God is the God of the Living

Awhile back, the angels asked me to dedicate Sundays to the Gospels. With love and gratitude, here is the Gospel of Luke 20:27-38. With a loving message behind it. 

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 out ‘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.”

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The Pharisees set out to mock the belief in life after death by posing a preposterous scenario, which they believe will undermine the resurrection. But they have chosen the wrong target, for Jesus has no trouble besting their efforts to stump him. 

Jesus easily brushes aside their simplistic logic, asserting that marriage is a thing of this “age” and those found worthy of the resurrection will not be defined or bound by such labels. That Heavenly Life will transcend our categories; there, death will be no more and we will be simply “children of God” enjoying life with the angels, in an angelic existence. 

Jesus then cites their own law, that (Deuteronomy 3:6) how could Moses refer to God as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob if those patriarchs are no longer living? The declaration that the Lord is “not the God of the dead , but the God of the living” is the truth Jesus came to proclaim both through his life and teaching- but most of all, through His own Resurrection from the dead. [see reference]

Reference: Workbook for Lectors, Gospel Readers and Proclaimers of the Word.