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.

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 

 

Yesterday we read that the Pharisees went and plotted how they might entangle Jesus in His talk.  Jesus is now in Jerusalem and it is the final week of His earthly life.  The Pharisees 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.  Jesus tells that Sadducees, "You are mistaken."  The Sadducees were an aristocratic party in Jerusalem; they were wealthy landowners who had inherited roles in maintaining the temple, as members of the high-priestly and landowning class who controlled the temple and the internal political affairs of the Jews.  They held only to the Torah, the written Law (the first five Books of the Bible).  In contrast to the Pharisees, they rejected oral tradition.   They believed neither in the resurrection nor in spirits like angels.  In His response to them, Jesus confirms that there will be a resurrection, but not of the nature they are imagining.  The Sadducees consider the concept of resurrection to mean a continuation of earthly life (including earthly marriage), so they mock the doctrine with an absurd scenario.  But, as Jesus tells them, they are ignorant of the Scriptures, which reveal a complete transfiguration of life in the resurrection, which makes their earthly-oriented question irrelevant.  They also fail to understand how Abraham and his sons can be alive in God even if they are physically dead.  My study Bible says 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.  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 explains that the Pharisees had found 613 commandments in the Scriptures, and they debated about which one was central.  So the question to Jesus is a significant one and pertinent to their concerns and focus.  Here Jesus sets forth the first and the second commandment, which together constitute the grand summary of the Law.  Although this lawyer has come with malice to test Christ, we know from St. Mark that this man is converted by Jesus' answer (Mark 12:28-34).  Additionally, my study Bible comments that the second commandment cited by Jesus must be understood as it is written:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself -- or more, expressly, "as being yourself."  It's frequently misinterpreted to be understood, "You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself," but this takes away the force of the statement.  How much we love ourselves is not the standard set by Christ.  We are called to love our neighbor as being of the same nature as we are, as being created in God's image and likeness as we are.  Patristic teaching holds that we find our true self in loving our neighbor; that is, these commandments taken together give us a sense of how the love of God is expressed in love of neighbor, and is inseparable from love in action in our lives.

I was recently participating in a prayer group in which we focused in part on a section St. Paul's letter to the Romans (Romans 6:3-11).  In that part of his letter, St. Paul writes, "Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (verses 3-4).  In other words, St. Paul writes that baptism is both baptism into the death and the resurrection of Christ; so we take on that new life into which He was resurrected.  And St. Paul's understanding of baptism pertains deeply to today's passage.  Jesus tries to give insight into the Scriptures to the Sadducees, who reject any Scripture beyond the Torah (or Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible).  He tells them about this resurrected life, and tries to explain the condition of those in this life.  It is images like the one He describes here when He says, "they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven" that contribute to an ideal of monastic life, which is often called the "angelic life."  This is so precisely because, as St. Paul says, we are baptized both into His earthly death, and also His resurrected life.  We take on the qualities of that resurrection through baptism and the work of the Holy Spirit, and through our faith.  That is, aspects of that resurrectional life become part of the fruits of the Spirit.  Of course, the qualities of that life are many and varied beyond our imaginations and understanding, but this is part of the experience of the Church and its myriad saints and faithful.  It is this life into which we are baptized that helps to make it possible for us to break destructive habits, to take on hopes we don't think are possible, to accept that although we might find ourselves in very difficult circumstances, there is a way in which we might transcend them and in which God can help to transfigure them and fill them with meanings we could not discern otherwise.  These are all aspects of that resurrectional life into which we're baptized and in which we might participate -- even highly tangentially and partially -- while we yet live in this world as faithful.  And so Christ also explains to the Sadducees, just as would inspire St. Paul to his own understanding, that God is the God of the living and not the God of the dead.  In Luke's version of this passage, Jesus says, "For He is not the God of the dead but of the living, for all live to Him" (Luke 20:38; my italics added for emphasis).  That "for all live to Him" include us, we the living and the faithful, and this also informs St. Paul's declaration in the letter to the Hebrews that "we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses" (see Hebrews 12:1-3).    (After writing about the witnesses to faith Abraham and his descendants in chapter 11, St. Paul draws those to whom he writes into the understanding of their continuation in and with Christ's flock and the promise of Christ.)  And so, Jesus speaks of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in today's passage as "the living," and will draw all those in the resurrectional life -- into which we are also baptized thanks to Christ's Passion -- so that the Sadducees and others who listen in the temple, as well as all those who have read ever since including us, will start to ponder just what that life is which He promises and about which He speaks in reference to the Kingdom of God.  When we think about our own faith, we should also remember that additional phrase added in St. Luke's Gospel, "for all live to Him."  For insofar as St. Paul writes, we are baptized into His death and His resurrection and we participate -- through the Cross -- in that newness of life described here.  It permeates in moments of darkness with light that shines there, even if the darkness cannot take it in (John 1:5).