November 6, 2022: Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gospel: Luke 20:27-38

Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to Jesus, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us, If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless. Then the second and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.”

Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise. That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called out ‘Lord,’ and the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to God all are alive.”

Reflection

This passage seems another attempt by the Sadducees to present Jesus with a trick question. Jesus doesn’t try to answer their question, but certainly does come down on the side of resurrection with his reference to Moses and those who went before him. I think we can take hope and consolation from Jesus’ words that “God is not a God of the dead, but of the living, for to God, all are alive.”

Action

What meaning do you find as you sit with the phrase “for to God, all are alive?” Whom do you include in your “all?” Are there persons in your life that you’ve excluded and written off as “dead?” Pray for God’s grace to have a change of heart in their regard.