ONE OF THE SCARIEST PASSAGES IN SCRIPTURE…FOR SOME OF US


12/17/18
A few days ago, my reading of the Scriptures brought me to Mark 12, 18-27.    I’ll paraphrase most of it because most of you are familiar with it or its equivalents in Matthew and Luke.  This is the passage in which the Sadducees, who didn’t believe in the resurrection, tried to trip Jesus up by posting an absurd argument.   They posit a situation in which there are seven brothers.   The first brother marries and dies “leaving a wife but no child.”   According to the law as prescribed in Deuteronomy 25, 5-6, his brother marries the widow, but they have no child.  The process continues through all seven brothers, but no child is produced and the woman dies.   (You’d think that someone would have figured out that the woman herself had infertility issues so repeating the exercise made no sense, but medicine was primitive in those days and, after all, the law said that the brothers all had to do their part, and the law must be followed, right?  Sound familiar?   But I digress.)  The Sadducees, always the smart-asses, ask Jesus

“At the resurrection (when they arise) whose wife will she be?   For all seven had been married to her.”

Jesus answers

“Are you misled because you do not know the scriptures or the powers of God?  When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like angels in heaven.”

Then He goes on to talk about God’s being the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and certainly not the God of the dead, “but of the living.”   But I want to focus on the first part of Jesus’s answer about not being married in heaven.

For a lot of people you and I know, this comes as great news.   “Fantastic!  I’ll be rid of the old man (or the old lady) when I reach the Pearly Gates!”   There are simply a lot of people out there that are not tantalized by the prospect of having to spend eternal life with their husband or wife and, tragically, in many cases, justifiably so.

I, and doubtless many of you, however, find this passage especially troubling.   I can’t imagine an eternity without my wife.   I may have gotten in the wrong line, so to speak, for many things; patience and tolerance come immediately to mind with good looks being not too far behind.   I probably could have used another helping or two of brains as well, but I’d better cut this off before this paragraph runs into the pages.  I did get in the right line for wives; I have the very best God created.  I don’t want to spend eternity without her.    So I don’t like this passage.

There is some good news, though.  It’s nice to know that we “will be like angels in heaven.”   And most reassuringly, we are reminded of “the powers of God.”   I’m interpreting this to mean that maybe the powers of God can result in my wife and I remaining together forever.

But on it’s face, Mark 12, 18-27, and, specifically, Mark 12,25 does not sound like good news.

All God’s blessings, now and always.

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