Give God A Chance

A man dies. He finds himself in a reception area. He has no idea exactly where he is or where he is going, until a man dressed in a tuxedo approaches him and asks, “Smoking or Non-Smoking?”

There are passages in the Old Testament which reflect Israel’s consciousness that God possesses unlimited power and, therefore, He is able, not only to send people down into the “nether world” (that is, to die), but also He is able to bring them up from there (that is to restore them to life, to resurrect them).

Now, The Sadducees who approach Jesus in today’s Gospel Lesson, are among “those who say there is no resurrection,” Luke tells us. Moreover, they are preoccupied with the minutest details of their religious doctrine and religious law. Consequently, they construct a hypothetical afterlife situation and they present it to Jesus as a problem to be resolved (even though they consider the problem unsolvable). They ask Jesus to consider the case of a…