Life of Christ 156
The rural Pennsylvania cemetery where my daughter is buried |
Jesus had historically
tangled far oftener with the Pharisees. This is because the Sadducees were less
numerous amongst the common people. The Sadducees were the party of the rich
and of the politically connected, and Jesus had had limited interaction with
such men thus far. However, they too have a vested interest in stopping this
religious upstart as Jesus threatened all of Israel’s leading parties of the
day.
The Sadducees most
well-known theological position was a rejection of the afterlife. Similar to
the Samaritans, they accepted the Torah (the books of Moses) and rejected as
canonical the Old Testament prophets. They also rejected the Pharisees’ Oral
Torah (the ‘fence around the garden of the Torah’). This Oral Torah is what we
commonly know as the Mishnah section of the Talmud. It embraced all manner of
extra-biblical rules and insisted on a hyper-literal minute observance of
thousands of rules. The Sadducees limited embrace of only the books of the
Moses was the foundation for their rejection of the afterlife. After all, to
them the afterlife was not clearly referenced in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, or Deuteronomy.
To the Christian this is
startlingly ridiculous. Heaven is spoken of often in Scripture, and together
with the fact of Christ’s resurrection is a great comfort to our hearts. But
the Sadducees rejected the rest of the Old Testament, Christ’s resurrection was
still five days away, and the New Testament had not yet been penned.
But to the Sadducees of
Christ’s day this was an altogether reasonable proposition. This was especially
true when set in contradistinction to the pharisaic approach to the afterlife.
The rabbinic Pharisees had garnished the doctrine of the resurrection to a
fare-thee-well. Edersheim reports they held that ‘in order to secure that all
the pious of Israel should rise on the sacred soil of Palestine, there were
cavities underground in which the body would roll till it reached the Holy
Land, there to rise to newness of life.’ Faced with such ridiculous assertions
the Sadducees held their position to be the reasonable one.
Jesus, of course, had
already proclaimed Himself to be the
resurrection and the life. (John 11.25) He had raised several people from
the dead including Lazarus a mere two miles away a few weeks ago. Yet the
Sadducees cared nothing for this. And if they could somehow box him into a
corner, verbally, and leave Him gasping for conversational air they would win
points not just against Jesus but against the Pharisees as well.
They open their attack
by spinning an improbable story.
Luke 20. 27 Then came to him certain of the Sadducees,
which deny that there is any resurrection; and they asked him,
28
Saying, Master, Moses wrote unto us, If any man’s brother die, having a
wife, and he die without children, that his brother should take his wife, and
raise up seed unto his brother.
29
There were therefore seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and died
without children.
30
And the second took her to wife, and he died childless.
31
And the third took her; and in like manner the seven also: and they left
no children, and died.
32 Last of all the woman died also.
33
Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them is she? for seven had
her to wife.
They had the barest
shadow of support for this story since the Torah commanded a brother-in-law to
marry a childless widow in order to ensure the family inheritance remained
intact. (Deuteronomy 25.5-6)
Jesus on this Tuesday
morning is being displayed to us in a different light. He is hoisting His
opponents on their own verbal petard time and again. He is holding nothing
back. He is going for the jugular each time. He does the same here as well.
His response goes back
to the sole authority the Sadducees will permit – the Torah alone. Quoting
Exodus 3, Jesus says But as touching the
resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by
God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. (Matthew
22.31-32)
His answer hinges on the
grammatical tense of ‘I am.’ If Abraham were currently (in the timeframe of
Exodus 3) dead God would have told Moses ‘I was the God of Abraham.’ But God
did not. God said, ‘I am the God of Abraham.’ Clearly then, an Abraham dead for
five centuries by Moses’ time was actually still wonderfully and vitally alive
– in Heaven – which means the resurrection and the afterlife are both true. And
this was provable from the Torah alone.
My daughter's grave |
Beloved, you have buried
your own loved ones as have I. But those we have buried who fell asleep in
Christ are still very much alive. And there is comfort enough to last a
lifetime long until we are once again re-united with them in Heaven.
…and if you are scoring along at home it is
now Jesus three, the Sanhedrin zero.
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