Canter Bridge

Jesus’ stunning rejoinder to the conundrum regarding a wife whose husbands seem to fall like raindrops hints at the liability of low expectations. A hostile delegation stages the scene of a serial widow’s multiple marriages and fairly taunts Jesus to resolve the dilemma of which of her husbands will accompany her ‘in the resurrection’.

In his response, Jesus suggests that they have thought too little and too dismally about the power of God and what it has in store for those whom death cannot kill:

Jesus answered them, ‘You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.’

Jesus’ meaning is not entirely obvious. But he seems to suggest that marriage is a concession to earthly limitations. The satisfaction, pleasure, and joy that husband and wife know in their best moments will—so Jesus seems to suggest—be generalized and available outside of the small social constructs we design to contain them.

This is no libertine portrait of ‘free love’. It is rather the barest hint that things can be much better than we have known them to be. Marriage is sacramental, perhaps. It points at a larger, more fulsome reality. It is not the thing signified but the mere signifier.

The angels know something of this unfettered joy. You will be like them, Jesus tells his adversaries, if you have a share in the resurrection.

Small expectations of the kind his questioners bring to him appear, when bathed by this light, ludicrous and sad. One ought, therefore, to expect more. One learns to long for those things that, in this moment, angel eyes alone can see.