Devotional Thoughts: Sadducees ask Jesus about the Resurrection

Previously, the Pharisees and the Herodians tried to trap Jesus about paying taxes to Rome. He gave the famous answer: Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.

Jesus answered their question in a way they didn't expect.

Now, it is the Sadducees shot at trying to stump Jesus.

In Matthew 22:23-28, the Sadducees who don't believe in resurrection try to confuse the issue by using the "absurd hypothetical" ploy.

They framed the question with a hypothetical of SEVEN brothers who in sequence marry the same woman and all die and then the woman dies. They then ask, who does she belong to husband-wife wise?

Jesus wasn't fooled. He went after the premise of the question by responding: in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage.

Thus, Jesus (1) affirms resurrection and (2) indicates the institution of marriage is only for our "earthly" life.

As I think about this passage, I have to wonder, why do the Sadducees have a problem with the resurrection as a theological concept?

Running a google search with the terms "why don't sadducees believe in resurrection" yielded many web pages. I was drawn to this item because, I usually respect the perspectives featured in Christianity Today. The item is an interview with N.T. Wright. I'm told some of his views are controversial but in the context of this discussion, I thought he made some interesting points.

The article isn't specifically about Sadducess and their views on the resurrection but it gives some hints as to why they might be doubters of the resurrection.

(1) The Hebrew Scriptures don't say a great deal about the resurrection. Excerpt:

You can search the Old Testament from end to end, and even if you take a maximal view of passages like the "I know that my redeemer liveth" bit in Job, you're still left with a very small selection over against the vast mass of the Old Testament in which the question is not even raised.
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The view that I came to is that the main thing the whole Old Testament is concerned with is the God of Israel, as the Creator God who has made a good creation, and that what matters about human life really is that it's meant to be lived within God's good, lovely, created world.

(2) The concepts of immortality of the soul and bodily resurrection was separated in the minds of some philosophers. Excerpt:

It's certainly true that Greeks did not believe in resurrection. It's not true, however, that all Greek thinkers believed in the immortality of the soul. That concept is specifically developed in Platonism. Some Greeks believed that nothing at all happened after death. It's also true that by no means did all Jews believe in the resurrection of the body. Some Jews like Philo of Alexandria, a Platonist philosopher, believed in the immortality of the soul.

(3) Belief in resurrection could motivate attempts to alter the existing power structure of which the Sadducees had a vested interest in keeping. Excerpt:

Liberals like Crossan seem to imagine that bodily resurrection is just a way of saying the present world is irrelevant and what matters is the future postmortem existence. Like Marx, they think that if you tell people that all is going to be right in some future life, they won't worry about their social and political disquiet in the present.
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If you believe in resurrection, you believe that the living God will put his world to rights and that if God wants to do that in the future, it is right to try to anticipate that by whatever means in the present. It is your job as a Christian, in the power of the Spirit, to anticipate that glorious final state as much as you possibly can in the present. Live now by the power that is coming to you from the future, by the Spirit. And in the same way, live socially and politically because God is going to put the world to rights. That's the great theme of justice in new creation. It is up to us to produce signs of resurrection in the present social, cultural, and political world.

Because resurrection is a creation-affirming doctrine, it also goes with the desire to change injustice in the present.

Lord, thank you for assuring our future by what you did at the Cross. Help me to live in the present with courage to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly because our future is secure. Amen.