Children of the resurrection

The object of our disciple-making enterprise is to beget “children of the resurrection,” people “worthy to attain that age” (Luke 20:35). The mission of the gathering we call the Church is to advance against strongholds of death and release the captive to new life, both in the present time and in eternity. Like the kingdom of God, we have to view resurrection as both present reality and future hope.

This was a point missed by the short-sighted Sadducees. These rigid keepers of the temple and all things liturgical did not believe in a resurrection hope. Their narrow-minded fundamentalism restricted thier view to their version of the Torah, the books of Moses. Since they could not find a mention of life-after-death in Moses it didn’t exist, and they were not open to conversation. And don’t bother mentioning texts in Daniel chapter 12 and Isaiah chapters 26 and 65. No Moses, no cigar.

So when the self-assured Sadducees wanted to try to discredit Jesus as he taught in their temple, they trotted out their favorite old hypothetical about the one wife for seven brothers. It was designed to make Jesus look foolish. He used it to turn the tables on them.

“You deceive yourselves, not knowing the Scriptures.” He then described how the resurrection will make us different. We will never die again, and because of that there will be no need to reproduce through the marriage relationship. Our familial relationships of the present time will not extend to eternity. I know that flies in the face of most of the Southern Gospel songs we sing about going to heaven to see Mama one day, but that is what Jesus said.

As for the resurrection itself, Jesus made fools of the Sadducees using their precious Torah. Apparently no one else had ever done this, because it made the scribes sit up and declare, “Well done, rabbi!” It is also recorded that the Sadducees did not have a comeback. They were silenced; their oft-used tactic backfired. Badly.

Jesus’ argument? God is known as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God is not the God of the dead but of the living. The patriarchs continue to live in a resurrection state beyond their physical death. As do all the righteous dead. Even the Sadducees could not argue with that.

The important thing to remember is that in biblical thought resurrection means restoration. It means change. The metaphor is not restricted to life-after-death. Paul relates that when we become a follower of Jesus and submit to water baptism we die to the old and are resurrected, with Christ, to the new. The Hebrew Scriptures spoke of the return of the Jews from captivity as a “resurrection” of Israel.

With promised restoration and change comes hope. Hope makes living through difficult times possible because we have the reasonable expectation that we will be vindicated, restored, renewed, and justified by the grace of God through the saving acts of Jesus Christ. That happens now as well as in the age to come.

Our committment to mission means that we boldly and with confident hope assault strongholds of darkness, decay, and death to retreive any who will follow to a new life of hope and resurrection from the death. Both now and in the age to come. Let us be faithful in begetting children of the resurrection.