Title: Living Beyond What We Can See
Intro: We are people who know that death is not the final word.
Scripture: Luke 20:27-38
Reflection
Dear Friends,
My dear friends, I want to tell you a story that has stayed with me for years now.
There was a little girl in our parish—I’ll call her Maria—who lost her grandmother when she was only seven years old. At the funeral, she stood by the coffin, her small hand clutching her mother’s sari, and she asked me a question that pierced my heart: “Father, where did my grandmother go? Will I ever see her again?”
I looked into those innocent eyes, filled with tears and confusion, and I realized something profound. This child wasn’t asking me for theology. She wasn’t looking for complicated explanations about heaven and eternity. She was simply asking, “Does love end? Does life just stop?”
And that, my friends, is exactly what the Sadducees were asking Jesus in today’s Gospel reading from Luke 20:27-38, though they didn’t know it. They thought they were being clever, setting a trap with their ridiculous story about seven brothers and one wife. But beneath their mockery, beneath their intellectual pride, they were really asking the same question that every human heart asks when faced with death: “Is this all there is?”
Sometimes we need to have our certainties shaken. Sometimes we need to be reminded that there is more to reality than what we can see with our eyes or hold in our hands.
The Sadducees were the religious elite of their time, the educated ones, the ones who prided themselves on their rational approach to faith. They didn’t believe in angels. They didn’t believe in spirits. They didn’t believe in resurrection. To them, when you died, that was it. Finished. End of story.
So they came to Jesus with their puzzle, their trick question about the woman and the seven brothers. “Whose wife will she be in the resurrection?” they asked, barely hiding their smirks. They thought they had found the perfect trap, the ultimate proof that belief in resurrection was absurd.
But Jesus, as always, saw right through them. He didn’t just answer their question—He exposed the poverty of their imagination. “You are wrong,” He told them, “because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God” (Mark 12:24).
Think about that for a moment. These were men who had memorized the Torah, who spent their entire lives studying scripture. Yet Jesus said they didn’t really know it. Why? Because they had reduced God to their own understanding. They had made faith small enough to fit inside their own minds.
Jesus tells them something revolutionary: “Those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection” (Luke 20:35-36).
Do you hear what He’s saying? He’s telling them—and us—that the life to come is not just a continuation of this life. It’s not just more of the same. It’s something completely different, something so wonderful and so beyond our experience that we cannot even imagine it properly.
But then Jesus says something even more beautiful. He says, “Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive” (Luke 20:38).
Let that sink in, my friends. All of them are alive. Your grandmother who passed away last year—she is alive to God. That child you lost too soon—alive to God. That spouse who left you grieving—alive to God. That parent whose loss still makes your heart ache—alive to God.
This is not wishful thinking. This is not sentimentality. This is the foundation of our faith. As St. Paul writes, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died” (1 Corinthians 15:19-20).
I think about the story of Rabbi Hofetz Chaim, living in that simple room with just his books and a bench. When the tourist asked where his furniture was, the rabbi’s response was perfect: “Where is yours?” We are all just passing through, friends. All of us.
But here’s what materialism does to us—and materialism is not just about loving money or possessions. Materialism is believing that this world, this life, this physical existence is all there is. Materialism tells us to grab everything we can now, because there’s nothing after. Materialism whispers in our ears: accumulate, possess, control, secure yourself, because when you die, it’s over.
And that lie, that poisonous lie, makes us anxious and greedy and afraid. It makes us cling to things that don’t last. It makes us build our lives on sand.
I see it every day in my ministry. I see families torn apart over inheritance. I see people who have spent their whole lives accumulating wealth, only to realize at the end that they have nothing that matters. I see the fear in people’s eyes when they face their mortality, because they have lived as if this world was all there was.
But the resurrection changes everything. The resurrection tells us that this life is not the end. It tells us that love is stronger than death. It tells us that nothing good is ever lost, that every act of kindness, every moment of grace, every sacrifice made in love—all of it matters eternally.
When Maria asked me if she would see her grandmother again, I knelt down beside her and I said, “Yes, sweetheart, you will. Because your grandmother loved God, and God is the God of the living. She is more alive now than she ever was before.”
And you know what? That child’s face lit up with hope. Not because I had explained the mechanics of resurrection—I couldn’t if I tried. Not because I had answered all her questions about how it works. But because I had affirmed something her heart already knew: love does not end with death.
As St. Paul says, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). We cannot imagine it, friends. We cannot picture it accurately. But we can trust it.
This is why we gather every Sunday. This is why we break bread and share the cup. This is why we pray and sing and hope. Because we are resurrection people. We are people who know that death is not the final word.
And this belief—this beautiful, radical belief in resurrection—it changes how we live now. When we know that this life is not all there is, we become free. Free from the tyranny of things. Free from the fear of loss. Free to love without counting the cost.
Think about it: if you really believed, deep in your bones, that you would live forever in God’s presence, how would that change your life today? Would you still worry so much about your bank balance? Would you still be so afraid of what others think? Would you still hold grudges and nurse resentments?
Or would you live with open hands and an open heart, knowing that nothing you give away in love is ever truly lost?
My dear friends, the Sadducees were wrong. The materialists are wrong. The cynics are wrong. Death is not the end. This life is not all there is. We are, all of us, passing through on our way to something more wonderful than we can imagine.
So let us live like it. Let us live as people of the resurrection, people of hope, people who know that our loved ones who have died are not gone but simply gone ahead of us. Let us live as travelers, not as settlers, carrying light baggage and keeping our eyes fixed on the destination.
And when our own time comes to pass through that final door, may we go with confidence, knowing that we are going home to the God who is not the God of the dead but of the living, in whom all things are made new.
May the heart of Jesus, live in the hearts of all. Amen...
