November 21, 2012. Homily, Saturday, November 24, 2012

Luke 29:27-40

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 Gospel of the Lord.



Then the Sadducees wanted Jesus to tell them who the woman's husband would be in heaven.  There is a trick to the Sadducees' question.  The trick is so devious that I doubt that even the Sadducees knew it was there.  The Sadducees made an assumption about the nature of heaven.  They assumed that people would be married in heaven in the same way that they were married on earth.  Their assumption was wrong.

The Sadducees came up with this ridiculous scenario because they didn't believe in the resurrection.  They wanted to demonstrate how ridiculous the idea of life after death, the resurrection, and heaven and hell all were.  They wanted to back Jesus into a corner so that He had to admit that the whole idea of life after death is ridiculous.  They thought they had Jesus right where they wanted Him.

Of course Jesus picked up on the false assumption immediately.  The Sadducees' scenario was not ridiculous because the after life is ridiculous, but because they had made the ridiculous assumption that life in the next world is the same as it is in this world.  They assumed that people would still be married in the next life.  Jesus told them this was not the case.  He said, "[They] neither marry nor are given in marriage."


The Sadducees in today's Gospel tried to make the resurrection of the dead seem ridiculous and they failed.  Jesus not only showed them a flaw in their argument, but He then made a point of His own.  He said, "[God] is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him."

Jesus not only made the point but He demonstrated it.  On the Friday after He had this debate with the Sadducees, He carried our sins to the cross and there paid the penalty for them with His very life.  The following Sunday, He Himself rose from the dead and paved the way for all who believe in Him to join Him in the everlasting paradise of heaven.

To the rabbinical way of thinking, since God used the present tense (I am) and not the past tense (I was), it indicates Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still very much alive to God. Hence there must be a resurrection from the dead and an afterlife extending into eternity. Jesus then sums it up by concluding, God is the God of the living, not the dead.

While the rabbinical argument Jesus used may noit seem overly convincing to us today, who are accustomed to evidence of a more scientific nature. let us remember that Jesus went on to rise from the dead himself and appear to many of the early diusciples. We have the testimony of the Apostles that Jesus did in act rise from the dead and Jesus' word that we shall also share a similar resurrection if we remain true to him. Let us thank God for the assurance of eternal life with him and ask for the grace to live lives   worthy of such a great calling.

The phrase "like angels" (isangeloi) is more important than we might be inclined to notice, for it is perhaps the most definite description of the state of being that will characterize us for all eternity once we are taken to the Lord in death. Angels function wholly according to their spiritual nature; they are pure intellect and free will, and adhere to God by their own choice. Since they function unimpeded in the operations of their faculties by the attachments, alterations and distortions of passion they adhere in love unalterably to God whom they contemplate and praise in unceasing worship. Because we are destined to be the same as angels, the saintly Fathers taught we become perfect by freeing our self from the distortions of passion through discipline and by the contemplation of God in his creation This in turn leads to a loving union with God which is the only state that satisfies our deepest longings.