New Realities | Fr. Chad E. JarnaginLuke 20:27-38 27 There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection,28 and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. 30 And the second 31 and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. 32 Afterward the woman also died. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”34 And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, 35 but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36 for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons[b] of the resurrection. 37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.”Our faith and Christ’s teaching say that at the moment of death, life is changed, not ended. In Jesus’ strong affirmation of eternal life, it is clear that new realities will replace those of this life. In the new /next life, all anxieties are gone... all our prejudices are gone... all apprehensions, contempt... we all live in the light of new realities... and all together in the holy communion of the saints... transcending time and space. Interesting at how we looked at that last Sunday.The Sadducees' question seeks to make life after death out to be ridiculous. It rests on an assumption that life after death will simply be a repetition or extension of life - same conditions applying... with nothing changing. No new realities.Jesus finishes by saying: 36 for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.The pivot here- “but that the dead are raised... they cannot die anymore.”Jesus' answer is that the resurrection is a new existence in which we participate in God's eternity. God told Moses that he was the God of his forefathers: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The message to the Sadducees is good news, whether they comprehend it, believe, or not...This is not the end. Actually, it is just the beginning... with those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.This can be difficult for us to grasp... and that is okay. It is almost like, we grasp this concept when and where we need to. Sometimes our reason and intelligence may be missing crucial humility to accept or hold truths that faith tends to uncover.Jesus is announcing that there is a line (or dimension) in the cosmos here: in believing in Christ’s resurrection, we believe in our own. Being equal to angels... means to be children of God... being children of the resurrection brings about living with the new reality ... which means eternal living.“The point of the resurrection...is that the present bodily life is not valueless because it will die...What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it... What you do in the present— by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it...). They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom.”All things work together for the new reality. -NT Wright
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