God of the Living
Gospel Reflection for June 5th, 2024
“As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God told him, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not God of the dead but of the living. You are greatly misled." Mark 12:26-27.
In the time of Christ there was a faction within the Jewish community called the Sadducees. They are mentioned a few times in the Gospels as adversarial to Our Lord. Today’s Gospel is one of those occasions where the Sadducees present Jesus with what they think is a ‘gotcha’ moment. They ask Him the hypothetical scenario of a woman who marries seven brothers1 and then dies childless and ask Him who she would be married to in the resurrection of the body. The goal of the Sadducees has little to do with the hypothetical situation and far more to do with their desire to get Jesus to deny the resurrection of the body.
The Sadducees were a group that specifically denied the belief in the resurrection of the body, the immortality of the soul, life after death, etc. Their ploy here was to see if the new and popular Rabbi from Nazareth would take their side against the Pharisees, who they were opposed to. Clearly, Christ affirms the opposite.
There are two main rebukes that Christ gives to the Sadducees that we can take from this reading today. The first is when He chastises them by saying, “have you not rea in the Book of Moses…” This may not sound like much but for the first-century Sadducees, this was a harsh rebuke. For reference, the Sadducees only regarded the first five books of Scripture as canonical and inspired, that which is called the Pentateuch or the Books of Moses. Add to that, the Sadducees prided themselves on being scholars of the Books of Moses. For Christ to rebuke them in this way, citing that since they are so knowledgeable in the Books of Moses, is an embarrassment. He is basically saying to them that there is no legitimate reason why they should not believe in the resurrection of the body since they know the Books of Moses so well. Herein lies the true rebuke. It isn’t that they haven’t read it, clearly, they have, but they haven’t comprehended it. This is what Christ is telling them. This applies to us as well. How many times have we read the scriptures, but we read into it what we want to hear and not what God is speaking to us? This leads to the second rebuke.
“He is not God of the dead but of the living.” Christ cites the Book of Exodus when God speaks to Moses and says that He is not a God of the dead but of the living. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not dead in God, they are living in Him and thus there is still a connection between those who have gone before and we who remain. Those who criticize the veneration of the saints are like the Sadducees. They assume that those who die in this world are dead in the next. But Christ did not promise eternal death, He promised eternal life! He is God of the living and so those who are alive in Christ can certainly hear our prayers through the power of God. They can intercede at His throne for us. They can assist us through their help in our times of trouble. He is not just the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is also the God of Moses, Elijah, and Isaiah. The God of Mary, Joseph, and Peter. The God of Gregory, Cyril, and Leo. The God of Dominic, Francis, and Benedict. The list goes on. Our God is a God of the living. And He calls us to live in Him.
To our modern ears, this sounds very odd. The idea of a woman marrying seven brothers, each after the previous had died, is very foreign, if not scandalous to us. But for the Jews at the time, this was following the law of Moses. This is a reference to Deuteronomy 25:5-6. The law requires a man to marry his brother’s wife if he dies childless so that the family name would not die out.
My mother had only a high school education, and thus of course, not seen as a scriptural scholar. She was filled with the Holy Spirit tho. One day she was talking to a Protestant Evangelical minister who was berating her and the Catholic Church for praying to saints. He used it as proof that we are not Christians. My Mum came back on him with the exact same argument you have given. It silenced him. I thank you for this reflection. We Catholics must use it more!!!