“I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”?
27 He is God not of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong.’
Mark 12: 26-27
It seems this last week in Jerusalem, everyone in religious leadership is upset with Jesus and trying to trip him up with trick questions. Yesterday it was the Pharisees and the Herodians trying to trick him about paying taxes. Today it is the Sadducees. They don’t even believe in the resurrection of the dead but they still come and ask a question. A woman who has been handed from brother to brother, seven brothers, who have all died leaving her childless, to whom will she be married in the resurrection. That is a horrible question and from a woman’s point of view, I applaud the abrupt answer Jesus gives. There is no consideration of the woman and what she might have experienced and she is treated as chattel. Horrible. We might call it a “living death.”
Jesus is very direct: “You are quite wrong.” God is the God of life and hope. It makes me think of the lines we draw in the sand and assign people we don’t like to one side and ourselves to the side of the good. It is easy to see this in politics but there are many other subtle ways that we evaluate “who’s wife” or which category a person belongs in. Beauty may be our criteria or wealth or talent or health or employment. Those are easy targets but we have others.
God is looking for life. We might ponder what that means to us today. Do we look for the life and growing aspects of others or do we focus on failures? Let us spend a moment asking the Holy Spirit to reveal the good, the life in someone we perhaps have trouble loving. Lord, help us to focus on life and not death!
On the Way to Wonder 