Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”
NL Daily Devotion for Wednesday, March 6, 2024
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
This concept used to bother me. When I was 19 and planning my wedding, I subscribed to the notion that I had found my one and only “soul mate” and that we would be together not only for the rest of our lives, but for all eternity. If there was no marriage in the resurrection, wouldn’t I be bereft of my “other half”? The one who “completed me”? What kind of heaven would that be???
Now I’m 52 and divorced, almost 20 years in 12-Step Recovery, and possibly even a little wise after all my life experience. My perspective has entirely shifted. No Hollywood (or religious) notions of perfect relationships in which the partners are predestined for eternal love from conception inform my ideas about what it means to love someone in a partnership relationship.
Jesus, too, seems to be trying to point out the chasm between human social norms and divine will. Marriage in his day was about generating offspring and social protection for women. Wives were property but also obligations and so would pass from brother to brother so they didn’t wind up on the street (as one of the many destitute “widows and orphans” God was constantly nagging everyone to take care of). For me now, this proclamation of his feels liberating for women. “Guess what? Someday it won’t be necessary for a woman to be defined in terms of her relationship with a man. She will be completely whole and loved for her own sake. Those seven brothers have no claim on her at all.” Oh and by the way, those brothers won’t be defined in terms of their wives or children or any social relationships either. They, too, will be whole and loved for their own sake. Does this mean we won’t love one another in the resurrection? I hardly think so. Will we choose to have romantic relationships? I have no idea. I am just grateful that we don’t have to wait for the resurrection for Jesus’ ideas to be true. Today in the here and now we are at a point where we, women and men, get to live as whole, beautiful, and beloved individuals regardless of our relationships.
How have my religious beliefs informed my ideas about marriage and relationships?