The Pharisees and the Sadducees Come to Tempt Jesus
James Tissot, ca. 1890
My dear friends,
In this portion of the Gospel of Luke, we are drawn into a confrontation not of doctrine, but of intention. The Sadducees, who deny the resurrection, present Jesus with a hypothetical puzzle meant to expose the absurdity of belief in life beyond death. But Jesus does not descend into metaphysical defense. Rather, he invites them—and us—to shift from speculative cleverness to spiritual insight.
those who say there is no resurrection,
came to him and asked him a question:
"Teacher, Moses wrote for us
that if a man's brother dies
leaving a wife but no children,
the man shall marry the widow
and raise up children for his brother.
Now there were seven brothers;
the first married a woman and died childless;
then the second and the third married her,
and so in the same way all seven died childless.
Finally the woman also died.
In the resurrection, therefore,
whose wife will the woman be?
For the seven had married her."
- Luke 20:27-33
The Sadducees’ question is framed as a challenge to belief, but it is rooted in a deeper confusion: the assumption that eternal life would merely replicate the social structures of this world. By clinging to literal continuity, they miss the invitation to inner transformation. Jesus does not entertain the details of their scenario. Instead, he shifts the conversation to the nature of this age versus the next, contrasting the limited perspectives of legal inheritance with the boundless reality of divine presence.
"Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage,
but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age
and in the resurrection from the dead
neither marry nor are given in marriage."
- Luke 20:34-35
Here Jesus calls attention to a deeper way of being. Marriage, in his time, was often bound up with concerns of property, lineage, and social identity. The resurrection life, by contrast, is not defined by roles or transactions. It is not a matter of continuation, but of liberation. Those who live from the mind of compassion—the awakening heart—are not caught in the cycles of possession and fear. They are not bound by convention, but made free in the simplicity of presence and love.
because they are like angels and are children of God,
being children of the resurrection.
And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush,
where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."
- Luke 20:36-37
To say “they cannot die anymore” is not to entertain fantasies of personal immortality, but to affirm that love awakened to its Source does not perish. The one who lives from bodhicitta, from the Spirit of God, abides already in a life that is not touched by decay. In recalling the story of Moses and the burning bush, Jesus appeals not to esoteric knowledge, but to the living experience of the sacred now. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not honored as relics of history, but as living presences in the memory of God.
for to him all of them are alive."
- Luke 20:38
This is the heart of the teaching. God is not the custodian of corpses or doctrines. God is the ever-living Source of life itself. When we are present, when we are compassionate, when we are awake, we participate in that life. To God, all who live in this awakened way are alive—not later, but now. The spiritual life is not postponed until resurrection; it is resurrection, enacted in this breath, this choice, this moment of mercy.
May we not be as those who ask clever questions but refuse the wisdom of the answer. Let us live in such a way that our lives proclaim the God of the living. Let our hands become instruments of compassion, our words vessels of truth, and our hearts be homes of fearless love. For the children of the resurrection are not found in some future age; they are born wherever the Spirit of love is received and practiced in the here and now.