Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

The question of the resurrection

²³ The same day some Sadducees came to him. (The Sadducees deny the resurrection.) Their question was this.

²⁴ “Teacher,” they began, “Moses said, ‘If a man dies without children, his brother should marry his widow and raise up seed for his brother.’ ²⁵ Well now, there were seven brothers living among us. The first got married, and then died, and since he didn’t have children he left his wife to his brother. ²⁶ The same thing happened with the second and the third, and so on with all seven. ²⁷ Last of all the woman died. ²⁸ So: in the resurrection, whose wife will she be, of all the seven? All of them had married her, after all.”

²⁹ This was Jesus’ answer to them: “You are quite mistaken,” he said, “because you don’t know your Bibles or God’s power. ³⁰ In the resurrection, you see, people don’t marry or get married off; they are like angels in heaven. ³¹ But as for the resurrection of the dead, did you never read what was said to you by God, in these words: ³² ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He isn’t God of the dead, but of the living.”

³³ The crowds heard this, and they were astonished at his teaching.