People who resort to debating tricks are not really interested in the truth. Attacks on others beliefs in the attempt to show that they are ridiculous does not really prove anything. Tearing others down, does not build anybody up. That is what the Sadducees are doing in the gospel today. Jesus believed, as did many Pharisees, in the resurrection of the dead. The Sadducees did not believe, for a variety of reasons. Their argument about seven brothers and one, poor childless woman is an attempt to show that life after death makes no sense. Their mistake was that they were arguing with the Lord of Life.
There was a growing belief in the resurrection of the righteous among the Jewish people of Jesus’ day. In the first reading, the Maccabean martyrs chose death rather than eat pork. The Maccabees were a Jewish rebel group that opposed Greek rule in Israel during the Second Century before Christ. They fought a long civil war against the Greeks and their Jewish allies that wanted to impose Greek culture on Israel. The martyrs, like our modern day martyrs, chose grisly death over the betrayal of their faith in the God of the covenant. The mother of the martyrs was forced to watch each of her sons die without renouncing their faith. The Maccabees believed that God would be faithful to his covenant with his people, even after death. God is the Lord of the Living. (see
2 Maccabees 14:46).
The Sadducees don't believe in the Resurrection because they can't find it literally taught in the Torah. The levirate law that they refer to was intended in ancient times to assure a woman of offspring who might care for her in her old age. (see
Genesis 38:8;
Deuteronomy 25:5).The Sadducees turn the law on its head when they want to know to whom the woman will belong after she has had seven husbands. Man’s domination of woman is not the intent of the law. Jesus does not play their game. God’s law is not about earthly children, but raising up “children of God” sons and daughters of the resurrection.
St. Paul says “our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father … has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement and good hope through his grace…” St. Paul and us have solid cause for our hope because of the resurrection of the Christ. Jesus, quoting the scriptures, tells us that his Father is the God of the living, not the dead. All are alive in him. Remember that in John 6, Jesus tells us that we have life within us if we “
eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood.” John 6:53 Jesus says that we will “… no longer die” but will live “like angels” be “children of God.” Lk. 20. In Luke angels are always a sign of hope. An angel appeared to Mary and at the tomb after the resurrection of Jesus. Both had good news for us. Hope is always trust in the goodness of God.
The game of ‘gotcha’ is as old as time. We cannot reason to the truth of the Resurrection of Christ. We can only offer our faith in God the Father and God the Son in God the Holy Spirit. We can only wonder what God has in store for his faithful. People of faith, like the Maccabees or the martyrs of the present, live in unstable times. Trust in the goodness of God was the strength of the Maccabees. Our trust in God’s goodness, is also our support as we can encounter the challenges of our time.