Whose Possession Is She?
we will all live
Luke 20:27–40 (NRSV)
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, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, 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 belong 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.”
She wept.
Her last husband had died, the seventh in a long line of brothers. She had been the wife of each of them due to each one’s untimely death. They had all acted honorable according to the law, taking her as their own in place of the brother before. Their righteous act had kept her from destitution and poverty.
But she had borne no children to any of them. Their lineage had been cut off, and her misfortune had brought a curse on her life. Where was God? Where was her blessing? Where would she go?
No one would take a seven times widowed woman. She wasn’t a young maiden at this point, and she had a reputation of death about her. With no husband, she would have to go back to her elderly father and pray he took care of her. Without that mercy, she would be forced to beg for alms in the street. What was going to happen to her? Where would her salvation come from? Where could she belong now?
***
When the Sadducees came to Jesus and presented a hypothetical case of seven brothers marrying one widow according to the law, they probably didn’t think anything about her, about how each death would have torn at her, about how barren her womb was and how so longed for a child, about how she would have been destitute and impoverished when the last brother died.
But this was the reality for widows in the time of Jesus. Without someone—a man—to take care of them, they had no hope beyond alms.
Women historically have been given in marriage. That is to say, the father has given the woman to the husband. It’s been a transference of power, of possession, of what amounts to property. This was the reality in Jesus’ day, and it has continued through history.
So, when the Sadducees asked whose wife she would be in the resurrection, they were really asking who did she belong to? Who owned her? Whose possession was she?
Jesus changed the conversation.
According to Jesus, the Sadducees were asking the wrong questions. Of course, they were talking about women as possessions. The question they were asking was male-centric and a thinly veiled trick to convince people of how absurd they thought the idea of resurrection was.
The Sadducees didn’t believe in any kind of resurrection. They believed that any kind of eternal life came from the legacy left by children and blessed memory in the community. In their framework, death was the end of the person. There was nothing else.
Jesus, on the other hand knew the reality of the hope of resurrection. Jesus knew in fact he was the resurrection, both as what would be the first fruits of that resurrection and as the means of the resurrection. For Jesus, death wasn’t the end but rather a transition into the life to come, the life eternal, the life of resurrection.
“People are given in marriage and are taken in marriage now.” Jesus points out the problem here. People are treated as possessions in a patriarchal society. Women don’t have autonomy but are tied to the man in their life—first their father then their husband—for their very identity. They are traded for dowries, used for political gain and maneuvering, and in general are considered nothing more than second-class citizens at best.
The Torah had provisions for women so that they were—as much as possible—not left to destitution. One of those provisions was the Levitical law that the brother of a deceased husband would marry the husband’s widow. This both protected the lineage of the deceased and gave the widow a way away from poverty and neglect.
But still, the woman wasn’t given autonomy in this exchange. She was at the mercy of the family of the deceased man. There’s even the story of Tamar (Genesis 38) where the widow has to take the matter of provision into her own hands.
Back to Jesus’ words. “In the resurrection of the dead, there is neither people who marry nor are given in marriage.”
Game changer.
Marriage wasn’t to be found in the resurrection. There was no treating women as property. There was no possession of another human. Jesus goes on to say that in the resurrection there is no longer death.
Now, this seems odd. Taking about marriage, Jesus introduces the topic of death. But the truth is, the two are interrelated.
Marriage is about avoiding death. We enter into this—indeed any—covenant because someday we are going to die and we want to leave a legacy of who we are. Marriage is a way to keep our memory alive, to keep our bloodline alive, to give us a lineage by with we may ever be remembered.
We are not forever. Like leaves on a tree, we are green for a season. Then we fall to the ground, are swept up and forgotten. No one wants that. We don’t want to assign ourselves to the void, to the emptiness, to the forgotten-ness. We want to make a mark on the world, an image by which we can be remembered.
In short, we live by an economy of legacy.
The stronger a legacy, the greater the person. When our lineage remains strong, we are remembered. But, we have to work for this greatness; we have to play by the rules of empire, either achieving heroic feats or violently villainous crimes. Our legacy is determined by how much we stand out, how much we can accomplish, how much, how much, how much.
This isn’t the economy of the resurrection.
In the resurrection, there is no death, no end to the person. So, instead of lineage, we have presence.
