Lk 20:27-40
27Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to [Jesus], 28saying, “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.’ 29Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless. 30Then the second 31and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless. 32Finally the woman also died. 33Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.” 34Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and remarry; 35but 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.
36They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise. 37That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; 38and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” 39Some of the scribes said in reply, “Teacher, you have answered well.” 40And they no longer dared to ask him anything.
THE SADDUCEES WHO DENY THE RESURRECTION: The Sadducees were a party or group within Judaism in the New Testament period. The party is composed of the priestly aristocracy and their dependents and supporters.
The Sadducees accepted only the written Torah and rejected the oral Torah, or traditions held by the Pharisees. They did not believe in the resurrection to which, they claimed, the written Torah made no reference.
The Sadducees present a hypothetical question that is rooted in the Levirate Law of Moses requiring a man to marry his brother’s childless widow. The first-born son she bears shall continue the line of the deceased brother (Dt 25:5-10). How will a woman in this case live with seven husbands simultaneously—if indeed there is resurrection and the age to come?
Jesus’ riposte explains that the life to come is not exactly a continuation of life in this world. Those found worthy of the resurrection are immortal, like angels. They are “children (sons) of God,” which is a favorite Old Testament name for angels (Gn 6:2). Thus, Jesus proclaims the reality of the resurrection and of angels. Finally, he disproves the non-existence of the dead by his interpretation of the written Law. The fact that Moses himself called “Lord” the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob means that somehow God sustains the patriarchs in the “age to come.” They are alive in him, since only the living can have a God, and God calls himself the God of the patriarchs.