Speaking and Listening

Most of us don’t get up in the morning and decide to believe wrong things. And neither do the various people Jesus talks with. Sometimes people try to convince Jesus to change his mind. Sometimes people try to have Jesus confirm their own beliefs. And Jesus, of course, is also trying to convince people to change their minds.

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, then 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 belongs 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.” Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” For they no longer dared to ask him another question. Luke 20:27-40 NRSVue

This encounter happened after Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday¹. Jesus was teaching in the Temple that week, and there were a variety of encounters with different groups- the chief priests, the scribes, the elders, regular people, and the Sadducees.

We actually don’t know too much about the Sadducees as none of their own writings have survived. All we know is what others, who may not have been sympathetic to them, have said. The Sadducees were active from the second century BCE to the first century CE. They did not believe in life after death, or angels and spirits.It seems the Sadducees were mostly priests (but not all of them, and not all priests were Sadducees) They were influenced by Greek culture and they were wanted to have good relations with the Roman Empire. They were likely wealthy and enjoyed some level of social status.² The Sadducees considered only Torah to be scripture and did not accept the oral tradition or other writings as authoritative³. The Pharisees accepted a wider variety of texts and oral traditions.

Luke was fairly neutral in how he presented Jesus’ encounter with the Sadducees. They “came to him and asked him a question.” Other groups are said to have sent “spies” or are described as trying to trap or trick Jesus. Luke doesn’t offer clues about the Sadducees’ intentions.

It sounds like they are trying to make their case that there is no resurrection by using a particular Biblical text. Seven brothers married successively to the same woman. None of them had children with her, there were no heirs. It’s an extreme example, but it’s not impossible. It’s based on what is called levirate marriage.⁴

Historically the common belief was that people lived on through their descendants and in memory. If a man died without children, there was also the concern that the man’s property, his land could pass out of the family. It was important to preserve the family line and legacy. That’s how people lived on, in memory, in descendants, in family property.

Belief in the resurrection of the dead was a fairly recent and not universally accepted idea in Jewish belief. Torah doesn’t mention the idea of the resurrection of the dead. That idea first shows up in Scripture in Daniel 12:2, and some intertestamental works⁵.

The Sadducees were asking, if what Moses and Torah said were authoritative, then how does the idea of the resurrection of the dead fit with practice of levirate marriage? If a person had even two or three spouses, who would be married to whom in the resurrection? How would all that get sorted out? This is something people would wonder about. I suspect their logic is that this extreme example shows that the resurrection of the dead doesn’t happen, it’s unworkable. Similarly, if the dead are resurrected, why would Torah have these rules that would cause confusion in the next life?

Jesus told them that life in “that age” will not be like life in “this age”. Things will be very different in the age to come. And then Jesus cited Moses encounter with God in the burning bush as his example of life after death. God spoke of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the present tense.

Then something interesting happened. This is an important point for our time. Some of the Sadducees are intrigued by Jesus’ answer. They say, ” Teacher, you have spoken well.” They don’t grasp at straws to discredit Jesus. They don’t mock him or belittle him. They acknowledge that Jesus has made a compelling response to their question.

And then “…they no longer dared to ask him another question.” The word “dared” might suggest to us that they were scared to ask another question. The word also carries the meaning of to be bold or courageous. In other exchanges during Holy Week people are described as “amazed” and “spellbound”⁶ by what Jesus teaches. Jesus was evidently a powerful and persuasive speaker. The Sadducees realized they didn’t have a worthy response. There was no one bold enough or brave enough to continue talking. There was no point in doing that.

It’s common to say, and true mostly, that we have lost the ability to talk about ideas with which we disagree. How many people do you know that won’t talk about sensitive subjects at family gatherings, at work, and at church? But we won’t resolve things if we don’t talk about difficult topics. People asked Jesus hard questions. And he often responded with teaching that was unsettling or challenging.

I started this by writing that no one tries to think wrong things. If we thought it was incorrect we wouldn’t believe it. At the same time, we all have had mistaken ideas about things. We are wrong about various things all the time. Because we are wrong about things, it behoves us to consider different ideas and different points of view. Some things we can dismiss quickly. Others take some time to consider.

We won’t make any progress in solving any of our problems or disagreements if we feel we have to win every disagreement. Dividing the world into winners and losers isn’t helpful and won’t help us solve problems. We won’t make progress if we never admit that sometimes we need to change our minds. Sometimes other people have good ideas. Sometimes we have good ideas. But we can’t approach every discussion believing that I need to win and you need to lose. We all need to consider that we, on any given subject, might be wrong. Or the other person might be wrong. Or we are both partially wrong. It happens. None of us will always have the correct answer or the correct idea. There is no shame in that. Humans are imperfect. We make mistakes. We have mistaken ideas about things. Our goal should be to help each other move closer to the truth. Not that this will be easy. Sometimes it is a struggle to find the truth or reach a consensus. It can take time and lots of discussion. Helping each other, all of us, to live in the world Jesus invites us to create, is worth the struggle.

1. Palm Sunday is the Sunday before Easter. The week in between those Sundays is called Holy Week. ↩︎
2. Anthony J. Saldarini, Mark Allan Powell, “Sadducees” in HarperCollins Bible Dictionary, Mark Allan Powell Gen Ed. Page 905-906 Kindle Ed. Society of Bible LIterature: 2011 ↩︎
3. This discussion of the text is indebted to “The Gospel of Luke” by R. Alan Culpepper in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IX, (Abingdon Press: 1995, pages 387-390, and The Gospel of Luke, Joel B. Green, (Eerdmans:1997) pages 717-723. ↩︎
4. Deut 15:5-10 ↩︎
5. Some of the book of Daniel was likely written around the time of the Exile and some parts around 167 BCE ↩︎
6. amazed Luke 20:26, spellbound Luke 19:48 ↩︎