The Holy Gospel in the three-year lectionary this past Sunday (St. Luke 20:27-40) has invited a consideration of holy marriage and its meaning and significance in view of the Resurrection, as our Lord responds to the sarcastic and disingenuous question of the Sadducees. They mockingly ask about married life “in the Resurrection,” even though they “deny that there is a resurrection,” seeking to trick and trap and discredit the Lord Jesus, who shuts them down on all counts in His straightforward response. As for the Resurrection itself, He points to the account of Moses and the burning bush, where the Lord, Yahweh, identifies Himself as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” though “He is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to Him” (Exodus 3:6; St. Luke 20:37-38). That Word of Christ underscores the significance of the Feast of All Saints, which confesses the Life that belongs to all who belong to Him by faith.
But as the Sadducees asked specifically about husbands and wives and the nature of marriage in the Resurrection, our Lord also speaks to that, highlighting the mysterious newness of the New Creation, much as St. Paul does in 1 Corinthians 15:35-53 (and consider Ephesians 5:22-33). At ground level, the most basic fact is that the Resurrection of the body and the Life everlasting of body and soul are fully realized, all wrapped up, and centered entirely in the crucified and risen Body of Christ Jesus. This fact illumines the meaning of marriage in this body and life, which eventually gives way to the singular Marriage of the Lamb in His Kingdom without end.
“Those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the Resurrection from the dead,” Jesus says, “neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the Resurrection” (St. Luke 20:35-36). There’s a whole lot packed into that statement. To begin with, there is the distinction between husbands (who marry in this earthly age) and wives (who are given in marriage), one aspect of the various differences between men and women, originating in God’s ordering of His creation to signify and point forward to the beautiful relationship of Christ and His Bride, the Church. A father entrusts his daughter to a man who becomes her husband and head, whereas a son leaves his father and mother to receive and cleave to his wife, and the two become one flesh.
In the Resurrection, there is no longer any need or place for human marriages, as all creation is fulfilled in the Mystical Union of Christ and His Bride. The full number of the elect are glorified and confirmed in their fellowship with the glorious Body of Christ Jesus. Procreation is no more, as death is dead and gone. And every eye is fixed and focused upon the Lamb upon His Throne. In these respects, the “sons of the Resurrection” will be “equal to angels,” as Jesus clearly says. In other respects, however, they will differ from the holy angels and excel them, since they will have glorified bodies of flesh and blood, sharing the same human nature as the Incarnate Son of God, who is not the Savior of angels but of the children of man (Hebrews 2:10-17).
With these aspects of the Resurrection in view, we recognize that both holy marriage and the vocation of celibacy point beyond themselves to the heavenly and eternal Matrimony of Christ and His Church. Earthly marriage is only “till death do us part,” serving as a living icon of the Lord’s love and the Church’s faith within that divine Marriage. Those who bear the holy cross and calling of celibacy, by contrast, look forward to being “given in marriage” to that heavenly Bridegroom when all things are finally fulfilled. And in the meantime, they dedicate themselves to loving and serving His Bride, the Church on earth, in chastity and purity of life. So should all of our earthly vocations – and all of our earthly relationships – embody and confess the hope and promise of the Resurrection. We neither despise our own callings and stations, nor covet those of our neighbors, but we embrace this earthly life in faith and love, bearing the holy Cross in peace, and eagerly anticipating the consummation of all things in the Resurrection of all flesh at the last, when all our familial bonds will be superseded by the fellowship of the one Body of Christ!