The Sadducees challenge Jesus about his teaching on the afterlife. They are convinced that the Mosaic Law says nothing about a future ressurection (20:27) and so present him with a dilemma: If Moses permits a woman to remarry every time her husband dies (Duet 25:5), will this not bring confusion into the next life? How will she determine who is her legitimate spouse if all of them are raised? Jesus deals with his objection on their own terms: first, by denying that marriages exists in the next life and, second, by deliberately citing the Mosaic Law against them. The burning bush episode shows that (Yahweh) identified himself with the patriachs long after their death (Ex 3:6). If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still with God, then life must endure beyond death and a future ressurection is implied in the Pentateuch.Luke 20: 27 - 38
27 There came to him some Sadducees, those who say that there is no resurrection,
28 and they asked him a question, saying, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the wife and raise up children for his brother.
29 Now there were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and died without children;
30 and the second
31 and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died.
32 Afterward the woman also died.
33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife."
34 And Jesus said to them, "The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage;
35 but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage,
36 for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.
37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.
38 Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him."
1) that age (20:35) - The institution of marriage will not exist in heaven.
2) equal to angels (20:36) - Like the angels, the saints will be clothed in glory and immortality; but, unlike the angels, they will ultimately live in ressurected bodies and not as disembodied spirits (1 Cor 15:35-50). They are thus equal in some respects, but not the same in all respects. Belief in the general ressurection is centrel to the Christian faith. The Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed both state that our physical bodies will be raised again to enjoy eternal life.
Saint Quote of the Day:
"The most astonishing thing was that there were actually saints there, even ones who were beatified, who were passing through Purgatory. St. Severinus, Archbishop of Cologne, appeared to one of his friends a long time after his death and told him that he had been in Purgatory for having deferred to the evening the prayers he should have said in the morning. Oh! What years of Purgatory will there be for those Christians who have no difficulty at all in deferring their prayers to another time on the excuse of having to do some pressing work! If we really desired the happiness of possessing God, we should avoid the little faults as well as the big ones, since separation from God is so frightful a torment to all these poor souls!"
-- Sermon on Purgatory by Saint John Vianney
