Read­ing Time: 3 minutes

Plotting to trap Jesus

Fol­low­ing Luke’s present­a­tion, Jesus has made his ingress into the of Jer­u­s­alem. And in Luke 19:45–48, Jesus per­formed his first activ­ity in Jer­u­s­alem. Luke notes that as soon as Jesus entered the Temple courts, he drove out those who turned the house of God into a mar­ket arena. After that, he taught the people in the Temple on daily basis. Instead of listen­ing to his teach­ings, the chief priests, the teach­ers of law and the lead­ers of the people were ser­i­ous look­ing for a way to accuse and kill him. At the begin­ning of the twen­ti­eth chapter, Luke observes that as Jesus was busy teach­ing the people in the temple, the same chief priests, the scribes and the eld­ers who have been look­ing for some reas­on to kill him, ques­tions his author­ity for driv­ing out those buy­ing and selling in the temple and for teach­ing in the temple. As usu­al, Jesus mes­mer­izes them and silenced them, mak­ing them look more stu­pid (cf. Luke 20:1–8). After such cal­cu­lated dis­trac­tion, Jesus con­tin­ued with his teach­ing, this time with a par­able of the vine­yard and the ten­ants. The con­clu­sion of this par­able is that the Jew­ish author­ity wanted to arrest Jesus because they per­ceived the par­able was against and about them. As usu­al and as evil people, they were afraid of the people (cf. Luke 20:9–19). Giv­en the fail­ure of their plan A, the chief priests, the scribes and the eld­ers, now resor­ted to plan B. This time, they decided to send spies. After expos­ing their trick, Jesus saw through their dupli­city and silenced them too, mak­ing them look stu­pid and fool­ish as those who sent them (cf. Luke 20:20–26).

Concerning Resurrection

Whatever their inten­tion was, the Sad­ducees’ inter­rog­a­tion offers us the oppor­tun­ity to reflect more on the issue of life after death. Often, we are faced with the dilemma of wheth­er there is anoth­er life after our earthly exist­ence, or wheth­er phys­ic­al death means end of life. The three read­ings of this Sunday have one theme in com­mon – resur­rec­tion and the hope of resur­rec­tion. Accord­ing to the Cat­ech­ism of the Cath­ol­ic Church, death is only but the ter­min­a­tion of earthly life (cf. n. 1007). For the same Cat­ech­ism, bod­ily death “is a par­ti­cip­a­tion in the death of the Lord, so that they can also share his resur­rec­tion” (n. 1006). How­ever, such par­ti­cip­a­tion and shar­ing is only for those who die in the grace of Christ.

Conclusion

Due to their world­li­ness, the Phar­isees could not dis­tin­guish between the eph­em­er­al and the etern­al. Talk­ing of whose wife will the woman be on the resur­rec­tion day means the Sad­ducees under­stood noth­ing about the resur­rec­tion from the dead. The earthly style of life is com­pletely dif­fer­ent from the eschat­o­lo­gic­al life. Just like the Phar­isees, this Gos­pel is meant to call most of us back. Often, we live and behave as if we cre­ated and own life and the world. But I think it is bet­ter to believe there is anoth­er life after the earthly exist­ence, than to believe and behave as if there is none, only to dis­cov­er after death that there is. In that case, you are swindled and the only thing one can do for you is to pity you. Call unto the Lord while you still have time! 

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