“How Do You Get Married In Massachusetts?”  That was the webpage Gillian and I read as we planned our wedding.  It’s posted on Mass Equality’s website.  It lists all the things you have to do in order to get married in Massachusetts.  The forms, the ID, the blood tests which are no longer required, and the most sticky thing: residency.  In order to say “I do” to each other, Gillian and I had to say “I do” to the state, promising that we intend to move there.  We did, and four Sundays ago we got married.  The next day we found out it wasn’t legal.  Because of typos.  So we refiled the whole thing, and we haven’t received our official copy yet, but according to Town Hall everything’s fine and we are married.

How do you get married in the Presbyterian Church?  Easy if you’re a man and woman.  If you’re two men or two women, you can have a “holy union.”  This is a ceremony that looks a lot like marriage.  Except you’re not allowed to call it a marriage.  Church policy says you specifically have to say “This is not a marriage.”  That’s because the church doesn’t approve of same-sex relationships.  Except it’s okay to bless same-sex relationships as long as you don’t call it a marriage.  You can thank parliamentary procedure for that little bit of logic. [1]

How do you get married in Ohio?  Easy if you’re a man and a woman, right?  Well, it wasn’t easy for Erin Barr and Jacob Nash.  This loving heterosexual couple from Warren, Ohio, just happened to have a transgender groom.  Jacob Nash had his birth certificate amended and his name legally changed.  The court wouldn’t have known he used to be a woman, except that he had been previously married (to a man) and the divorce decree was a required part of the marriage license application.  The judge denied their marriage license.  As far as I know, they are still in the process of getting his decision appealed—three years later. [2]

In the gospel reading today, the Sadducees want to know how you get married in heaven.  They ask Jesus a question about a hypothetical woman who had married seven brothers in a row.  All of this would have been above-board, and actually required by the law, which the Sadducees quote: “Moses said, ‘If a man dies childless, his brother shall marry the widow, and raise up children for his brother.’”  This law protected the dead man’s memory, and more importantly his property, by creating descendants for him.  It also protected the widow.  Widows weren’t normally considered marriageable, and without a husband widows had little hope of supporting themselves.  Although it left the widow little choice in her own marriage, it did ensure her survival.

But, the Sadducees ask, if God is really going to raise all eight of these people from the dead, then, whose wife will she be?  All seven marriages were contracted in the eyes of God; which one is God going to pick?

Of course, that’s not the question the Sadducees are really asking.  Here’s what they’re really asking: “Look how ridiculous this situation is.  Doesn’t that prove the resurrection can’t be true at all?”

Jesus answers both questions, the pretend question and the real question.  Contrary to what we might expect, Jesus’ answer does not overturn tradition.  It is actually deeply rooted in tradition: “You know neither the scriptures (the same Scriptures we’ve had all along) nor the power of God (the same God we’ve had all along).  In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage. (So she doesn’t belong to any of these men anymore.) ... God is God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, (present tense,) God not of the dead but of the living.”

Let’s back up a bit and remind ourselves what the resurrection is here.  Resurrection is God’s power to bring new life from the dead.  There are different beliefs about how exactly this happens, of course, all of them very speculative.  I believe God will literally raise the dead and give them a whole new way of being that we cannot even imagine.  I’m using the word “heaven” as a sort of shorthand for that whole new way of being.  But whether you believe this particular version of the resurrection or not, resurrection faith means you believe that God is stronger than death.  Nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God.

So how do you get married in heaven?  Well, you might assume marriage is the same in God’s eyes as it is on earth, and you might not think twice about it.  But here is the value of the Sadducees’ question: It does make us think twice.  And we do need to think twice about marriage.  At that time, and to some extent even now, marriage basically meant a man owned his wife, or wives.  Marriage defined who you belonged to.

Today, all these ridiculous marriage debates make us think twice about What Marriage Has Always Been...

I am convinced that Jesus Christ is doing something amazing precisely in and through the marriage debates that frustrate us so much.  The gospel is truly coming to life today precisely in and through all this logistical crap surrounding the weddings of transgender and same-sex people.  Here’s why.

Marriage is foundational to American society.  The right is right.  Our culture in the U.S. is absolutely obsessed with marriage.  Our culture in the U.S. is obsessed with marriage, and we Christians have bought into it, to the point where it gets in the way of our Christian faith.  We have made an idol out of marriage.

In case you think I’m putting this too strongly, let’s try out a few phrases.  Tell me what you think these phrases are about.  [pause after each]  Happy ending.  Happily ever after.  Someone to wipe away my tears.  I used to be incomplete, but now I am whole.

Now these are expressions of tremendous hope, complete commitment, and for Christians, this should be hope in God and commitment to God!  This is about the resurrection and the life!

