"Now we could unpack Jesus’ answer as it relates to understandings of marriage, and of the differences between life before death and life after death and how they relate to marrying or not marrying, but the stuff about marriage is not really the main point. The question about marriage is only a furphy designed to ridicule the idea of resurrection, and although Jesus does dignify it with a quick answer, he quickly turns to their main point: “The fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” Luke has softened Jesus’ response a little. In Matthew’s and Mark’s versions, Jesus begins his reply to the Sadducees by saying, “You are wrong, because you do not understand either the scriptures or the power of God.”
And really what Jesus is doing, in all three versions, is turning the issue to our understanding of God and the power of God. In particular, he is saying that God is a God of life, a God of the living, a God who is all about life, life and more life. And he is calling us to recognise how radically this contrasts with what we are on about and what we mostly think God is on about. Because what the Levirate law really shows, Jesus is saying, and what the way we mostly conduct funerals nowadays is saying too, is that we are obsessed with death and with a fear of what will happen if we die before we have carved out a lasting legacy in the world that will ensure us some kind of ongoing impact in the land of the living."
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