This past Sunday (11/14/2004) our pastor challenged us from Mark 12:18-27 with these words. "The hope of the resurrection is a basic fact for all Christians, [so] make it your hope!" It's true. Though we as Christians say we believe "in the resurrection of the dead", perhaps the most notable difference between Paul's preaching and modern evangelical preaching is the neglect of full-bodied resurrection hope. Modern evangelical preaching tends to emphasize the cross of Christ as a means for individuals to be admitted into heaven after they die. That's it. That's our hope. In contrast, the language of resurrection in the New Testament is meant to refer to "a resurrected re-embodiment over which death would have no more power -- unlike the kind of disembodied state where death does indeed rule, forbidding re-embodiment." (p. 422, N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God.)
In Mark 12:18-27, the Sadducees' twist the Levarite law of marriage from Deut 25:5-10 to serve the reign of death. Though God originally sanctioned the law to provide the hope of embodied life for a widow and her deceased husband, the Sadducees use it to make God into a "god of the dead", denying His power for eternal life promised in His covenant to Abraham for all his children. Their imaginary story is the ultimate example of poetic injustice: it thoroughly abandons a covenant woman widowed to the grave and provides absolutely no hope for redemption. The Sadducees communicate their confidence in the complete victory of death over the promise of life by their symbolic use of 3 & 7: they enumerate the loss of three husband-brothers and second it by the total of seven brothers dying--all leaving no offspring. The only hope the widow had according to the Law, they suggest, was in the seven men, but they all died. In essence, the story of the Sadducees and their follow-up question says this to Jesus, "Abandon your foolish resurrection hope, for all life shall be swallowed up in death. God is the god of the dead, and we obey the Law of Moses according to that god to secure our reign. You preach a hope that is beyond the control of our Temple administration, and we perceive that to be a threat to the politics of our order. We will not tolerate your zealous justice for Ruth and Naomi in our house, lest every stone be torn down in Obed."
Posted by Eric Pyle at November 15, 2004 8:30 PM
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Passing Thoughts
What do the Sadducees have to do with the "Temple" administration? The Sanheidren are more properly in charge of the Temple. Well, for one, we see the Sadducees' first serious engagement with Jesus AFTER he overturned the tables at the Temple, stirring up the religious & political hornets nest. That indicates they had some power-interest in the temple administration. As a party, they were given the responsibility by the Roman government for appointing the High Priest (according to the order of Zadok, from whom Sadducees probably derive their name, not their lineage).
Posted by: Eric Pyle | December 16, 2004 9:13 PM