I saw
a picture this week of two tombstones, facing away from each other, back to
back. Between the two, there’s a wall
separating them, but the wall is shorter than the tombstones. Extending from the back of each tombstone is
a sculpture of a hand. In the middle,
over the wall, the hands embrace. The graves
belong to a married couple, who died in the Netherlands in the late 19th
Century. One was Catholic; the other,
Protestant. Unable to be buried in the
same cemetery, they still found away to embrace.
My
first thought was to give thanks to God for how far we’ve come with ecumenism
since then, but as I reflected on the image more, a deeper gratitude started to
well up in me. I started to give thanks
for love. Love from which and for which
we were made. Love which is
unquenchable, uncontrollable, which refuses to respect the walls we build, that
has its own power to last, to burn, to grow, its own lust for life. Love that conquers all. Love that lets itself be wounded. Love that holds out a wounded hand, refuses
to let go, beckons, “Come, Follow me.”
That
love is the last thing we heard from Jesus today, and it undergirds everything
else we heard in our scripture readings.
He draws us back to the burning bush where Moses encountered God who
refused to identify Himself in any other way than to say who he was in
relationship with: “I am the God of your father, of Abraham, of Isaac,
of Jacob.” Not “I was;” “I am.” God freely enters into covenantal
relationship with His people not out of any need, but motivated out of love:
pure, simple, fervent love. And love
lasts. Yes, our loved ones are taken
from us: death, while conquered, still lashes out in its death throes. We see but dawn’s first light, while we long
for the fullness of day. But God sees
clearly. God’s love never lets go. The embrace outlasts even death. “I am the God of your father, of
Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob.” God loves everlastingly. We are His beloved forever.
That
truth was no more a commonplace in the Ancient World than it is today. If I were to change out of my preacher’s
stole and don my scholar’s cap, I could talk at length about how it’s only in later
Jewish texts (like our first reading from Second Maccabees) that we see really
clear language about resurrection or eternal life. It takes a while to realize that God’s love
is more potent than death. Our gospel
text itself bears witness to the controversy surrounding resurrection in Jesus’
time: unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees, who were a Jewish group in Jerusalem
with great devotion to the Temple, denied any kind of eternal life. And here Jesus is in the Temple they loved so
much, teaching, attracting a great crowd who seemed to be becoming more and
more attracted to him. So, they go to
trip up him, catch him out, let everyone see how ridiculous his views on the
resurrection are. The rabbis would
record many similar debates where people who didn’t believe in the resurrection
would concoct stranger and stranger puzzles to tear down the credibility of
this strange new teaching.
One
bride for seven brothers: to them, it’s a knock-down argument that demonstrates
the illogicality of belief in eternal life.
And they’ve read the law accurately enough: the principle they quote is
right there in Deuteronomy 25. It’s a
principle that reflects an impulse towards a desire for eternal life, without
daring to believe God would literally give us just that. The idea is this: having children is a way in
which your life can, in a sense, continue after you’re dead. Your seed can live on. So if a man dies before he has his first
child (and note how this principle is focused squarely on the man), he hasn’t ‘just’
lost his own life, but his line has also ended. To avoid this tragedy, the man’s brother is to
marry his wife and raise up children who will be counted as really ‘belonging
to’ the dead man (again, note that the woman’s agency, and the brother’s for
that matter, is pretty much nil here). Known
as levirate marriage, it was a compensation clause, the Miss Congeniality of
immortality.
Jesus knew
God offers the real thing. Death is not
the ultimate threat that it was feared to be.
God loves everlastingly. Levirate
marriage is no longer needed; we don’t derive immortality from progeny, but
from the gracious unmerited gift of God’s everlasting love. Families do not exist to give husbands and
fathers a cheap form of immortality. No,
they exist as schools of love, as webs of commitment, icons that make present
on earth the Love that moves the sun and other stars, that laid in a manger in
Bethlehem, that hung on a cross on Calvary.
The Love that will come again, that will draw all things to itself when
all things are made new. And we long for
that day, when God’s love envelops us so utterly tangibly that we don’t need
signs, symbols, reminders. There will be
no marrying or giving in marriage in heaven, because marriage’s job will be
done: it will have taught us how to love.
And
that’s the love that renders ridiculous the riddles of the Sadducees. The love that sees the wall they build and
carves two hands embracing above it.
That loving wounded hand is outstretched, beckoning us.
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