We remain secure in our identity as children of God. All of us. Women, people of color, queer people, and even those of us who are enmeshed in the systems of oppression and power. We are all freed from the economy of death that exists in so many facets. We become truly children of the resurrection, belonging to ourselves as children of the Most High.
***
Resurrection is hard to believe.
From where we stand, death seems like the final movement, the ending point, the end of everything we are. We don’t know what is past that vale. Death elicits fear. Some people have come to accept that death comes for us all, and that it is a part of life… except it’s not.
We weren’t made for death. Life is more than an animating force that eventually winds down. Life is beauty, color, love, relationships, toil, pain, and grief. Life is a multifaceted gem through which we see ourselves and others. It is everything we are, what we experience, and why we keep believing in more, in better, in something beyond ourselves.
I’m not trying to take away people’s belief in annihilation, that the end, death, is the end. But I cannot accept that the end is the end.
As a baptized believer, a Christian, I choose to take Jesus at his word. In this passage, Jesus says that God is God of the living, not the dead. God states he is the God of the Jewish patriarchs, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God speaks of them in the present tense because (according to Jesus) they are alive to God.
This is the promise of resurrection. We are alive to God, even after our legacy and lineage surpass us.
No longer do we have to strive to make a mark so that we won’t be forgotten. Forever we will have our presence to give to everyone because we will live.
These are the two truths that are true: Death comes for us all AND everybody lives.
Death is real, but it’s not the end. We remain alive to God, children of the resurrection, children of God. We were always and always will be the beloved. This is the reality of the resurrection.
We are and will ever be alive to God, the creator, sustainer, and giver of that very life.
No longer are we bound by the fear of death and the need to be great. That need will create hierarchies and dominance, subjugating others to us so that we can be King of the Hill.
The resurrection is eternal presence, autonomy, and freedom.
Women are free.
People of color are free.
Queer people are free.
And white men are free.
Everyone enmeshed and trapped by empire and the system of death are free.
***
Okay, but so what?
This might be a great promise, an astounding hope, but we are all still living in the valley of the shadow of death.
Death stalks us, haunts us, comes for us. We still have the pain of loss, the fear of being forgotten, and the grief of absence.
Not to mention the machine of death that oppresses, traps, and crushes us all is still going strong. Empire looms large, and empire uses the threat of death to keep us chained to the oppressive powers and principalities.
So what good is resurrection in an existence of death?
My God, it is everything that is good.
We may not be free of the cycles and systems of oppression, but we are not bound by them.
Their threat of death is something we can scoff at because we have resurrection coming for us.
We can begin to treat everyone as if their presence will be eternal, urging them to take up their autonomy as we all work together for freedom.
Resurrection as hope means we can begin to see and protest the ridiculousness of hierarchy, greed and billionaires, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy.
Resurrection we can stand against ICE without fear because we know that one day they will stand naked before us all as we all stand before God.
Resurrection means we can become ungovernable without fear because we belong to our autonomy.
The hope of resurrection changes everything because we have a different ending to the story, and with a different end we can live the pages of our story differently. With this amazing hope grounded in the reality of Jesus’ own resurrection as the first fruits from the dead, we can begin to live the reality of the result of resurrection as if it is already here. We are free to imagine differently. Different economic systems. Different socio-political systems. Different parenting systems. Different religious systems. We are free to dream, to try, to fail, and to try again because it’s not over until we all come alive.
We’ve peaked at the last chapter, and it is glorious. With the hope of an ending of triumph, justice, and life we can imagine, live, and protest differently. We are not bound by the systems of violence, dominance, and oppression. We are free to change our world, to be changed, and to offer that change to others.
So, even as the widow weeps at the death of the seventh brother, she is offered hope. She will not be destitute. She will not be forgotten; she will not be someone else’s possession.
She will live.
We will live.
I am in the process of becoming a community chaplin with The Order of Hildegard. This program is designed to help form people into spiritual leaders that lead and serve from the margins. It’s for the people who don’t quite fit with the traditional church because of trauma, disability, or identity. If you, as my community, would like to help me fulfill the financial obligation this chaplaincy program has, you can give at the link below. Thank you for the myriad ways you support me.
Amen Amen Amen 🙏