Daily Gospel Reflection

Live with Sincerity

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant, where each day we explore the genius of the life and teachings of Jesus in the Gospels. Today's reading is Jesus Getting Question About the Resurrection. And it comes from the Gospel of Luke chapter 20, verses 27 through 40. There came to him some Sadducees, those who say that there is no resurrection. And they asked him a question saying, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the wife and raise up children for his brother." Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife and died without children. And the second and the third took her. And likewise, all seven left no children and died. Afterward, the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.

And Jesus said to them, "The sons of this age marry and are given him marriage, but those who are accounted worthy to attain to the age and to the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection." But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush where he calls the Lord God of Abraham, the Lord God of Isaac, and the Lord God of Jacob. Now, he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live in Him. And some of the scribes answered, "Teacher, you have spoken well, and they no longer dared to ask him any questions."

What jumps out at you today? The idea that jumps out at me, remember you say we're looking for a word or a phrase or an idea? It's easy some days to take a word or a phrase, but sometimes it's good to challenge ourselves to think about an idea. And the idea that jumps out at me today is sincerity, okay? And maybe you now look at the reading and say, "Okay, sincerity, how does he get that from there?" So we think about the opening line of the reading. There came to him some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection. So these are people who don't believe in the resurrection, and they're questioning Jesus about details, okay? They now come to Jesus and say, "Is there resurrection? Is there an afterlife?" No. They come to Jesus with this details of like, "This guy gets married and has no children, and then has according to custom, the next brother," and you know all this sort of stuff. And there's a real insincerity there because they're not questioning to learn. They're not questioning to grow. They're not questioning to be filled with more of God's wisdom. They're questioning just out of academic curiosity or just trying to trip Jesus up.

And there's a real insincerity there. And that's the idea that it jumped out at me. Maybe something else jumps out at you. But today I'm going to go about my day. I'm going to think, okay, am I living my life with sincerity? Am I bringing sincerity to this conversation, to this situation? Have a great day, and remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.