Lk 20:27-40
[or Lk 1:46-55
or Mt 12:46-50]
God of the living: The question about the resurrection is raised by some Sadducees, a priestly aristocratic group who accepted only the first five books of the Bible—the Pentateuch—and followed the law in these books to the letter. Thus, they rejected oral legal tradition and the resurrection of the dead.
The riddle that Luke portrays them presenting to Jesus is based on the law of levirate marriage, as found in Dt 25:5-10. It presupposes that the way of life in the world to come is the same as it is in the present world. In the case of the riddle, this would mean polyandry, which was unacceptable and excluded by the law of Moses.
Jesus corrects the presupposition that the present world and the world to come are identical. Life here is human and mortal; sexuality guarantees the continuance of the human race. In the world to come, sexuality will not be necessary because people do not die.
Once its presupposition is lost, the riddle itself is no longer a trap. Then, Jesus addresses the question of resurrection by appealing to the very same Scriptures that the Sadducees used. He reminds them that in Exodus (3:6) Moses called “Lord” the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. God is not the Lord of the dead but of the living. To God all are alive.