A few years ago I came across something online
called “Eternal Earthbound Pets;” pet insurance for the rapture. For $135 for
the first pet (and $20 each additional at the same address), a group of
well-meaning and well-organized, animal-loving atheists will care for your pet
for the duration of its life, if you are raptured up to heaven in the end
times.
The frequently asked questions page considered
such things as,
“How
long will it take someone to get to my pet, after the rapture happens?”
“Since
we assume chaos will reign immediately after the rapture, we can make no
precise predictions as to response time, but have committed certified atheist
pet rescuers in a certain mile radius from our clients. Your animal will be rescued in as
timely a manner as possible and after no more than 12 hours.”
“What
if it turns out a relative of mine is left behind and wants to care for my
pet?”
“Unless
otherwise specified, unraptured relatives will have the right to claim and care
for your pet, but if they choose not to, we guarantee to fulfill the contract
and provide quality care for your earthbound pet.”
This arrangement struck me as a delicious win-win
for all involved.
For Christians planning to be raptured, what a
great service this is!
And sure, it’s a bit of a gamble, because while
the end times certainly could come in
our lifetime, there is no guarantee – so you may be out $135. But
isn’t it worth $135 for the peace of mind that you have knowing you’re a prepared
and responsible pet owner? Because
really, who wants to come into glory worrying about poor Fido starving to death
back home in a post-apocalyptic nightmare?
How much better that all the doomed humans
fighting it out against the anti-Christ and his evil minions have something
good to occupy themselves with besides their own too-late and terrifying circumstances?
(Although, if we’re completely honest, it’s a bit of a double bind, because of course, you’d like everyone to be saved, and you’d may even
make some effort in this life to share the gospel with as many people as
possible, but secretly, you hope that if anyone is stubborn and unfortunate enough to hold out on God it will be your
pet-rescuer. What a disaster it would be if, when gathered
in the golden streets at the throne of our Lord and Savior, you were to turn
your head and see your certified atheist pet rescuer standing right there next
to you among the saved?
God-forbid!)
Thankfully, because the atheists involved sign a
contract guaranteeing they do not believe in Jesus Christ as Lord, and are in
fact committed avowed atheists, mutual trust joins mutual stereotyping to
create this almost foolproof system and you, and Fido, will probably be all
right.
But let us not forget that is a win for the Atheists
as well! Those who volunteer to
care for the pets of raptured Christians, of course, have nothing to lose and
everything to gain, since in their mind they will never be called to fulfill
this extreme and, let’s face it, kind of big commitment, as they do not believe
such an occasion will ever actually arise! It’s a small gamble for them too, because of course, they
could be wrong, but they’re preparing for that, so all in all, pretty risk-free,
if you think about it.[1]
We’re all just anonymously benefiting from each other’s faulty belief systems.
That is what the Sadducees question to Jesus
today reminds me of. Supposedly high stakes, but utterly risk free questioning.
Sadducees were in charge of the temple. They were
educated and devout- united with Pharisees in their hatred of Jesus, but
divided from them over many other things, including belief in resurrection. The
Sadducees saw authority only in the Pentateuch, the first 5 books of Scripture,
believed to be written by Moses. And since the Pentetuch doesn’t mention
anything about it, resurrection after death must not be real.
The stage is set.
And now the Sadducees approach Jesus with a
riddle of sorts, a real stumper.
And the catch is, they’ve got nothing
at all invested in the answer. They don’t even believe in resurrection to begin
with! It’s a nothing to lose question for them.
So here goes the question.
Woman’s husband dies. Law of Moses says the brother should marry to continue the
family line for the husband. Brother marries. Brother dies childless. Second
brother marries. Dies
childless. This goes on seven
times, (one bride for seven brothers). Now
in the “resurrection,” they say, whose
wife will she be?
You can imagine, when they’re finished setting up
the scenario, that the listeners and onlookers are silent and grinning,
watching the hot ticket rabble-rousing Rabbi Jesus as he is confronted with
this resurrection-busting question, “Oooh!
What’s he gonna he say?!”
But something goes awry.
Jesus doesn’t take the bait.
Instead he goes underneath their whole argument
to the very foundation of what’s real, what’s at stake for us all.
Those who belong to “this age” Jesus says, deal
with this marriage thing. But in
the age to come there will be no need of it.
In other words, this thing
we call marriage? This social contract to protect widows, this mechanism to
continue the family line, this law to preserve and protect people? That’s
completely irrelevant and unnecessary in the resurrection. In fact, Life itself will not be recognizable.
With our limited imaginations,
and locked inside time and space, and our own human constructions, we can’t
even begin to fathom that life means
anything other than what life means to us right now.
The Sadducees assumed life
eternal just means this, only
longer. This, forever and ever.
More eating and sleeping and working and raising kids and paying parking
tickets and planning anniversary parties and feeding pets and seeing chiropractors and asking
for raises.
Once, as I was planning a
difficult visit that dearly I wanted to go well, a wise friend reminded me not
to keep adding days on in attempt to make it go better, “Kara, remember, it’s
not about quantity, it’s about quality.”
