Saturday in Easter Week

Mark 12:18-27

 He is not God of the dead, but of the living...

The Saducees were a Jewish sect distinct from the Pharisees, Jesus' usual adversaries, who were opposed to both Jesus and the Pharisees.  The main distinctive belief of the Saducees was that they did not believe in any sort of resurrection. 

Their question to Jesus then, about the unfortunate woman with the seven dead husbands, is asked quite surreptitiously.  They are trying to use a technicality of the law to show that Jesus', as well as the Pharisee's, preaching on the resurrection is false.  Jesus of course, does not fall for their little trick, and it is the Saducees who end up looking foolish.  Not only is Jesus able to answer their question and prove their understanding of marriage to be in error, but he is also quick to prove the resurrection as well.  The fact the God was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was fundamental to the Jewish identity, so Jesus is playing a big card here.  Essentially he is saying that to claim that there is no life beyond this one is to fundamentally misunderstand who God is.  If God is indeed the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob then it follows that the Patriarchs, though their lives on earth were centuries before, must in some way still live, because God is not the God of the dead.

Today, there are many "Saducees" in the church, those who would dismiss the idea of the resurrection,  who would want to preach Jesus as an idea, an ethic, a spiritual inspiration, instead of a risen and living Savior.   They say things like this:

"The story of Jesus' bodily resurrection is, at best, conjectural; that the resurrection accounts in the four Gospels are contradictory and confusing... the significance of Easter is not that Jesus returned to actual life but that even death itself could not end the power of his presence in the lives of the faithful."
The Rt. Rev. John Chane, Bishop of Washington, D.C., Easter sermon in 2002

Like the Saducees of old, this is to fundamentally misunderstand God.  It is to promote the worship of a false god. 

Their god is god of the dead which really is fitting for the culture we live in.

Our God is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which means that our Lord Jesus Christ lives, for our God is the God of the living and not the dead.