Marriage, of course, is a wonderful and meaningful commitment.  I’m saying this as a very happy newlywed, you know.  Marriage is joyful and beautiful in all kinds of ways I’m not even going to get into because this isn’t supposed to be an hour-long sermon.  The promises of marriage take incredible trust, and yes, it does matter whether or not we keep them.  Where we get into trouble is when we try to locate our final fulfillment, our completion, our approval, our salvation, in... marriage.  Our salvation is not from marriage!  Our salvation is from God.  What is your only comfort, in life and in death?  The answer isn’t “I belong to my wife,” or “I belong to my husband,” or “I belong to some one of my seven husbands.”  The answer is “I belong to God.” [3]

Okay, if you’re sitting there nodding happily, let’s think for a moment about how we treat single women.  Especially divorced women and widows who have been married several times.  Especially women over the age of 40 who have never been married.  What first comes to our minds?  Do we think “What’s wrong with her?”  Do we think “Hey, I know just the right person to fix her up with?”  Do we think “Oh, poor dear, she must be so lonely?”  Does a woman need a spouse to be an okay human being?  In the eyes of American culture, yes.  She absolutely does.  In the eyes of God, no.  She absolutely does not.  God has already saved her.  God has pronounced Her approval.  No marriage could ever make God love her any more, or any less.  In God’s eyes, there is no such thing as needing to belong to one and only one man.  There is only the fact, the already-accomplished fact, of belonging to God.

Try asking an evangelical that sometime.  “Does marriage save you or does Jesus save you?”

By the way, that’s why marriage is not a sacrament in the Reformed tradition.  (It isn’t a sacrament in George W.’s church either—someone ought to explain that to him.)  Sacraments for us are the things that communicate the saving grace of God: baptism and communion.  Marriage doesn’t make it onto that list.

So that’s all very theological.  Here is what it means for us.  When we in the church start trying to include and exclude people on the basis of marriage, when we start using marriage as the litmus test for who is acceptable and who isn’t, we are really in trouble.  Now pay attention, because even if you don’t remember anything else I say this morning, I want you to remember this: The church does not have the power to exclude.  The church does not even have the power to include, because God has pronounced the welcome already.  The church does not have the power to exclude or even to include, because God has pronounced the welcome already.

All the church can do after that is decide whether to tell the truth about what God has done, or whether to tell lies.  First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto is not a welcoming church: it’s a church that has decided to tell the truth about the welcoming God.

In the church, if we’re going to tell the truth about it, a woman married to seven men (or seven women) is just as holy as a woman married once.

That is the real sticking point for today’s Sadducees, today’s version of the folks who just don’t want to have to deal with the fact that the people they find so scandalous are going to be right next to them in the kingdom of heaven.  But they can’t get rid of us.  They can’t get rid of us by excluding us, by demonizing us, or even by killing us. 

Because the resurrection is real.  Even those who are excluded in the most profound fashion—murder—are included by God, precisely as they are, not in some cleaned-up less scandalous form than who they were in life.  Friends, the choirs of heaven are full of queer people.  Who do you think taught all those angels how to sing?

The thing about the resurrection that makes the devil quake in his boots is that God’s people are not dead and gone.  We haven’t seen the last of those drag queens at Stonewall.  We haven’t seen the last of people like Tom Henderson.  I’d like to know what Fred Phelps is going to do when he gets to judgment day and there is Matthew Shepard singing “Holy, holy, holy” to the glory of the living God.  God is the God of the living.  

AIDS victims are alive.  Tom Henderson is alive.  Victims of lynchings are alive.  Brandon Teena, Matthew Shepard, and the crucified Christ are alive.  God does not cede the victims of violence over to death; God has abolished death.  God is God not of the dead, but of the living.

So how do you get married in heaven?

The quick answer is “You don’t.”  Those are the words of Jesus’ answer.

What lies beneath Jesus’ answer, perhaps, might be something like this: Marriage is how we take two unrelated people and create a family from them.  In the resurrection, on the other hand, we do not create family.  \

God has created a family for us, to which we belong, in a much more profound way than we ever belonged to a spouse.  Because again, we are not possessions of each other.  We do not belong to parents or husbands, we belong to God.  It sounds funny, but in that light, maybe we should look at one another all as betrothed.  We’ve still got barriers between us, our violent world precludes us from sharing the trust of a marriage, but we have been identified as people who will one day share a home and a name.  In that light, treating one another with love and respect is the only way to honor the promises of God.  Neither marriage, nor the lack of a marriage, nor life, nor death, nor angels, nor rulers, nor activists, nor murderers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor the Defense of Marriage Act, nor the Presbyterian Church, nor George W. Bush, can separate us from the promises of the living God, in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Alleluia!  Amen.