Sunday, November
6th, 2016
A Reflection
on Luke 20:27-40, N.A.B.
By: Larry T
Riddle me is a figure of speech that means: Go
ahead and try to explain that to me. It’s easy for us to shake our heads and
smile at the Sadducees’ foolishness at approaching Jesus, the Author of Life, with
a riddle, a brainteaser which they had used to stump the Pharisees for years.
In Judaism of
Jesus’ time, a childless widow would marry the brother of her late husband,
according to the custom known as levirate marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5). The law
was designed to perpetuate the name of a man who died childless. The hapless
woman in the Sadducees’ made-up story suffered through seven childless
marriages and finally died. At the resurrection, whose wife would she be? The haughty
Sadducees had cooked up this riddle to show that resurrection would lead to
ridiculous results; it suited their purpose perfectly because they didn’t
believe in a resurrection whereas the Pharisees did. The riddle had never been satisfactorily
explained, that is, until the high and mighty Sadducees decided to challenge
Jesus with it.
27
Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and
put this question to him,
28
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.’
29
Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless.
30
Then the second
31
and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless.
32
Finally the woman also died.
33
Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been
married to her.”
34
Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and remarry;
35
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.
36
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.
37
That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush,
when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob;
38
and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
39
Some of the scribes said in reply, “Teacher, you have answered well.”
40
And they no longer dared to ask him anything.
– Luke 20:27-40 N.A.B.
– Luke 20:27-40 N.A.B.
The
eavesdropping scribes might have been clapping and high-fiving when Jesus solved
the riddle by contrasting life in the current age with life in the age to come where marriage will not be a
part of the age to come because one
of them approached him and said, “Teacher, you have answered well.” Not only
had the arrogant Sadducees, along with their gloomy doctrine of no life after
death, been put in their place, but the scribes and Pharisees could look joyfully
forward to life after death.
At this
confrontation Jesus not only upheld the doctrine of resurrection, but he also
spoke of the age to come noting that
“only those who are deemed worthy” would
have life in the coming age. Since worthiness to enter the age to come cannot be grasped or assumed because it comes from
God’s judgement, and is therefore a grace, Jesus’ words bring endless joy to
those souls God calls to himself, to those who hear and obey. Are these words
of dread or discomfort to those souls who hear and fail to respond or
understand? If they aren’t, they should be. Do those graceless souls hate God?
Probably not, it’s His commandments that they dislike and choose to ignore.
What can we
learn from this Gospel story that has meaning in our modern world? Our earthly
transformation, the path to worthiness, begins when we start to model ourselves
after Jesus by following his example and his teachings. This is how He is
spiritually resurrected millions of times a day, even by the slightest act of
kindness performed in His name; it is how He continues to live through us. In following
Jesus’ teaching we announce His resurrection to the rest of the world.
