Life, Not Death

Luke 20:27-38 is a story about a dialogue between Jesus and the Sadducees, a group of high ranking religious leaders in ancient Israel. In ancient Jewish culture, there were lots of different beliefs about life after death. Some Jews did not believe in any afterlife. Others believed in resurrection.

The Sadducees were characterized by their belief that there was no resurrection. Knowing that Jesus had a different perspective on this, the Sadducees present Jesus with an argument using a text from Deuteronomy. According to the Law of Moses, when a married man died without a male heir, it was considered the responsibility of the husband's brother to marry the widow. To a large extent, the purpose of this law was to ensure that the deceased's name would live on forever. The Sadducees present the following hypothetical: if a man dies childless, and a brother marries the widow, and then a succession of brothers die, which one (i.e. the original decedent or one of the brothers) is now the husband? In other words, if there were a resurrection, the Law of Moses would have specified the answer, and the absence of any reference in Deuteronomy to the resurrection creates this conundrum.

Jesus' responds to the Sadducees by arguing that they have completely misunderstood God's nature. God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living, for to God all are alive. For God, there is only life, and we will remain alive after death. Our life here on earth is very different from our life after we pass beyond this world. But it is still life. Death is just something that moves us from one form of life to another.

Ancient Israel was scared to death of death. Our culture is scared to death of death. We express our fears in different ways. In our society, we spend thousands of dollars to make ourselves look younger and we deify youth.

We don't have to be afraid of death if we live as God's people, because death has no power over us. If we live as God's people, we will not only live without fear of death, but we will live as people who have no reference to death. We will see only life.