When reading a mathematical or logical proof, if the author says “Clearly, ….” you should check the statement that follows. Often it’s not clear. Sometimes it’s not even correct.

This advice applies to both reading logical arguments and making them. The things we think are obvious can hide blindspots.

The Sadducees in this passage are making a logical argument against the resurrection. They are beginning with premises in Moses’s teachings about the responsibility of a man to marry his brother’s widow and arriving at what they consider to be a contradiction: If there is a resurrection, this hypothetical woman will have seven husbands. Clearly preposterous in the mind of these men.

For the idea of a women marrying several men sequentially, they cite Moses, apparently understanding this to be a somewhat unusual practice. No justification is given for the idea that marriage lasts beyond death or the idea that a woman married to multiple men is preposterous. This critical element of their argument is based on elements of their context that they believe to be fixed universals, but are instead just incidental features of the society that they live in.

In twenty-first century North America, we have different ideas about what marriage is and the logic doesn’t follow. It didn’t follow for Jesus either. Those assumptions about societal structure around marriage are exactly the ones he points out in his critique of the argument.

Jesus provides a counter argument starting from completely different premises. God is the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God is not the good of the dead, but the living. Therefore those long ago patriarchs must count as living. This too is a carefully constructed argument, but unlike the one put forward by the Sadducees, it relies only on statements about the nature of God.

The resurrection is real, Jesus argues, because of who God is.

I’m not sure I buy the details of his argument. It seems as though he’s playing fast and loose with definitions and timing and words. But that bigger idea that the argument can and should be based on the nature of God is something I’ll have to think about for a bit.

But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

Matthew 22:31-32 Full Text Matthew 22:23-33 (NIV)

This week’s reading has a bunch of ideas about life and death and justice all tied up in a passage I’m not super familiar with. So let’s shake it and see what comes out.

First of all, notice that this passage comes from John 5. Even though we’ve just come through Easter, this passage occurs before Christ’s death and resurrection. The basic context is that Jesus was healing people on the Sabbath. The religious leaders were unhappy about that and in response Jesus gives this long philosophical speech. Our passage this week begins in the middle of that speech. Compared to the violence and

I particularly like Wilda Gafney’s translation in verses 27 through 29. The reminder that judgement in verse 27 is about justice combined with the word change from condemnation to judgement in verse 29 reframe this passage from one about punishment to one about setting things right.

And God has given the Son authority to render justice, because he is the Son of Woman. Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out — those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgement.

John 5: 27-29 (Wilda C. Gafney) Full text John 5:25-29 (NIV)

Jesus doesn’t seem to be talking about a future time in this passage, certainly not a far future time. Bringing this message of justice, to the dead is something that Jesus understands as being already underway. Even before his own death and resurrection.

Justice is available. Even now. Even for the dead.

Another piece that I find interesting here is that Jesus’s capacity to enact justice is linked explicitly to his humanity as the Son of Man. I think I’ll stew on that part a little more, but if it’s Jesus’s humanity that gives him the authority to bring justice, what does that mean for our own human capacity for justice? Or our own human responsibility?

This story about Jesus appearing to Thomas talks a lot about belief. Thomas doesn’t believe until he sees the risen Christ with his own eyes and touches him with his own hands. And then he does believe.

That’s a bit of a loaded word isn’t it? Believe.

Thomas, by the evidence of his own senses, comes to accept that Jesus is alive, but when Christians talk about belief (“Do you believe in Jesus?”) there’s a lot more specific ideas tied up in that. We define ourselves by what we believe, not just about whether or not Jesus was resurrected, but about a whole host of other theological details: doctrines of trinity, and atonement, and cosmology.

Recently, I’ve found it fruitful to think about my own Christianity in terms of something besides belief: practice, hope. I’m starting to wonder if maybe we’ve made belief too central in Christianity. I’m not ready to say that belief isn’t good or necessary, just that maybe it shouldn’t be the singular thing that we use to define ourselves.

This week’s passage talks a lot about belief. It’s clearly a preoccupation of the authors of the text. But Jesus, both times he appears in this passage offers peace first. Belief comes later.

A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

John 20:26-27 Full Text John 20:19-31