Wednesday in the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time, June 7, 2023

Mark 12, 18-27

Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and put this question to him, 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 and died, leaving no descendants. So the second brother married her and died, leaving no descendants, and the third likewise. And the seven left no descendants. Last of all the woman also died. At the resurrection when they arise whose wife will she be? For all seven had been married to her.” Jesus said to them, “Are you not misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven. As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God told him,  I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not God of the dead but of the living. You are greatly misled.”

At the time Jesus walked the earth the various sects of the Jews held differing beliefs about life after death.  The Pharisees, who arose in the time of the Greek occupation, believed in life after death and of a great judgment.  They believed in a life in heaven as well as condemnation to hell for the wicked, and certain non-biblical books that reflect Pharisaic beliefs indicate that they had a place for purgatory too.  The Sadducees, who controlled the Temple, held only to the Law and did not believe the Books of the Prophets were Scripture.  They rejected the idea of life after death unless this meant a shadowy existence in Sheol.  It is not clear what the followers of John the Baptist believed in this matter.  At any rate, he preached repentance and the imminent coming of the Messiah who would punish the wicked, at least in this world.

Some of these Sadducees came to Jesus in the Temple area and challenged him on his teaching of the resurrection of the dead.  They had a case ready for him and they wanted to see what he made of it.  It would be interesting to know how a Pharisee would have answered it and we can assume that it would have come up.  The case the Sadducees select would have been the one they thought the most solid, the most irrefutable.  Thus, when Jesus answers it, the Sadducees have nothing left in their arsenal.  They are completely defeated.

“At the resurrection when they arise whose wife will she be? For all seven had been married to her.”  The use of the number seven is not necessary.  The Sadducees probably use it in order to maximize the amount of confusion that would have resulted at the resurrection if it occurred as they imagined.  Their premise is flawed, however, since they posit that the next life will simply be a continuation of this one, in a physical world.  The Lord points this out to them, prefacing his answer with a general rebuke: “Are you not misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?”  That is, they do not know how to read the Scriptures and interpret them, and they suppose God to be a giant man who rules from the sky and not an infinite spiritual being.  “When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven.”  The life to come will exceed the present life and the just shall “be like angels” — without physical bodies.  From this we learn that marriage is “unto death” and then no more.

“I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  Jesus quotes from Exodus 3, 6, a book which the Sadducees did hold as Scripture.  The key here is the verb “is”, which is in the present tense.  In the Greek, the present tense is continual, so that the sense is, I continue to be the God of Abraham, etc.  or, I am being the God of Abraham.  Very possibly, the conversation between Jesus and the Sadducees took place in Greek, for the Sadducees were lovers of Greek culture.  If it had been in Hebrew, the quote from Exodus would have been from the Hebrew text and not the Greek Septuagint.  The Hebrew verb tense used as the present is actually a past tense and so this tense also has the sense of continuity.  What was done in the past continues in the present.  No matter in which language we read the verse, then, the idea is that God has not stopped being the God of Abraham but continues, and so Abraham still lives.  Our God is the God of the living.

“You are greatly misled.”  We rejoice in Almighty God who confers eternal life on those who believe in him and love him.  Let us take care not to humanize him as the Sadducees did for to do so lessens our appreciation of his power and love, but let us pray that we shall always hold the infinite God in awe even to the day when we see him face to face.