20:27 Some of the Sadducees came to him, those who deny that there is a resurrection. 20:28 They asked him, “Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man’s brother dies having a wife, and he is childless, his brother should take the wife, and raise up children for his brother. 20:29 There were therefore seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died childless. 20:30 The second took her as wife, and he died childless. 20:31 The third took her, and likewise the seven all left no children, and died. 20:32 Afterward the woman also died. 20:33 Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them will she be? For the seven had her as a wife.”
20:34 Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry, and are given in marriage. 20:35 But those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage. 20:36 For they can’t die any more, for they are like the angels, and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 20:37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he called the Lord ‘The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’* 20:38 Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all are alive to him.”
“God Of the Living”
It is dwarfed minds which want answers rather then vision; specifics rather then promise.
The Sadducees trap question reveals how small of mind they are. They want to know in human terms what cannot be put in human terms - it is too big to be made so small.
When we try to put the mysteries of heaven in human terms - trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together in logical sequence, or throwing up our hands and saying it can’t be done so it doesn’t exist - we end up with nothing worth anything.
If we try live too much for heaven we will not live for today. If we live only for today we have no hope for tomorrow.
The key is to live with a loving God today letting tomorrow be in God’s loving hands. This is the source of our sure and certain hope.
Eternal life cannot be reduced to conditions of temporal life. We are in God’s loving hands.
God of the living and of the dead; God of yesterday, today and forever. We live in love and with love waiting for the day when all things will be new and only love will remain
“God Of The Living“(Part 2)
Jesus is running up against - again - the religious who were of a different kingdom. They didn’t want him to be the final answer; they wanted to be the final answer. They wanted to keep God in the box of their own making, so God would not ask of them more than they were willing to give. Jesus didn’t fit in their Kingdom!
Just as Mother Teresa didn’t fit for the ‘religious’ man who spoke these words when confronted with the possibility that Mother Teresa was close to what Jesus taught.
“Someone should tell Mother Teresa about triage. In battle the medics don’t work on what they judge to be hopeless cases. They work on the ones who have a chance to make it. Mother Teresa is impractical. Think how much better it would be if she helped people who were going to live and taught them a skill that would enable them to earn a living and maybe even help others. She needs some business training.”
The Kingdom of God as seen in Jesus (and those who follow him) is impractical. Yet it is what Jesus was all about and what we are to be all about - being merciful as our God is merciful!
Do we dare believe that who we are, what we do, say, give, and how we live and treat even the least can be a part of God’s impractical, unexpected, and creative acts at work in our world through which God’s Kingdom does come on earth a small bit as it is in heaven? Then we will be impractical, yet loving as we have been loved!
Our religion will not be in our rituals, but in our living!
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