You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God

 

 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 multitude heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.

 

- Matthew 22:23-33 

 

Yesterday we read that, after their confrontation with Jesus in the Temple, 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 multitude heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.  My study Bible comments that Christ confirms there will be a resurrection, but not the sort the Sadducees imagine.  The Sadducees were a landowning aristocratic class, who did not hold with a doctrine of resurrection.  They followed strictly the written law in the first five books of the Bible (that is, the Torah), and not the oral teaching and interpretations followed by the Pharisees.  They imagine the resurrection to be a continuation of earthly life, including earthly marriage -- and thereby mock the doctrine with an absurd scenario.  But they are ignorant of the Scriptures, as Christ says, which reveal a complete transfiguration of life in the resurrection, and make such earthly questions irrelevant.  Additionally, they fail to understand how Abraham and his sons can be alive in God even if they are physically dead.  My study Bible states 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.

The Sadducees as a class would disappear after the Siege of Jerusalem.  As they were a property owning class, also holding many high offices in the society and the priesthood, this is perhaps not very surprising.  But one can't help but wonder if it is also connected to their failure to grasp the notion of resurrection, an insight into the Scriptures which Jesus reveals here.  They were exceptionally prudent and adapted to Roman rule.  But the failure of imagination, a steadfast literal interpretation of the Books of the Law, seem to imply a strong focus on earthly life, and this is evidenced in their question which is focused on concepts of inheritance -- a topic which was very important to the Sadducees as a class and even historically in religious disputes over the Law.  Jesus seems to teach us in today's reading that it is essential to understand Scripture not as a kind of textbook, but as a type of literature with its own kind of language, conveying more than the absolute literal forms on the page, and asking us for insight, grasping our comprehension in ways that do not necessarily seem obvious.  Jesus tells them that they don't understand resurrection, because they neither know the Scriptures nor the power of God.  These are things that are not simply earthly concepts, but require us to use a spiritual imagination and insight to grasp.  Moreover, Christ gives us a taste of what it means to perceive the Scriptures with such insight and spiritual imagination or understanding, when He tells 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."  That is, in the very language of the Scripture, the words of God reportedly said to Moses (Exodus 3:6, 15) imply a timelessness that is a part of the resurrection, where those who have died in the world yet live to God.  Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob belonged to different generations, yet all live in the presence and reality of God.  And this is an example from Christ Himself as to how we need to read and understand Scripture.  The experience of earthly life alone cannot supply us with the necessary insight for things we need to understand in our capacity for spiritual life and the nurturing of the soul, the turning to the higher things that take us forward and guide us into God's will for us.  God calls us not just to earthly concepts of justice but beyond that to mercy, to a right-relatedness that is not necessarily deserved, and to a life beyond this world.  Jesus teaches us to pray not that we impose our worldly understanding on God, but that God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10).  Contrary to the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection, nor by most reports even the existence of angels, Christ points us to the saints who live and by whom we are surrounded (the "great cloud of witnesses" to which St. Paul refers in Hebrews 12:1), and from the beginning, the Church has understood that we also invoke the prayers of the saints as intercession, and we pray and worship together with the angels who worship in heaven, revealed in the vision of Isaiah (Isaiah 6:3) and also in the Revelation.  Christ taught us that "where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them" (Matthew 18:20).  Therefore we are to understand that the worldly life we live is permeated also with the spiritual, with the reality of heaven even in our midst, invoked in our prayers, witnessed by our faith, even revealed in worship.  A nominally successful worldly material life is not enough to teach us how to be successful faithful Christians nor to prepare us for the fullness of our faith.  For that we need more, we need the capacity to grasp the things that are given to us that are not simply material, but are necessary components for a deeper, richer life that fills the soul and can translate into a kind of order for the world in which our relatedness to all of creation, including to one another and to the blessings we have, is formed and shaped into something more than what is merely dictated by expedience or abstraction, but a substance of love that is present to us in the things that turn our minds and hearts to God.   There is an insight, and a fullness to life, that just isn't found elsewhere, a more full dimension to who we are and what we can be to which we are called.  Let us remember the disappearance of the Sadducees and consider how this might be related to a failure to hear and grasp the things that call us to a deeper life, which are not merely worldly or material, but which magnify our souls.  The material circumstances of the world and temporal life shift and change; there is one thing that anchors us midst the changes and helps us to transcend through them (Matthew 24:35).