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The Sadducees were perhaps the next most famous group—after the Pharisees—that came into conflict with Jesus. Jesus certainly would have been closer to the Pharisees than to the Sadducees in terms of what they believed. Their rejection of belief in resurrection (Acts 23:6-8) distinguishes them from the Pharisees. It is not surprising that defining element of the beliefs of the Sadducees is also the area around which they clash with Jesus in today’s Gospel. They present a case of a woman who had married seven brothers, following the levirate law that a man should marry the widow of his brother to raise up a son who would perpetuate the name of the deceased (Dt 25:5-10). If indeed there is resurrection, this will indeed be a big problem. But this is misunderstanding the resurrection as a continuation of life and relations on earth. Jesus says those who resurrect are “like angels.” They attain to immortality; they are no longer bound by earthly concerns.
GOSPEL • Lk 20:27-40
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 ‘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.” Some of the scribes said in reply, “Teacher, you have answered well.” And they no longer dared to ask him anything.
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