God is not the God of the dead, but of the living

 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. 

- Matthew 22:23-33

It is Holy Week in our current readings, the Passover week of Jesus' final days of His life as Incarnate human being.  He is in Jerusalem, He has cleansed the temple, and has been questioned by the leadership as to His authority to do so.  On Saturday 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.  My study bible tells us that here Christ confirms for us in His teaching that there will be a resurrection.  But it is not the sort of resurrection that the Sadducees are imagining.  The Sadducees were a wealthy landowning class of the area around Jerusalem.  They were active as part of the Council.  But unlike the Pharisees they followed only in the first five books of the Scriptures (the Pentateuch or Torah) and did not believe in resurrection.  They imagine the concept of resurrection to be a continuation to be a continuation of earthly life, including earthly marriage, and thereby mock the doctrine with an absurd scenario.  However, Jesus says they are ignorant of the Scriptures, which reveal that there is a complete transfiguration of life in the resurrection, which makes earthly questions like their irrelevant.  Moreover, they fail to understand how Abraham and his sons can be alive in God even if they are physically dead.  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.

What is life?  How do we characterize life?  Jesus speaks of the Resurrection as a transformed reality.  Life as we know it shifts.  We're in a new mode.  We get a few hints about this in the experiences of Jesus' own Resurrection.  Mary Magdalene doesn't recognize Him until He calls her name (John 20:11-16).  Neither do the disciples who walk with Him on the road to Emmaus, until "He was known to them in the breaking of bread" (Luke 24:13-35).  Life is transformed.   But Jesus characterizes life itself when He replies to the Sadducees asking them, "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."   Life itself may not look like what we expect it to be.  It may not take on familiar characteristics of appearance, nor even of nature.  But life is life, and life exists even beyond death and its power in this world.  Jesus is known to His disciples in the breaking of bread.  He's known to Mary when He calls her name.  The disciples on the road to Emmaus reflect on their experience, and ask one another, "Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?"  In this familiar experience of person-to-person communication, they recognize the Jesus they knew intimately as their Master.  Jesus names definite persons in His expression of life from the Scriptures, as God speaks by saying, "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?"  God names distinct persons in revealing God's own identity, identifying life with each person.  Jesus further expresses the sense of the Scripture, opening its meanings, by giving to us the gift of recognition of persons as well -- in a place of life that is without barrier to that life, not by time, not by space, and not by death.  We are transformed to expand with life itself, to be taken to the "next level," if we can put it that way, so that we are more filled with life than we could previously accommodate.  We are transformed in order to accommodate more fully the life offered by God.  In The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis writes of a place where everything becomes more, color has more depth, people are more substantial, and the worldly seems ethereal, pale, abstract, and muted by contrast.  This is the fuller life for which we are transformed, the place Jesus teaches us about, the life that God characterizes in self-revelation as "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."  Perhaps it is we who are far too diminished and little in our own understanding of life, and who need to expand to accommodate God.  Let us consider all the ways that God fills life, and the essential unknown that is filled with that life we cannot conceive, but awaits in His life for us.  Jesus says that God is the God of the living.  It is we who must find the way to learn what that means, in a fullness and depth we have to find through faith.