Kelly - Luke 20

I never noticed before that Jesus was talking about the resurrection with the Sadducees before his crucufixion. I had always assumed that concepts of the resurrection came about with Christ's resurrection - but apparently the concept was alive in Jewish thought much much earlier than that.

My Bible notes explain that the Sadducees would only believe the testimony of Moses - the Torah - and did not hold to the authority of the prophets, etc. in the Old Testament. Which is why Jesus cites the authority of Moses in his explanation of the resurrection. To my mind, Jesus' argument is weak at best. Just because God is the "God of Abraham" doesn't imply that Abraham lives in the resurrection age to my mind. But the Sadducees seem to have accepted the argument.

This story shows up in the week before Jesus' arrest and trial in Jerusalem...so Luke has obviously placed it here to focus our minds on what's next. Perhaps this passage offers a little bit of comfort in a couple of chapters of really hard words and stories. A reminder that this is not the whole story - that there is a resurrection -for all of us, and so for Christ. But just like in my daily life, the reminder of the resurrection is a partial comfort, but not a whole one. The knowledge of a resurrection brings me comfort when someone has died- but I am still left behind and sad and alone. Christ may know of his coming resurrection and remind us and his followers of that in this story - but we are still left without him here. Loneliness and anguish for the disciples who had lived with him. And loneliness for me - who never had the chance to know him here and now must learn to live as one "who believes but has never seen."