Resurrection makes that
shift, taking us out of quantity and into quality. It alters substance
completely, it changes all the rules, not merely a never-ending quantity of the
same lurching efforts, it is qualitatively different than life as we know it.
The resurrection is, to the
Sadducees, just an idea, something to argue over, something to debate, something
that separates them from the people around them, the fools, who believe in this
silly notion, and something which others, who do believe in it, can use to
judge them. It’s hypothetical and
risk-free, and ultimately requires nothing from them.
And there is so much irony in this moment, not least of which is that when Luke reports
this story, the temple itself, meant to last forever, is gone, and along with
it, the role of its caretakers, the Sadducees; there is no more need for them.
They have fallen out of collective consciousness enough that Luke has to remind
his readers who they were and what they believed. And yet, here they stand in their time-groundedness,
throwing around their hypothetical arguments as though they’ve got no skin in
the game of life and death.
No way is resurrection real
and dangerous; they’re confident of that.
What’s real is this business
of people dying – that’s indisputable. Marrying and being childless are real.
Having mouths to feed, a legacy to leave behind, a widow to care for. Dying young with nothing to show for
it, being forgotten generations later, that’s frighteningly real.
What’s real is that each of
them is making their way in the world in their own connections and isolation,
loss and fears, relationships and obligations, duties and dreams, and the cold
hard truth it all comes down to that ultimately, every one of them, like every
one of us, will one day die. And
the truth is not a single one of us knows what happens after that.
And instead of bringing
questions from those real and vulnerably places, they stand there with their
clever riddle, and it is inconceivable to them that resurrection would have anything
to do with you and me right here and now.
But Resurrection, it turns
out, is the realest thing there is.
And he is standing in front
of them.
The most gripping irony of
all in this conversation is that the one whom they question about hypothetical
resurrection, is in fact the real embodiment of it. The love of God alive and in
the flesh. They can’t imagine or accept that there is anything beyond the life we see and know here and now, even though right here and now, God eternal is in their
midst.
And then he says this
startling and wondrous thing: God is the
God of the living, not the dead. God is the God who comes in and shares
life. God brings life out of
death, is always creating anew, takes what is dead and shaping new life. The
God of the living is with us, even now, as God is with all those who’ve gone
before, whose lives are taken into the living one as well.
Our faith, our trust, our
hope, is not in something that we
guess or argue may or may not happen after we die. It’s not in our own strength of belief or lack of doubt, our
foolproof arguments or racked up good deeds, our hope is not in any other form
of insurance we’ve got for our own souls, or for those we love, to make sure
we’re not overlooked now or left behind one day. Our faith, our trust, our hope, is in the living God, the
God of the living, who is deeply invested in life with us, who’s got skin in
this game.
And one day, when time is no
more, these broken and patched together systems we’ve set up in this life to try
to ensure people’s security, protect people’s humanity, offer a chance at
something like wholeness, will cease to be. They will not need to be. The
barriers to wholeness will be torn down, and with them our meager human attempts
to create, uphold, or mirror it.
So, whose wife will this
hypothetical (and may I add, unfortunate) woman be when all is said and done?
They ask Jesus.
In other words, Whose
property? Whose responsibility? Questions of status quo. Questions of the dead. Questions
of theory and making do, and life going on forever just exactly like it is now.
Not whom will she love? Who
will she share her deepest self with, who will accept and know her, who will
she embrace and uphold? What might life be like when all the dying is past? Who
is with me in my losses and when I think I can’t go on? Not questions that face
their own humanity and hers, not questions of the living.
My friends,
he answers, you misunderstand, completely.
Marriage,
he says, is part of this side of things.
In its very best
manifestations, it is a sacred covenant between us and God that tries to
surround and protect here in the temporary realm, something of the eternal. It
creates a vessel that can hold and tend the eternal core of it all, which is
love.
But love itself is what
abides. Love, wholeness, life,
each person fully known and completely cared for, each person joyfully
contributing, and the harmony and balance of all things once again in sync, as
we live side by side and face to face with our Creator. Life - completely, qualitatively different.
So instead of the risk-free
questions that require nothing from us, the ones that that separate us out from
each other and let us walk away unscathed and unaffected and unseen, let’s ask
the real questions, the ones that shake us to the core, that fill us with hope
and dread, that bring us face to face with ourselves and each other, and the
anxiety of not knowing.
And Resurrection
happens.
So we might as well raise
the life and death issues, the things that make and break us, the places of
death that cry out for life. Let's ask the questions that hurt.
Because
whether we realize it or not, friends, we’ve got it all invested. Everything.
Like it or not, we’re all
in.
And so is God.
[1] The owner of the site was recently forced to publically declare it as
a joke, admitting that it began as a kind of social experiment and was not
real, when the New Hampshire Department of Insurance subpoenaed him to come in discuss complying with insurance policy law and register the product. Since then the site has,
unfortunately in my eyes, closed down business. But it tapped into a market,
and now there are several altruistic, all-volunteer versions of the service
available to fill in the need if and when it should arise.
No comments:
Post a Comment