Luke 20:20-47
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die any more, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” For they no longer dared to ask him another question.
With the scribes and chief priests silenced, the Sadducees enter the contest.
By way of background: the Sadducees were the folks who had primary responsibility for the Temple and, interestingly, were for this reason often at odds with the scribes and Pharisees (who tended the Synagogues). Their concern for the Temple, however, explains why the Sadducees would now aid their rivals and seek to discredit Jesus, as they would have been particularly offended by the ruckus he recently caused at the Temple. The Sadducees also honored only the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Jewish Scriptures (what we call the Old Testament). And because they believed there is no theology of an afterlife in those books, they did not believe in the resurrection.
And this is the point they press with Jesus, referring to a practice described in Deuteronomy (25:5-10) called levirate marriage that sought to insure the preservation of the family name by stipulating that a man should marry the childless widow of his brother. Taking this command to the extreme – seven brothers for one widow – they ask whose wife she will be in the (“supposed,” they would likely add) afterlife.
But Jesus confounds the Sadducees by making two moves. First, he says that they’re primary assumption – that the afterlife is simply “more” of the life we enjoy here – is flawed. Resurrection life isn’t more, it’s different, and it won’t be marked by the same things with which we mark this life. That doesn’t mean we won’t recognize those with whom we’ve been in relationship in this life, only that all things – including our relationships – will be different as we live in the nearer presence of God.
Second, Jesus – referring, by the way, to the primary stories in the Pentateuch – points out that God continues to be in relationship with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, thereby establishing that life with God doesn’t end with death. Why? Because, as Jesus answers, God is the God of the living, not the dead, and so those who live in God enjoy life eternal with God.
Prayer: Dear God, remind us that you are the God of the living and so seek the welfare – now and forever – of all living things. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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