You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
For the rest of the week, let’s turn to the Gospel passage appointed for next Sunday (the usual pattern for Water Daily…). This is an odd snippet of narrative, one which I’m usually quite happy to skip in deference to the All Saints readings. But if there is gold to be mined in any passage of Scripture, let’s go prospecting.
Jesus is approached by members of the sect of the Sadducees, who Luke tells us did not believe there would be any kind of resurrection after death. Since Jesus often spoke about an after-life, they decide to quiz him: "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her."
Is this a first century logic puzzle or are they satirically pointing out the inanity of life after death? Or are they playing a game of “gotcha?” I cannot discern a theological question here. But Jesus responds on a logical level, asserting the reality of resurrection, citing references to the “God of Abraham, Isacc and Jacob” as proof that the ancients believed in life after death.
Then he goes further, asserting that the activities we engage in in this life are not necessarily what we will be concerned with in the next. Some things, like marriage, are a fact of life in this world, not in eternity (more on that tomorrow…) He reminds them that God “is God not of the dead, but of the living.” Preoccupation with what will be in the heavenly courts takes our attention away from the life God has given us here and now – which may be a preamble to eternal life, but is very much to be lived.
And, as God is concerned with the welfare of all those with whom we share this earthly life, that is where we are to put our attention. That means we focus on those with us now more than on those we have lost. It means churches spend more time and resources focused on ministry and mission than on caring for our buildings or cemeteries.
These are good questions for us to consider now, while we remain very much enmeshed in our lives in this world. By faith we claim that death is not the end for us, though physical death still awaits us. Knowing that life and more life await us, how might we live as though this life is not all there is, is not even a fraction of the rest of our future? Might we hold our worries more lightly, engage in love with more freedom? Might we take more risks and step out in faith more boldly?
We have a lifetime to figure this out, and then eternity to live it out in the fullness of love.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
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