Jesus dismantles the Sadducees’ argument, which brings up the case of a woman who married seven brothers and, seeing them die one by one, will find herself, according to them, in the contradiction of not knowing to whom she belongs when they all rise again.
But that woman is not an object, and no one can possess her, especially in the logic of the kingdom of God, which is a logic of structural and radical freedom. “The children of this world take wives and husbands, but those who are judged worthy of the other world and of the resurrection from the dead do not take wives or husbands, and they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and, being children of the resurrection, they are children of God” (Luke 20:34-36).
But this cannot be understood unless we open our minds and do not close them. If there is one point on which our faith stands or falls, it is the resurrection.
Even in Jesus’ time, there was a clear separation between those who believed in it and those who did not. However, it must also be said that even among those who believe in it today, some have formed a mistaken idea, confusing the resurrection with some form of reincarnation or revitalization of a corpse. The resurrection is a fact that cannot be described in its entirety.
What we do know for certain, however, is that it is the gift of a concrete life, in a concrete body, but freed from the dictatorship of sin and death. No one can explain this mystery because, like all mysteries, it can only be experienced. Certainly, however, nothing can be understood about the resurrection if it is conceived as the same life that exists here.
A seed has life, but when it dies (germinates), it becomes a tree, which is also life. It is life that comes from the seed, but no one would dream of saying that it is the same as before, because it is radically different. In the same way, to think of the resurrection with the same logic of possession and limitation with which we live our lives here would mean not understanding anything about the life given in the resurrection.
