Sunday Meditation: The Nature of Life After Death

This is a remarkable exegesis by Jesus Himself.  Two keys to remember here.  First that the Sadducees did not believe in life after death, and that they only accepted the Pentateuch, the first five books, as Biblical authority.

 

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."

~Lk 20:27-38

 

My pastor at St. Rita’s Church, Fr. Eugene, has a way to remember who the Sadducees were.  “Remember, the Sadducees are sad because for them there is no afterlife.”  But Jesus has a great way to rebuff the internal logic of their question.  He takes them right back to the Pentateuch to prove they did not even fully understand their own reduced vision of the scriptures.  He repeats that God is “not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive."  The dead are alive in God!

 

That is a nice little video.  Now notice what else Jesus says.  There is no marriage in heaven and no procreation, and therefore there will be no conjugal relations.  Do you find this a blessing or a bane?