came forward and put this question to Jesus, saying,
...
likewise all the seven died childless.
Finally the woman also died.
Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be?
It hasn't entered the heart of the Sadducees what God has prepared for those who love him (cf. 1 Cor. 2:9). Their minds are set on earthly things (cf. Phi. 3:19). The only solutions they can imagine to the inequities of this life are sequential and chronological and therefore partial. They can only imagine this woman finding blessedness with an eighth husband who finally gives her children.
Yet the paradigm of heaven is not the paradigm of earth.
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.
This is something that we need to understand. Blessedness isn't ultimately that one event that makes up for all the bad we suffer. It is more than the psalmist asks when he prays, "Make us glad as many days as you humbled us, for as many years as we have seen trouble" (cf. Psa. 90:15). If it were, we would never have witnesses like "the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth." The opposite of the sequential improvement the Sadducees expect is what happens when these two finish their testimony.
When they have finished their testimony,
the beast that comes up from the abyss
will wage war against them and conquer them and kill them.
To the Sadducees this can only sound like failure. Their mission is proven false because the after they have finished they die and the inhabitants of the earth gloat over them. In the mind of the Sadducees a project of God can only end in victory. This isn't wrong, but their horizons are narrow. What is the point of testimony if the one who testifies is killed? How can that be valuable to anyone? What is the point of a marriage that does not bring the blessedness of children?
Yet in all these things God's people are more than conquerors (cf. Rom. 8:37). Our horizons are not narrow. Our eyes are on the things of heaven where Christ is seated at the right hand of God (cf. Col. 3:1-2). Christ is the prototype of apparent failure that is actual victory. In him, there is nothing the world can do to us. No apparent failure actually matters. This is because "you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." The witnesses of our first reading are already dead to what the world considers success and failure. They are already alive with Christ even as they are martyred. The childless woman doesn't need things to finally go her way for once. The goodness of these goods is designed to point her toward the marriage between God and the Church. Even the goodness of earthly marriage must give way to life with Christ in heaven. Deprived of the earthly good, she can choose to embrace that life of heaven even now.
Earthly sufferings and failures are not the end. They are not simply followed by earthly blessings and successes. They give way to the only true success. They fade in the light of the only true blessedness.
But after the three and a half days,
a breath of life from God entered them.
How fixated are we on that one thing that will finally make it all OK? Are we too busy waiting for happiness according to our old paradigms that we can't even see that God has more for us than we dare to ask? This is the situation of the Sadducees. They have good reason to know that the resurrection of the dead is real.
That the dead will rise
even Moses made known
In what Moses writes they have a basis for understanding that it is more than just a better chronological continuity.
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 him all are alive.”
We are called to live for the world where are all alive to God. We are called to let all earthly love and obedience point us toward that fulfillment. Earthly suffering and failure can call us to raise our minds to the things of heaven. We already have that victory. Today we are called to live it. We are not called to improve one of our old songs.
O God, I will sing a new song to you;
with a ten stringed lyre I will chant your praise,
This is the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb (cf. Rev. 15:3). We are called to join Jesus in singing this song of his victory today.
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