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The same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, saying: "Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were with us seven brothers. The first died after he had married, and having no offspring, left his wife to his brother. Likewise the second also, and the third, even to the seventh. Last of all the woman died also. Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had her." Jesus answered and said to them, "You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven. But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." And when the multitudes heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.
But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."
- Matthew 22:23-40
The readings this week are the ones that tell us what originally happened during what we commemorate as Holy Week. Jesus is in the temple now, disputing with various authorities who pose Him questions. Yesterday, we read that the Pharisees went and plotted how they might entangle Him in His talk. And they sent to Him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that You are true, and teach the way of God in truth; nor do You care about anyone, for You do not regard the person of men. Tell us, therefore, what do You think? Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?" But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, "Why do you test Me, you hypocrites? Show Me the tax money." So they brought Him a denarius. And He said to them, "Whose image and inscription is this?" They said to Him, "Caesar's." And He said to them, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." When they had heard these words, they marveled, and left Him and went their way.
The same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, saying: "Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were with us seven brothers. The first died after he had married, and having no offspring, left his wife to his brother. Likewise the second also, and the third, even to the seventh. Last of all the woman died also. Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had her." Jesus answered and said to them, "You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven. But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." And when the multitudes heard this, they were astonished at His teaching. Here, my study bible says that when Jesus tells them "you are mistaken," He confirms that there will in fact be a resurrection, but not of the sort the Sadducees are thinking. They simply consider that the resurrection will be a mere continuation of earthly life (with means an earthly kind of marriage), and therefore they mock the doctrine of resurrection with an absurd type of scenario here. But really, they show their ignorance of the Scriptures, "which reveal a complete transfiguration of life in the resurrection, making such earthly questions irrelevant," says mys study bible. Moreover, they fail to understand how Abraham and his sons can be alive in God even when they are physically dead. My study bible adds that, "It is the clear teaching of Christ that the souls of the faithful who have departed this life are sustained before the face of God in anticipation of the final joy of the resurrection."
But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. My study bible says, "The Pharisees had found 613 commandments in the Scriptures and debated about which one was central. Jesus sets forth the first and the second, which constitute the grand summary of the Law. Though the lawyer has come with malice to test the Lord, we know from St. Mark's account that this man is converted by Christ's answer (Mark 12:28-34)."
And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." My study bible says that the second commandment should be understood as it is written: You shall love your neighbor as yourself, or more clearly, "as being yourself." Often it is misinterpreted to read, "You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself," which actually destroys the force of the statement. How much we love ourselves is not Christ's standard here by which He's calling us to love others. "Rather," says my study bible, "we are called to love our neighbor as being of the same nature as we ourselves are, as being created in God's image and likeness just as we are. As the Fathers teach, we find our true self in loving our neighbor."
Christ's answers come to both Sadducees and Pharisees, pulling these groups outside of their defined "territories," so to speak. The Sadducees are a landowning class, a type of aristocracy, who will disappear after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The Pharisees as pointed out by my study bible, focus on the Scriptures and are experts of the Law and its commands -- this question they pose (Which is the great commandment of the Law?) is therefore a natural one for them to ask. Even so, the Sadducees, presumably concerned with affairs of ownership, inheritance, property, ask a question that makes sense from their worldly point of view -- in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be? But in both of these cases, Jesus takes these questioners, and the point of view of the respective parties to which they belong, and turns them, or changes them. More accurately in these two cases, He expands them. The ways in which He does that exemplify the doctrine of love in the Kingdom of heaven -- more specifically, also linked to the eternal life of this Kingdom. In the power of Resurrection, based in God's love for us, is also the power of life itself, concepts beyond the life we understand, adding power and potency to the meaning of life. As He indicates, the answers to each question are already contained in the Scriptures, but they lack the imagination, and spiritual creativity, to see the things contained in Scripture that are really there, hidden in the words and awaiting the true interpreter. (The references to the eternal life in God are found in Exodus 3, verses 6 and 14-15. The first and second commands are found at Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18.) Resurrection, although not entirely obvious, is already to be found as the keystone to the new doctrine of the Kingdom of heaven. This is Resurrection in its varied and potent forms: to change life, to transform it, to heal all manner of ailments, to re-think old solutions and find new answers, to escape from old dilemmas into new thinking (see yesterday's reading), and to focus on the love of God -- because of which Christ came into the world so that we may have eternal life (John 3:16). Resurrection is therefore found in the very concepts of love and mercy that Christ brings to the picture, to expand on what was already there, to truly "fulfill" the Law, every jot and tittle, as He taught in the Sermon on the Mount. Hidden in plain sight, in the Gospel of the Kingdom, is Resurrection; the road on which we are progressing, with Him.
