32 nd Sunday in Ordinary Time November 7 th, 2010

Transcription

1 Jesus said to them, The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise (Luke 20:34-36). 32 nd Sunday in Ordinary Time November 7 th, 2010 First Reading: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14: 1 It happened also that seven brothers and their mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king, under torture with whips and thongs, to partake of unlawful swine's flesh. 2 One of them, acting as their spokesman, said, "What do you intend to ask and learn from us? For we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors." 9 And when he was at his last breath, he said, "You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws."

2 10 After him, the third was the victim of their sport. When it was demanded, he quickly put out his tongue and courageously stretched forth his hands, 11 and said nobly, "I got these from Heaven, and because of his laws I disdain them, and from him I hope to get them back again." 12 As a result the king himself and those with him were astonished at the young man's spirit, for he regarded his sufferings as nothing. 13 After he too had died, they maltreated and tortured the fourth in the same way. 14 When he was near death, he said, "One cannot but choose to die at the hands of mortals and to cherish the hope God gives of being raised again by him. But for you there will be no resurrection to life!" Second Reading: 2 Thessalonians 2:16 3:5 16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, 17 comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word. 1 Finally, brothers and sisters, pray for us, so that the word of the Lord may spread rapidly and be glorified everywhere, just as it is among you, 2 and that we may be rescued from wicked and evil people; for not all have faith. 3 But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one. 4 And we have confidence in the Lord concerning you, that you are doing and will go on doing the things that we command. 5 May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ. Gospel Reading: Luke 20: Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him 28 and asked him a question, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; 30 then the second 31 and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless.

3 32 Finally the woman also died. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her." 34 Jesus said to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; 35 but 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. 36 Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 37 And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive." Homily What are we to make of this discussion about multiple marriages and who is given to whom in heaven? Is it a topic that even merits discussion at all? Or is there another level to the story that will help us make sense of what was actually transpiring between Jesus and the Sadducees? If the text is read straight-up, we may be inclined to regard it as a silly discussion, especially in our current day. What were they really contesting? We need to know a little bit more about the Sadducees. They did not believe in a resurrection. But it is more interesting to understand why they didn t. They believed only what was contained in the written Torah and totally rejected the oral Torah, or the traditions held by the Pharisees. If it wasn t written down, then they rejected it. We have this perennial conflict rolling across the centuries between scriptural literalists and those whose scriptural interpretations may take into account a larger context. Hypothetically, the issue underlying the question about seven successive husbands had to do with the written law of Moses, recorded in Deuteronomy (25:5-10), which sought to assure the continuity of the family line. A man dying without a son or a widow without a son would be in dire straits in that world. Many spouses were actually first cousins of one another, so a dead man s brothers would be viewed as perfect candidates to remarry his widow. So then a silly question is asked, how in the hereafter will she juggle seven men at the same time? This is about as useful as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. But in their concepts of resurrection -- if you believed in resurrection then according to the Sadducees, you were denying the written Torah and relying on something else, and you d be siding with the Pharisees in this theological debate. Josephus wrote that the Sadducees denied both rewards or punishments or the persistence of the soul after death. From their standpoint, you d be subjecting the law of Moses to ridicule if you

