians, is our sin of unbelief, especially in the resurrection or the afterlife, so the questions on marriage between a man and a woman, and resurrection are used to make Jesus’s teachings and Christianity seem absurd and illogical.

The Gospels are unequivocal that only followers of Jesus who are willing to take up their own crosses and follow him can experience new life and become children of the resurrection, “worthy of a place in that age.” It is not new that the resurrection has never made sense in human terms. Like the ancients struggled with resurrection, many, even preachers and theologians, still find the resurrection odd and bizarre. The Sadducees in us cannot change the Truth, but the Truth can change us, and this is precisely what only Jesus can do.

The resurrection of the body of anyone who has died physically, but who will spend eternity either in heaven or hell, is one of the basic teachings in God’s Word. Jesus considers life for believers in the next age by revealing the beginning of that age with a resurrection, which involves receiving new, glorified bodies that can never die. No resurrection, no salvation (I Cor 15. Life at resurrection will no longer include earthly relationships such as marriage. When believers receive their new bodies, they ‘put on’ immortality. Resurrection is a resilient living, overcoming and enduring; hence, the children of resurrection know that questions about Jesus beyond head knowledge are questions of life, heart, and death. In resurrection, the life and worth of the woman trapped in the Sadducees’ story is not shaped by her husband or her fertility. Resurrection offers the woman safety, ‘unconditional, and eternal love of the God who created her.’ 

The Sadducees in the Gospel story, in relation to the 21st-century Christians, reveal the discrepancies between resurrection and the laws of marriage and kinship. Many love to sing Carols but are still baffled by the Easter morning empty grave, a hope, joy, peace, and love, beyond the grim finality of death. Beyond the Sadducees’ understanding of God’s kingdom and marriage, Jesus points to a kingdom in which people neither marry nor are given in marriage. Marriage is God’s greatest earthly gift. Adam’s poem aptly summarised the excellent mystery behind Christian marriage, ‘At last this is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; She shall be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken out of man’ (Gen 2:23).

The Sadducees’ story is to undermine and expose the absurdity of believing in life after death – ‘A woman is given in marriage to one of seven brothers, they tell Jesus.  When her husband dies without fathering an heir, she is passed on — as the law of Moses dictates — to his next younger brother.  When that brother also dies without siring a child, she’s passed on to the third.  And so on.  Eventually, all seven brothers die, and the woman — still childless — dies, too.  “In the resurrection,” the Sadducees ask smugly, certain that they’ve ensnared Jesus, “whose wife will she be?” The complexities of human life can never change the Truth of God’s Word but rather point to the Truth about human life (Jn 3:16).

Jesus, the Truth, tells the Sadducees, beyond Moses’ laws, marriage, tradition or sex, that they are wrong because the children of the resurrection will neither marry nor be given in marriage. The Sadducees’ flawed and incorrect understanding of resurrection points to the children of resurrection as angels, for whom the rules and practices of earthly life will not apply.’ Beloved, the rules and practices of earthly life and all its accompanying possessions and experiences are brief, transient, and temporary when compared to an eternal life with Jesus Christ. The earthly life, including marriage, serves as a test or preparation for the afterlife. The choices we make during this temporary time have eternal implications that will determine one’s ultimate destination – heaven or hell. Fellow 21st-century Christian, let us fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18, NIV).  God is calling us to recognise the temporary nature of earthly life and the need to shift priorities in serving and preparing for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.