Saturday in the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, November 20, 2021

Luke 20:27-40

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 ‘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.” Some of the scribes said in reply, “Teacher, you have answered well.” And they no longer dared to ask him anything.

The Lord performed great wonders while he walked the earth.  He gave sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf.  He cast out demons that had long infested people.  He fed thousands from a basket of fish and bread.  And he raised the dead.  All these he did in public.  They deeply impressed the people who saw them.  Even those who opposed him could not deny what he did, but attributed his power to the devil.  But you and I did not see them.  As we read testimony by eyewitnesses in the Gospel, we can be moved and astonished, but the effect is not the same as it would be if we had seen these miracles ourselves.  On the other hand, we can read his words, and even without the sound and force of his voice behind them, and even in translation, they can shake us and awe us.  Simply from reading his words we can know deep within ourselves that this is God speaking.  The Gospel reading for today’s Mass is a very good example of this.

“Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to Jesus.”  The Lord has entered Jerusalem and is teaching in the Temple precincts.  The people are “hanging” on his words, as we know from Luke 19, 48.  The Sadducees, a relatively small sect which had assumed the operation of the Temple, despised the Lord for teaching about the resurrection.  They see this doctrine as a heresy and vigorously resist the Pharisees, who also teach it.  Their animosity was so heated on this teaching that riots brokeout over it (cf. Acts 23, 6-9).  They attempt here to discredit Jesus as a teacher by proposing to him a legal riddle.  They preface their riddle by quoting Moses: “If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother” (cf. Deuteronomy 25, 5-6).  They then describe a situation governed by this injunction: “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.”  The Sadducees must have felt very clever at this point.  They next spring their trap, as they thought it to be: “Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be?”  

The Lord’s answer must have stunned 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.”  He gives an authoritative answer that goes beyond the Scriptures, telling them what no one but God and the angels could know.  He also throws the crude, materialist vision of heaven the Sadducees had back in their faces.  The majesty of what the Lord has revealed simply makes ridiculous what the Sadducees offer.  The Lord does not stop to allow them either to sneak away or to try to regroup: “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.”  His words blow out the smoke of false teaching so that all who hear him can revel in the light he brings.  The Lord does not merely and with ease destroy the teaching of the Sadducees, but reveals to the people something about the life in heaven that is beautiful, sensible, wise, and convincing.

But the Lord is not done yet.  He reveals something of the life of God: “That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  The Sadducees did not accept the works of the Prophets into their Scriptures but held only the Pentateuch, or Torah, as the inspired word of God.  Thus, the Lord does not quote from the Prophets with them, but from the books which they did accept.  Even Moses, he tells them, believed in the resurrection of the dead.  How do we know this? Because “he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”  We must note the present tense of the verb: He is the God of Abraham, not, He was.  That is, Abraham still lives and awaits the resurrection, as does Isaac and Jacob.  God is still the God of Abraham, after all these centuries, he says, and this can only be because Abraham, though dead, yet is alive.  Nor did Almighty God cast off Abraham and the other Patriarchs after they died so that they wander among the deep shadows of Sheol, but he remains their God after their life on earth as much as he had always been.

The Lord’s words shine with brilliance and simplicity.  They make us think, when their truth dawns on us, that only God could have said this and spoken in this way.  We fall to our knees in wonder, “Never did any man speak like this man” (John 7, 46).