The Golden Ass

“The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, 35 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, 36 for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. 37 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. 38 Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.”

If this rose is history, then the term “biology” is a thorn, and the flower is reproductive offspring. The genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1, Luke 3) is here the ancient root of this flower that, along the way, came to be reduced to “biology.” Here, reproduction is necessary, and necessity is that which is inevitable. In other words, necessity is death of the flower, and "biology" drives us to reproduce new seed. In our culture, sexuality and marriage tend to get explained away with "biology." Scriptural genealogy narratives, on the other hand, put that in a larger and different narrative. It's the narrative of the God who is Life.

If this rose is you and your lover, then the flower is the kiss of Jacob and Rachel (Genesis 29: 11). Here, our desire for union is a root nourished by the God who is and brings life. Also here, however, romanticism is a thorn in the side of marriage as a dominant cultural reason and hope for marriage. In our culture, what drives our sexuality and our marriages tends to hope or expect to be falsely fulfilled in romance. In the larger scriptural narrative, Jacob wept when he kissed Rachel, but that wasn't the driving force of the story. It's the story of the God who unifies.

If this rose is Jesus, then the living flower is the union of heaven and earth (Revelation 21: 1-5, 1 Corinthians 15: 28, Colossians 1: 15-23, 3: 5-11). Here, divorce is the thorn present as a sign that history is incomplete. Of course, then, marriage union is a sign of union between Christ and church. Here, the unseen roots nourish our desire for the reconciliation of all things that is embodied in the God who is and brings Life. In our culture, we tend to imagine that eternal life is basically just like life "in this age" except longer lasting. So, we also tend to imagine that our current ways of living involving things like work and marriage will simply continue but extend on through infinity, maybe with some doxological interludes. Successful marriage, however, is a mere budding heading towards an unimaginably beautiful eternal flowering that eclipses our current idea of the union of two separate things - the same way Christ fulfilled but eclipsed Torah.

Here’s the thing – they’re all three the same flower. They can't be compartmentalized; they all lead, point to, and are fed by Life.

Jesus is the turning point and climax of history. There is no need for a sexual climax where such letting go of the boundaries of self and control imitates death to bring forth the life of another when Life is already completely and unendingly fulfilled here and now rather than apparently budding. Reproduction is unnecessary when death is no longer inevitable. Jesus reveals that the end of history doesn't depend on whether or not humans continue in marriage, because death is not the end of history. And, the union of things is why things that are separate while death still reigns desire erotically to be together pointing and striving towards Life (this includes heaven and earth). There is no more romance when its desire is fulfilled. When the two are joined, there is no more Eros and, therefore, no more marriage. As the last man, the fulfillment of what man means, Jesus fulfills Genesis 2: 21-25. In Jesus - whose Word is this response to the Saducees and who is the Word of Life – is the union of all things.