There is old adage in sales: know your audience. If you have a product you are trying to sell, know what motivates your potential customer and target your sales pitch to that. That same advice holds true when it comes to evangelization. If you want to be as effective as you can in sharing the faith you must first understand the person you are sharing the faith with. Get to know them, know what motivates them and what pains them. Jesus gives us a great example of targeting the message to the audience in his encounter with the Sadducees. Let us pay close attention to how he engages them as we read this Gospel so that way may learn how to more effectively share the truth.
The Question about the Resurrection
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 in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, 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 the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him.” And some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” For they no longer dared to ask him any question. Luke 20 : 27-40
Scriptural Analysis
The Sadducees now enter the conversation with Jesus. This is the only time they will appear in Luke’s Gospel. It is not surprising that they should be around the temple since the group included leading priests and often the high priest himself was a Sadducee. The Sadducees and the Pharisees emerged about the same time in the second century BC. The Sadducees belonged to the wealthy aristocracy and hold only to the written law of Moses rejecting the oral tradition of the Pharisees. They deny that there will be a resurrection. That particular belief gained widespread acceptance due to the experience of the Maccabean martyrs. The Sadducees were opposed to the belief in the resurrection believing that it was not taught in the law of Moses.
The Sadducees argued that Moses actually taught against the resurrection. The Law of levirate (brother-in-law) marriage states that a brother of a man who dies without leaving a child should marry their wife and raise the children in order that he may have descendants:
A Comparison Of The Pharisees And The Sadducees
The Pharisees were entirely religious. They had no political ambitions and were content with any government as long as they could carry out their ceremonies. The Sadducees were few but wealthy. The priests and nearly all the aristocracy belonged to this group. They were a governing class and cooperated with Rome.
The Pharisees accepted scripture plus the oral tradition. The Sadducees only accepted the written law of Moses.
The Pharisees believed in the resurrection from the dead as well as angels and spirits. The Sadducees did not.
The Pharisses believed in fate and that God ordered a man’s life The Sadducees believed in unrestricted free will.
The Pharisees believed in and hoped for the coming of the Messiah. The Sadducees did not.
“If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead shall not be married outside the family to a stranger; her husband’s brother shall go in to her, and take her as his wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. 6 And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his brother who is dead, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. Deuteronomy 25:6
The Sadducees present Jesus with a test case: a family of seven brothers each of whom marries the same woman as none of the brothers had any children with her. The Sadducees want to know, after the resurrection, whose wife will she be. This extreme case of the levirate law is designed to make the resurrection look ridiculous and thus false.
Jesus responds to their question by presenting a two-part response. First, Jesus challenges their understanding of the resurrection noting how the Sadducees expect that it will be the same kind of existence as they are living today. That thinking is wrong. In the resurrected existence, marriage does not exist. The purpose of the levirate law is to ensure that if someone dies without an heir, the family can still continue. Since people will no longer die this is not needed. The children of this age marry but the children of the next focus on God. Finally, Jesus’s response indicates that not all will attain to the resurrection, “but those who are accounted worthy to attain.” This is yet another attempt by Jesus to get the people to focus on the things of the world to come: to get their faith in order.
In the second response, Jesus shows that in fact the resurrection was taught by Moses. At the burning bush, the Lord revealed himself to Moses as the God of the patriarchs, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” (Exodus 3:6) Although their bodies are dead, to God they are still living. Since God is the God of the living, not the dead which means that the belief in the resurrection is necessary to have a proper understanding of God. However, since the resurrection has not occurred there has to be some intermediate state that Christians know as the immortal soul.
Some of the scribes tell Jesus that he answered the Sadducees well. However, the Sadducees will return to this theme later with Jesus’s disciples who proclaim the resurrection of the dead in Jesus, “the Sadducees came upon them, annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.” (Acts 4:1-2) This answer quiets his opponents who will no longer engage him in questioning. They focus entirely now on plotting his death.
Daily Application
The Sadducees held as truth, as dogmatic only the Mosaic law. If something was not taught by Moses, then it wasn’t binding truth. Jesus knew this was their belief them so as he engaged them, he takes advantage of that in crafting his response. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection because they did not believe that Moses taught it. The approach Jesus takes is to use Moses’s own encounter with God to prove that in fact, Moses does teach the resurrection. He uses that which they hold as authoritative to show them that their belief was wrong.
There is something there for us to use in our own evangelization. If we want to share the Gospel with others, we first need to understand them: what they believe and what they hold as important, even authoritative. This is critical. For example, if I am talking to an ardent atheist then beginning with the Immaculate Conception is likely going to be ineffective. I must first start with proof for the existence of God based on the natural law, which the atheist accepts as a source of truth. Since Christ is truth, the supreme author of truth, all truth will ultimately point back to him.
Sharing the Gospel is not a one size fits all endeavor. In order to be effective, we must target our approach to the audience we are trying to reach. That does not mean we change the truth or avoid the hard parts. Quite the opposite. For a person far removed from the truth, the difficulties are often the most attractive. We just need to package that truth using that which the hearer is open to receive. Know your audience and bring to them the truth that is Jesus Christ.
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