“…he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
Our God is alive; throughout the Old Testament, beginning in Deuteronomy, we often hear Him referred to as “the living God”. For example: “For what mortal has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the midst of fire, as we have, and lived?” (Deuteronomy 5:26). Our ancestors in faith compared our God to the gods of surrounding nations, saying “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths but do not speak; they have eyes but do not see; they have ears but do not hear; nor is there breath in their mouths. Their makers will become like them, and anyone who trusts in them,” (Psalms 135:15-18). Our God is alive and, being made in His image and likeness (Genesis 1:26-27), we are alive as well. In the beginning we read that God created Adam from the lifeless dust of the earth and “…blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being,” (Genesis 2:7). We were never meant to die, and thus the Son of God comes down from Heaven to die for us, that we might live forever.
But eternal life takes more than Jesus dying for us: no more is it so simple as God breathing life into us but, having expelled that breath by Adam’s sin, humanity now must receive that life in a new way. Jesus says “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world…Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me,” (John 6:51, 53-57). We must eat and drink of the life poured out for us upon the Cross and, receiving that life, live it.
The Sadducees in our Gospel deny that there is a resurrection; they believed that this life was the only life there was, and so they sought to convince Jesus that He was preaching falsely when He taught about rising from the dead. They present to Him a case in which seven brothers lawfully marry the same woman, and when all are raised from the dead, there is the issue of whose wife she is. But Jesus takes the matter to an entirely other level, showing the Sadducees their ignorance of God. He tells them that those who rise from the dead can no longer die, for “…they are children of God…” and just as God is alive and is God of the living, so too are they alive. The Sadducees were concerned about the widow, and about raising up children for the dead brothers as it pertained to the Law (Deuteronomy 25:5-10); Jesus speaks of our God who raises the dead to life again. The Sadducees sought life in the Law and the things of this life; Jesus speaks of finding life in the very Source of Life: God.