Will the Circle be Unbroken

Some years ago, Steve and I watched a fantastic public television series about County Music. One recurring theme from that series was a song from the Carter Family made even more famous by Johnny Cash – Will the Circle be Unbroken. You may be familiar with the chorus… Will the circle be unbroken / By and by, Lord, by and by / There's a better home a-waiting / In the sky, Lord, in the sky

The story of the song – told in the lyrics of the verses – is of someone standing at a window as the hearse carrying their mother’s body passes by. There is a plea to the undertaker to drive slowly because the person is so sad to see the woman go – they cannot hide their sorrow, their grief, their loneliness. The chorus is a cry to be united with this loved one – to be together in heaven – to be reunited in the resurrection.

So, it is a song that addresses our own questions that may arise from reading this text from Luke’s gospel. People speculate about life after death, heaven, resurrection all the time, don’t they? Once while doing a student ministry term in White Rock a woman came to me during the hospitality time to ask me what I thought heaven would be like. I think her question – her desire to know – was genuine so I responded as candidly as I could that I had no idea – that I knew it was beyond me so I didn’t give much thought to it – that I was too busy trying to figure out how to follow Jesus in this life without worrying about the landscape of life in the resurrection. I didn’t want my image of the afterlife – bound by my experience and limited imagination – to frame what none of us can envision.

I also remember a man telling me about his hope that when he died, he would see his wife again – a comforting and reassuring hope. He died shortly after that conversation and I felt somehow soothed by the thought that his hope had been realized. I am sure that soldiers anticipating a battle or carrying wounded to a medic think about death and what will come after death. I imagine that they hope for a heaven of beauty and peace and familiarity – a heaven based on their best understanding of life filled with the people and promise of their experience. If they were to ask Jesus about life in the resurrection, I feel sure they would be asking with a sincere plea for comfort and hope and Jesus would offer just such assurance to ease their suffering and despair.

However, when the Sadducees in Luke pose their question about resurrection life, they aren’t being sincere or genuine. They are like reporters that ask a question to get a soundbite or elicit some ill-considered response. They are trying to trip Jesus up because they don’t believe in resurrection but their rivals, the Pharisees, do. Who will Jesus side with and will his answer stir unrest?

Jesus’ audience is hostile. The Sadducees reject the belief that God will raise up the righteous who have died; for them it is an innovation that has no basis in tradition – no basis in scripture. They only accept the first five books of the Bible – the ones everyone thought Moses wrote. And since nowhere in those five books is resurrection mentioned – they believe that the resurrection can’t be real.

Appealing to the laws for Levirate marriage, they seek to show that this new belief – in resurrection – leads to absurd conclusions. In their question, the Sadducees are ridiculing the idea with their example of seven brothers who have all at one point been married to the same woman. Their question relates to a law from Deuteronomy that was no longer adhered to even in their time – an exaggerated example meant to mock resurrection and to ridicule – to undermine – Jesus.

The Sadducees assume that the same relationships and realities that hold on earth will prevail in the resurrection. They contend – in much the same way that many do today – that if by some miracle there is a heaven – an eternity – a resurrection – then it has to be just like this life. What you see is what you get – for eternity.

“What will resurrection life be like?” This is an incredibly understandable question given that we are naturally curious about what comes next, both for our loved ones and ourselves. But the passage from Luke gives little specific or concrete details. It revolves on a hypothetical question asked to discredit Jesus while simultaneously trying to embarrass their resurrection-believing rivals, the Pharisees.

Even though the passage doesn’t paint a vivid picture, it does insist that resurrection life is qualitatively different from life as we know it. This is the mistake Jesus points out the Sadducees are making. Their question is premised on the assumption that eternal life is an endless state of “more of the same.” But resurrection life, Jesus insists, is qualitatively different. The ordinary events and relationships by which we track our journey though this mortal life – marriage, childbirth, graduations, retirements and so on – do not characterize our eternal lives because resurrection life is not merely an extension of this life but something wholly different – something, in fact, holy.

Jesus tells them that all the social and legal and relational arrangements which may be good and necessary – even wonderful in our earthly life – remain in earthly life. He insists that the resurrection does not restore the social and legal configurations we now know. The life which the resurrected lead in God’s presence is something altogether different and we cannot allow the limitations and adaptations designed for this age to corrupt our vision of the one who is not God of the dead, but of the living.

“So, is Jesus saying we won’t know our spouses, friends, and family members?” Most of us have a hard time imagining eternity without our loved ones. But as important as that question is, Jesus isn’t addressing it here. He does not say we will not know those who have been dear to us, only that resurrection life will not be marked by the same features as this one. Yet, given his next statement about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it seems that the relationships defining our current life may persist, certainly with God and likely with each other.

Jesus argues from Exodus, chapter 3 that, quite apart from the Sadducees’ naive view of resurrection, the Torah does indeed imply a belief in eternal life beyond death. He intimates that all life consists of a gracious friendship with God – a relationship which Abraham, Isaac and Jacob still enjoy because it is a relationship which death cannot end – the circle remains unbroken.

When John Owen, the great Puritan pastor and teacher lay dying, he was dictating some last letters to friends. He said to his secretary: "Write: I am still in the land of the living." Then he stopped and said: "No, change that to read – I am still in the land of those who die, but I hope soon to be in the land of the living." 

The Sadducees showed in their question to Jesus that they expected – perhaps even wanted – an eternity as close to earthly life as possible. But whatever the resurrection is, it is utterly other than anything we have known. The land of the living, as Owen calls the resurrection life, has God at its centre – the One we have always known, however dimly.

Whatever the limits we may experience about describing resurrection life, this passage from Luke invites us to proclaim with confidence our faith that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob raised Christ from death and promises to do the same for us. For God is the God not of the dead, but of the living, both then and now. Life in the resurrection is where what is real – what is love – will be lifted into the light and all relationships and all faces will be transfigured by God’s divine grace.

In that transformation – we become those who are fully alive – the circle will truly be unbroken. Amen