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This week marks what you might call the final countdown to our liturgical year. In a few short weeks we will celebrate the Feast of Christ the King of the Universe, which, by the way, will close the Year of Mercy. The following weekend , (Thanksgiving weekend), we will celebrate the first Sunday of Advent. As we move to the end of the year our readings take on a definitely more apocalyptic tone. This week our Gospel has the story of Jesus interaction with the Sadducees, who were the political and aristocratic elite of his time. They adopted Greek culture and customs while remaining Jewish. They also controlled the priesthood and the temple functions and often found themselves in direct opposition to the Pharisees, a group more closely associated with Jesus.
In our gospel today they pose a question to Jesus. The Sadducees did not believe in a resurrection of the dead. They instead believed that when you died you went to Sheol, a place of nothingness. The Pharisees, however believed in a resurrection, though there was much disagreement in what that resurrection looked like. In the scene from our gospel today the Sadducees pose a trick question to Jesus about a woman whose husband dies leaving no children. Under the law of Moses, his brother was called to marry her and raise up children in his memory. The story they tell goes on to say the woman married each of seven brothers in succession, each one dying and leaving no heirs, till finally the woman herself dies. (Honestly, I think she might have died of grief and exhaustion after so many husbands!). In the Jewish culture of Jesus day children were seen as a way of living on in the world. As long as you had children you were in a sense immortal, because they carried your blood forward. For the Sadducees there was no need for a resurrection if your blood line continued on. At the same time the Sadducees were mocking the idea of a bodily resurrection with a farfetched scenario. But there is a serious trap here couched in the funny plot they set up. If Jesus says the brothers should not marry the woman then he would be seen as denying the laws of Moses and not a good and faithful Jew and if he denies the bodily resurrection, then he pits himself against his own community, the Pharisees. (Read More)
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