First Reading
Haggai 1:15b-2:9 (track one)
In the second year of Darius the king.
In the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet: “Speak now to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to all the remnant of the people, and say, ‘Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the LORD. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the LORD. Work, for I am with you, declares the LORD of hosts, according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not. For thus says the LORD of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the LORD of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the LORD of hosts.’” (ESV)
Job 19:23–27 (track two)
“Oh that my words were written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever!
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
My heart faints within me! (ESV)
Second Reading
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 (omitted verses not in italics)
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things?
But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.
Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. (ESV)
Gospel Text
Luke 20:27–38
There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”
And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead 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. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.” (ESV)
Comments and Questions for Discussion
First Reading
Haggai text (track one)
Haggai is one of the shortest books of the Bible. It consists of only two chapters. The entire book only includes two pairs of oracles. In each pair of oracles, the prophet describes an element of distress the people are experiencing in the first oracle. Haggai attributes the distress to the people’s failure to rebuild the temple after their return from exile. They have laid the foundations, but recognize that what they’ve started hardly compares to the glory of the temple that was lost, and they are dispirited. In the second half of each pair, the prophet offers consolation and encouragement. In the second oracle of the first pair (our reading), Haggai declares that the glory of the temple being built will surpass that of the one that one destroyed. In the second oracle of the second pair he declares that God will restore the dignity of the Davidic monarchy.
So our reading this week is Haggai’s consoling prophecy (he speaks in God’s name in this section) that if the people will undertake this discouraging work, God will indeed see the work glorified. This is a little different from the second half of the second pair, which says that finishing the temple will bring glory and dignity to the people through the Davidic line. But in either case, Haggai’s concern is to see the temple rebuilt.
I wonder if we can imagine or remember a setting where we have suffered a great loss and become discouraged in trying to recoup that loss? How would the prophet Haggai speak to us in those moments?
Job text (track two)
Oh, my. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to read this text at a funeral again without cringing inside. As I studied the Job text for this Divergence I came upon an article that turns its meaning quite inside out. And I’m convinced that the article’s author, Amy Erickson, is on to something.
We have read this text as Christians as evidence that supports a notion of bodily resurrection. “In my body, I shall see God,” or, “in my flesh I shall see God.” But what Erickson demonstrates convincingly is that this is not an expression of faith, of confidence, but instead it is Job’s declaration that he will be vindicated apart from the witness of his body to his own guilt.
Throughout the book of Job, the Psalms, and the general world view of the time of Job’s writing, one’s body was thought to be an indicator of one’s innocence or guilt. Job elsewhere acknowledges his body’s “witness” (there are many judicial references in the book of Job) against him. But in our passage this week he refutes it, wishing instead for an immutable witness to his innocence, that is, something inscribed in stone. He goes on to say that this stone witness will testify to his innocence in spite of his body’s degradation, and that he will appear before God “without his flesh.”
This rests on another translational difficulty in the text. The preposition translated “in” in “in my flesh” is nowhere else translated that way. Rather, it generally means “from.” Now, we can see how one might translate “from” in the sense that one might say, “From the tower’s height, I could see for miles.” But really, this “from” usually means “away from,” and that is how Erickson translates it. And translating it this way, “away from my flesh,” “apart from my flesh,” makes much better sense in the context of Job’s argument for his innocence in spite of the testimony of his body’s decay.
Job is not declaring that he will stand before God after his death, but rather that his “redeemer” (a legal phrase) will “at the last,” in the end, stand and exonerate him, by the testimony written on rock, in spite of, without his flesh.
I have done grave injustice, I fear, to Amy Erickson’s arguments here by so shortening them, but I hope I’ve stirred enough of your interest that you’ll go read the real article, which I LINK HERE. (Remember, you can read 100 articles a month on JSTOR.org with a free membership. That’s what I do.)
Second Reading
If you read these Divergences with any regularity, you know that I usually put omitted verses into the text in italics, so as to give you a better contextual view of the verses we do have. I decided not to do that this time. The meaning and interpretation of vv. 6 and 7 of chapter 2 are so obscure that commentators going all the way back to Saint Augustine have despaired of ever understanding them. Small wonder our lections choosers skipped that section!
