Is There More? What We Can Say About Resurrection Life

The Game They Play in Heaven

It was the Melbourne Cup just last week. Maybe you participated in a once-a-year sweepstake or the like. People have a real passion for their favourite sport. Horse racing — pundits describe it as the sport of kings. League fans use the Tina Turner chorus, "Simply the Best." Football fans describe their sport as the beautiful game. Now, all of the above might be true, but everyone knows that rugby is the game they play in heaven.

The gospel today invites us to think about heaven — or more accurately, resurrection life. Not so much will there be rugby in heaven, but a more foundational question: Is there more? Is there more than this life? Is there a resurrection life, a heaven? And what can we say or know about that life?

The Sadducees and Their Challenge

The reading today is part of a series of confrontations between Jesus and the religious hierarchy. The Sadducees attempt to rope him into a controversy and make him look foolish. The heart of the controversy was that the Sadducees denied the resurrection, while Jesus and the Pharisees believed in a life to come.

The Sadducees were very conservative and accepted only the first five books of the Old Testament as authoritative. The resurrection did not appear there; therefore, to them, it was not real. They were a priestly caste centred on the temple in Jerusalem — aristocratic, wealthy, ultraconservative, and cooperative with the Roman occupiers. During the Jewish rebellion against Rome, Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed in the year 70 AD. By the time Luke's gospel was written in the mid to late seventies, the Sadducees had disappeared and no longer played any role in Judaism.

How Resurrection Thinking Emerged

Belief in a resurrection life became prominent in the period between the writing of the Old and New Testaments. For the Jewish people, this was a period of national struggle and domination by foreign powers. There was a real sense that justice was lacking in this life — a lack of justice for God's chosen people, for the righteous, for the poor, and a lack of justice for those who did evil.

This did not sit well with their understanding that God was a God of love and justice. And out of this troubled environment, resurrection thinking emerged. If God is a God of justice, there must be a life to come where these things will be sorted out by a just God.

Jesus' Response

The Sadducees confront Jesus with an extreme hypothetical case of what is called levirate marriage — a custom whereby a widow is married by her deceased husband's brother, maintaining his lineage and providing the widow with social and economic security. In their scenario, a woman marries a succession of seven brothers, each of whom dies. If there's a resurrection, whose wife will she be?

Jesus responds by arguing from the episode of Moses and the burning bush in Exodus 3 — a text the Sadducees accepted as authoritative — where God says to Moses that he is, not was, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus interprets this to mean that these ancient figures are still in God, that God is a God not of the dead but of the living. It's an argument particularly focused on the belief system of his opponents.

What Can We Say About Resurrection Life?

As Christians, we have a different belief system to the Sadducees. What is it that we can say about resurrection life? I'd have to say at the outset that while I believe there is a resurrection life after this life, apart from funerals, I don't think very much about that life at all. Partly because there's a sense that just about anything we say about resurrection life is speculative. And partly because I think the Christian life is to be focused on living well in this life rather than on the nature of a life to come.

There are, however, some things I believe we can say in faith with a degree of confidence.

1. Jesus and Paul Believed in Resurrection

Jesus believed there was a resurrection life, and so did Paul. You don't have to look very hard to find ample evidence of this in their teaching.

2. Resurrection, Not Disembodied Souls

While the nature of this resurrection life is not spelled out, it is resurrection life that Jesus and other New Testament writers refer to — not the Greek concept of an immortal soul. In resurrection life, we're not some disembodied soul floating around in the ether. We are resurrected people. Paul wrote about this in 1 Corinthians 15 in terms of having a "spiritual body." I'm not exactly sure what that means, but it suggests to me that resurrection is about the whole person. In resurrection life, I'll be identifiably me, and you'll be identifiably you.

3. No More Pain or Tears

While this life can be marked by hardship, suffering, and tears, in resurrected life these things are past. John's vision of a new heaven and earth recorded in the book of Revelation contains these words:

God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

4. Marriage in Heaven?

I'm not sure what to make of Jesus' words about there being no marriage in heaven. I wonder if it should be read in terms of a cultural understanding of marriage that viewed it primarily as a vehicle for sustaining the community by the having and raising of children. In this thinking, as no one dies in heaven, marriage is not necessary. In our time, we don't really think about marriage as just being about procreation. Jesus also sets aside the male-dominated structures that made the passing of women as property from one man to another either possible or necessary. We don't think about women in these ways today either. So I don't really know — but I guess we'll find out one day.

Trust God for the Life to Come

The final word to say is that we are called not to idle speculation, but to live this life in the best way we can and trust God for the life to come. Belief in the resurrection is, at its essence, a trust in the goodness of God.

I finish with these words from Peter:

Live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day. Make every effort to be spotless, blameless, and at peace with him. Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. To him be glory now and forever. Amen.