Gospel Luke 20:27-40
The Sadducees do not understand, they cannot see the kingdom of God. They believe that what is perishable cannot put on imperishability, that what is mortal cannot put on immortality. Jesus in His very person shows us otherwise. Those who are in Him will indeed rise again from the dead, raised to imperishability and immortality in a new body, to be with Him forever in a new heaven and new earth. Do you know what the leading cause of death is? Being born. And we who are born in the flesh will all face that day, but for the Christian born of water and Spirit we do not face death without the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. This is a promise not just for the patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. No, this is a promise also for you. God’s promises do not have an expiration date. All the promises of God have their “Yes” and their “Amen” in Christ. So this is a promise for you, you who believe and are baptized.
So this age is most assuredly not the age yet to come. There is something much better. Therefore we are waiting in hopeful expectation for Christ to return in glory. But He has not left us on our own, for even in this waiting we have the means of grace to establish and strengthen our faith. “38 Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.”1 In Holy Baptism you were made alive and continue to live in repentance and faith. Today we receive His very Body and Blood, and in this eating and drinking we have the promise of the new life yet to come – we “live to Him,” He who was raised from the dead.
1 Lk 20:38.