Word to the Wise
Saturday, November 23, 2024 - Saturday in the 33th Week in Ordinary Time
[Rev 11:4-12 and Luke 20:27-40]"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." [Luke]
There is more than meets the eye in this passage from the Gospel According to Luke. The context is important, to begin with. Jesus is in his last days in Jerusalem. The religious authorities are looking for some way to trap him in his words. Today it is the Sadducees, a sect of Judaism that accepted only the Torah (first five books of the Old Testament) as scripture. They did not think there was any reference to a final resurrection in those books. They were also more amenable to the Roman authorities and had a "live and let live" attitude in this very politically sensitive matter. Jesus' preaching about a "kingdom" could threaten their situation by angering the Romans. So, they come with a "trick question" about resurrection - an absurd hypothetical case of the kind that rabbinical debate loved - about the "Levirate law" (in Leviticus) that required a woman whose husband died before she could become pregnant to marry his brother so as to keep the family name alive. In this case, she has to marry seven brothers in succession! So, at the final resurrection, to whom would she be married?
Jesus cuts through the entire argument first by quoting from Exodus to the effect that God self-identifies as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as if they are alive somehow. But Jesus goes further in speaking of life after death as being like "angels." This is a rare glimpse of life after death as well as an affirmation of resurrection for all humanity. We are all "alive in God." Jesus wins the debate, but we know his adversaries will keep after him. We'll have to wait for Holy Week to see how it all plays out! Stay tuned! AMEN