But what we have this week is the author, writing in Paul’s name, consoling the people of Thessalonica concerning the “Day of the Lord.” The rhetoric and eschatology of this letter vary widely from that of 1 Thessalonians. This causes me to agree with many students of Paul’s letters that this was not written by Paul. Last week’s language of vengeance only reinforces this.
There is, however, in both letters an immediate expectation of the parousia, the revelation of Christ’s second coming. The church in Thessalonica is in confusion because it would appear that some of the things expected as harbingers of the end times have already occurred. Paul reminds them that there are other events that must come first, and these have not happened yet.
The lesson for us may be, “Stop worrying about the timing of Jesus’ return.” In light of the two recent predictions of the “Rapture” and the disastrous choices by some who accepted those predictions, this is particularly timely. But the larger lesson for me is that Paul’s understanding of the coming of the Kingdom evolves and comes to include the present moment, any present moment. Not that there will not be a “Day” on which God sets all things right, only that we need not wait for that Day to know its fruits.
So the greatest value I can find in the Thessalonian correspondence (both letters) is the contrast they provide to Paul’s later understanding of the “Day of the Lord.”
Gospel Text
Most of us, reading this text from Luke, find it a little familiar. This is the point at which the Sadducees try to trip Jesus up with the provision in Deuteronomy for the producing of a male heir to keep a man’s “name” alive by having a husband’s brothers raise up a son for him if he should die without that male heir. Sadducees, who only accept the first five books of the Bible as authoritative (the “Books of Moses”) reject the idea of the resurrection of the dead, as the find no warrant for this belief in those five books.
It is for this reason that Jesus is careful to respond to them with a text from Exodus, a book they count as authoritative. And when He demonstrates that resurrection is indeed supported by the Books of Moses, their response is, ‘You have spoken well.”
But Jesus’ answer to their riddle in Luke needs more careful consideration than simply accepting it as a response about resurrection. It varies in important ways from the version of the story as it occurs in Mark 12, and those differences ask us to look more closely at this text.
Firstly, Luke removes the criticism that opens and closes Mark’s version.
Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?
And
“You are quite wrong.”
By removing those criticisms, Luke makes Jesus appear to take their question more seriously rather than as a challenge. They meant it as such a challenge (their reaction, no longer being willing to ask Him any more questions, makes that clear) but Jesus treats this as a meaningful question.
Then Luke adds to Jesus’ response, and the additions may appear at first glance to carry some moral significance, some judgement, but upon more careful examination seem to me to point toward Luke’s understanding of the way people who live in the light of the resurrection live differently in this life than those who do not. In other words, this is not a teaching about whether or not there is marriage in heaven as it is in Mark. This is what I mean:
Luke adds this qualification to Mark’s description of the people in the riddle, “And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.” All that description of the people is only represented in Mark by the word, “They.” In Mark it is clear that “when they rise from the dead” there is no giving in marriage. But this isn’t so for Luke.
For Luke, being “counted as worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection of the dead” is a description of the current state of a believer, not their future, post-resurrection state. “Being considered worthy” is a phrase that only occurs two other times in the New Testament, but in both cases it is a description of people in this life. They are considered worthy of something yet to come. (Acts 5:1, 2 Thessalonians 1:5) So Luke here refers to those who know themselves redeemed by the death and resurrection of Jesus, but have not yet attained to it. It is these people who neither marry nor are given in marriage. Why? Because the maintaining of a man’s “name” is no longer important. Because a man’s family name does not die with his death.
By altering Jesus’ response in this way, Luke completely changes the purpose and tone. In Mark, Jesus response sharply to a kind of “gotcha” question, heaping criticism on His interlocutors. In Luke, Jesus turns the question on its head, demonstrating the way that the question itself depends on a fear (the loss of a man’s “name”) that is alleviated by the right understanding that death does not end anyone’s “name.” Only then does He go on to show why even the Books of Moses include a notion of resurrection.
I think it would be carrying this teaching a bit too far to suggest that in this Jesus tells us that marriage is no longer meaningful. Rather, I believe that in Luke’s version, Jesus only undermines the “preserving of one’s name” as a motivation for marriage.
For a more easily printable version of this Divergence, please CLICK HERE.
