The 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 6, 2022

Luke 20, 27–38

Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to Jesus, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us, If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless. Then the second and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.” Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise. That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called out ‘Lord,’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” 

The Sadducees seem to have arisen in the century or two before the Birth of the Lord as a reaction to the teachings of the Pharisees, who believed in the resurrection of the dead and a final judgment.  In addition to their belief in the mortality of the soul, the Sadducees rejected the oral traditions of the rabbis which, among other things, insisted on applying Temple regulations for the ritual purity of priests to ordinary people.  Finally, the Sadducees accepted only the Pentateuch and the Prophets as their sacred writings, while the Pharisees accepted all the books found in the Septuagint, which today makes up the Old Testament of the Catholic Bible.  Although these principles might make them sound like religious fundamentalists, they appreciated Greek culture (as did the Pharisees).  They also were to be found among the wealthier inhabitants of Israel and maintained the Temple during the time of Christ, whom they probably considered a Pharisee or an offshoot of the Pharisees for his social status as well as his clear teachings about the resurrection of the dead and the final judgment.

During the last week before he suffered for us, he was challenged by both the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  In the Gospel Reading for today’s Mass the Sadducees see a chance to confront this very prominent believer in the resurrection in order to show the absurdity of the doctrine he taught.  They bring before the Lord a case which they believe to be impossible to solve, that of the woman with seven husbands (which sounds like the Sarah’s situation in the Book of Tobit, which they would have rejected but which the Pharisees accepted).  The Lord solves their conundrum easily by stating that there is no marriage in heaven.  He reveals the rather stunningly primitive, crude notion of the afterlife the Sadducees fashioned for themselves, convinced that this was the vision held by those who believed in the resurrection.  The Lord explains to them of those who rise from the dead, “They are like the angels.”

The Lord’s proof of the immortality of the soul is wonderfully simple, and puts the Sadducees to shame as they had tried to put him to shame: “That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called out ‘Lord,’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”  That is, the Lord is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.  The Hebrew of Exodus 3, 6, which Luke shows Jesus to paraphrase, translates as “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  The Septuagint has this as well.  The Hebrew present tense is continuous, as is the Greek, and so this phrase could be translated as “I am being the God of Abraham”, or, “I continue to be the God of Abraham”.  That is, God does not say, I was the God of Abraham, or, “I am the God of Abraham” in a historical sense of the present tense.  His being the God of Abraham continues from the time that he first became the God of Abraham.  Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, therefore, continue to live, even at that time, awaiting the resurrection.

It is necessary for us to know what other people actually believe before we can begin the process of teaching them the Faith, little by little, and so we should ask questions concerning what they believe and why, showing our genuine curiosity and interest.  With the grace of God to assist us, we can bring people to Christ, but we must know who they are first so we can teach them appropriately.