Can We Still Believe in an Afterlife?

 November 6, 2022

            I have two riddles for you.  You have to pay close attention.  Here’s the first.  A wealthy family lived in a big circular house. They had a maid, a butler, and a gardener. The parents were going to a party, so they tucked all the kids into bed and kissed them goodnight. When the parents came home, all the kids were gone.  They had been kidnapped. The authorities asked the maid, the butler, and gardener what they were doing at the time of the kidnapping. The maid said she was dusting the corners.  The butler said he was organizing the library.  And the gardener said he was watering the plants. One of them was lying and kidnapped the kids.  Which one was it? 

            It had to be the maid who claimed she was dusting the corners.  The family lived in a circular house, so there would have been no corners to dust.

            Since we just had Halloween, here’s a scary one.  You walk into an old, haunted house. It has no power or plumbing. Once inside, you see three doors. Each door has a number on it. Behind each door is a way for you to die. Behind door number one, you die by getting eaten by a lion. Behind door number two, you die by strangulation. Behind door number three, you die by electric chair. You can’t turn back, so you have to go through a door. Which door do you go through?

            Door three, death by electric chair.  The house has no power, so an electric chair wouldn’t work.

            We see a few riddles in the Bible too.  In fact, the Sadducees presented Jesus with one in our text from Luke 20.  This is our first encounter with the Sadducees in Luke’s gospel.  They were closely aligned with the aristocratic and priestly classes.  They were well known for one of their beliefs: that there is no afterlife.  Another group, the Pharisees, did believe in an afterlife, and the two groups were often in conflict over this.  In our text for today, the Sadducees presented Jesus with a riddle that was designed to reduce belief in the afterlife to an absurdity, to make it look ridiculous.

            First, let me insert a footnote here.  To understand their riddle, we must understand the Jewish practice of levirate marriage.  Before a belief in the afterlife developed, the Israelites believed that one lived on in the memory of one’s descendants, your children and grandchildren.  So if a man died without children, the levirate marriage law kicked in.  It stipulated that the dead man’s brother was obligated to take his dead brother’s wife and have children by her.  I can see some of you women cringing!  The purpose of levirate marriage was to provide children to keep the dead brother’s memory alive and to keep property within the family.  Occasionally a brother would refuse to fulfill his duty to his dead brother.  The book of Deuteronomy has a procedure for dealing with that brother.  The widow would report him to the town elders.  The elders would then confront him.  If he still refused to do his duty,

…then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, pull his sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and declare, “This is what is done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.” (25:5-10)

            Henceforth, that brother would be known as “the house of him whose sandal was pulled off.”  I’m not making this up!  It’s right out of the book of Deuteronomy.  While it sounds a bit humorous to us, it was (pardon the pun) “deadly” serious business back then.

            Now, here is the Sadducees’ riddle.  Remember, their desire was to make belief in the afterlife look absurd.  A man died, leaving behind no children.  The levitate marriage law kicks in, and the man’s brother marries his dead brother’s widow.  He likewise dies leaving behind no children.  The next brother marries her.  He too dies leaving behind no children.  All seven brothers married the same woman each leaving behind no children.  Then the woman herself died.  Now, here was their question to Jesus.  In the afterlife, which they thought was ridiculous, whose wife will this woman be?  She had seven husbands, so whose wife will she be in the afterlife?

            We must assume their riddle was disingenuous.  They were not engaging in meaningful theological discourse.  Their attempt was to make Jesus look absurd.

            Let’s do what they didn’t do.  Let’s have meaningful theological discourse about what happens when one dies.  We just call aloud the names of people we love who died this past year.  This is important.  Can we still believe in an afterlife?  Can critically educated men and women still believe in an afterlife?  It belongs to the historical creeds of the church.  The Apostles’ Creed affirms belief in God, belief in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the communion of saints, and then it says, “I believe in the life everlasting.”  Do we still?  If we were to write the creeds today, with our knowledge of science and physics, would we include that line? 

Some would argue that we get one life, and we better live it to the fullest.  “Live, love, and engage,” they say, “because this is all we get.”  Some might admit that they have no desire to experience what the church sometimes presents as the afterlife—pearly gates, golden streets, endless singing with angels.  “I would just as soon not,” they say.  Some areas of psychology suggest that it is ultimate self-centeredness.  We think we deserve to be preserved through eternity.  Many of the faithful believe that the afterlife is for them but not people who are different from them.  “I’ll take my heavenly crown, thank you,” they say, “but you don’t get one.” 

Or would we agree with Shakespeare, who had Macbeth say of life,

Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Before we decide, would you walk with me a little deeper?  Let’s take this discourse further and consider Jesus’ response to the Sadducees’ riddle. Jesus lifts their little conversation to a high level.  For Jesus, this conversation was not about trickery or proving one’s point by making another’s position look absurd.  Jesus touched truth.  He affirmed that God, who created marriage, also provides for the other side of life, that the One who gives life also receives it.  Forget pearly gates, streets of gold, and endless singing with the angels.  What Jesus described to the Sadducees is far higher, greater, grander than anything we can imagine in this earthly realm, where we are concerned with marriages, mortgages, and mortality.  Those are earthly concerns, temporal matters, and, yes, they do occupy our attention now.  But put that on hold for a moment and consider the possibility of a greater truth, a realm beyond marriages, mortgages, and mortality.  Just as a newborn infant cannot yet value the beauty of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy or the ethical challenge of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird or the complexity of quantum physics, let us be open to the possibility that we cannot yet grasp the fullness, the totality, of what God is doing, the possibility that a realm exists above and beyond this one.  Biblical writers used the best language and symbols they had to describe it.  But they didn’t describe it, not really.  They tried.  We get glimpses of this realm from time to time, a foretaste, one might say.  The Celtic Christians used to call these glimpses, thin places, the moments in life when heaven and earth meet.  I’ve felt it at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.  I felt it as I walked the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem.  I’ve felt it holding my children.  I feel it sometimes when I hear this choir sing.  I feel it sometimes at the hospital when I wait with someone taking his or her final breaths.  They come together, heaven and earth, the beyond and here.  A glimpse.  It’s all we get on this side.  But it’s enough, for me.  It’s enough for me to hope.

            What’s it going to be like?  I can’t answer that question.  Don’t even want to try.  That’s like asking a newborn to describe quantum physics.  We can try to describe it, like the biblical writers did.  Like Native Americans did.  Like all the world’s great religions have done.  But our best efforts fall childishly short.  So, we take the glimpses we’re given, and we hope.  We trust we can still believe in an afterlife.

Closing Prayer 

            God, so far beyond us that we cannot fully understand you and so deep within us that we cannot escape you, help us have faith in what we cannot see.  Help us have faith in you and what you are doing.  Amen.