4 held this belief since the Mosaic books are silent on this point. The real issue was how to trap Jesus into taking a position on one side or the other. Jesus commonly responded to challengers by insulting them, and sometimes this was obvious, but in other cases, given the huge divide of time and cultures, it is less apparent to us as we read the English text just what was going on. In this case, he tells the Sadducees that those who are considered worthy by God will be immortal, like the angels. Oops! The Sadducees didn t believe in spirits or angels either (Acts 23:8)! So he leaves them in a quandary, tying the idea of immortality to angels and spirits. Then he says such immortals are children [literally, sons] of God. This terminology was a term used in the Old Testament to describe angels (Genesis 6:2; Job 1:6) who share in the resurrection, or in other words, creating a new level of living. Finally, Jesus quotes the Torah against the literalists, arguing that Moses proved the resurrection when he says that God is the God of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who were long gone. Since God is the God of those who are living and this God claims to have been God of the patriarchs before us, he therefore has sustained them and us in life into the age to come. In the Gospel of Mark, this same story is told, but there, he challenges the Sadducees by saying they didn t know either the scriptures or the power of God (Mark 12:24; Matthew 22:29). He also talks about the children of the resurrection (36). His argument that there will be resurrection because YHWH is the God of the patriarchs is further expanded because he is the God not of the dead but of the living [Exodus 3:6], for to him all are alive (38). To his contemporaries, the argument that they must still be alive because God is still the God of the patriarchs even after their death probably seemed more natural than it does to us. Continuity past death in this way would make more sense to Palestinean Jews and perhaps Jesus would have said something like that the nature of God is continuous and so are we (as best as I can understand it). In adding for to him all are alive, he has outwitted his opponents by ignoring the typical scribal reasoning and expanding the meaning. Jesus seems to say that the Torah does not render a hope in resurrection to be an absurdity but this continuity we share with the patriarchs is consistent with such hope. The issue of immortality, however, was probably derived from more of a Hellenistic idea. Some writers think that the Gospel writer was attempting to integrate and combine these two ideas, one of continuity from generation to generation believing in the same God, and a belief in individual immortality. Jesus also tells us that resurrection isn t prolonging our human arrangements but a state where marriage or giving in marriage is not a part of this new mode of existence. But in biblical history in both the Old Testament and New Testament God is not destroyed, and we are told in Romans (8:39) that Neither death or life will be able to separate us from the love of God. Some think that resurrection is a metaphor, a metaphor of transformation, a metaphor about the power of God to accomplish for us what we are unable to do for ourselves. It is an opening of a power and a grace that is

5 beyond us, the power of God breaking into nature and capable of raising up new life from the ashes of failure. Our fate of heaven or hell is a continuation of how we define ourselves in this life -- while we are here on earth. If we believe in heaven and hell as some kind of great divide, a great discontinuity, we are supernatural dualists. The logical conclusion from this position is that we may also think that we have to choose between being happy and content in this world or miserable in the next, or deprived and suffering now, to be rewarded later. Others, who perhaps are better described as natural humanists, which includes many agnostics, atheists as well as people of faith, would agree that heaven and earth are radically different and perhaps we should choose to focus upon what we know for sure -- the earth, here and now -- instead of looking for pie in the sky some day. But what if our philosophical leanings lead us to think that there should not be any discontinuity in reality between the life we know and the hypothesized hereafter? Perhaps some aspects of life are temporary and other aspects are enduring, so there is a continuity between how we live now and how we are going to live in the future as well. If we take this position, then while we fashion our own heaven or hell here on earth heaven or hell is here and now as well as future. However we live here will continue in the hereafter outside the limits of space, time, and our concepts of reality. And we might add that our understanding of these other dimensions is uncertain and it is an illusion to think we can know with certainty. Those who need to define the unknowable in order to feel spiritually secure will inevitably be dismayed, disappointed, and perhaps embarrassed we can think of many cases where the end of the world has been predicted with great certainty and we are all still here not some taken and some left behind. C. S. Lewis, in his parable of The Great Divorce teaches that if we hang on to fear, resentment and insist on staying in our prison, we will only be given what we have created. Jesus staved off the Sadducees and we are not told how they responded. Others -- probably some of the Pharisees -- publicly complimented him for his response. In the process, however, he probably was successful in insulting some and this may have led to his death. These issues of what happens after we die will not be resolved for most people via leftbrain, linear logic, empirical science, nor through concrete interpretations of scripture such as taught by the Sadducees as well as later fundamentalists of all religious persuasions. The thinking of literalists is similar across time. But we can open ourselves to the fullness of awareness and spiritual experience receiving the gifts of the Holy Spirit, living in communion of the saints both living and departed, and focusing on what we can know and do something about in bringing healing to our suffering world. O Lord, may we not fall prey to concrete narrow reasoning in order to contain our fears and deny our limitations in understanding. May we know the confidence that comes in resting in you, our God of the living. Amen.

6 Study Notes: Biblical background on the concept of resurrection : Except in the later parts of the Hebrew Bible, the idea of resurrection did not imply life of an individual person continuing after death but rather, it was a metaphorical renewal of Israel after its return from exile. Beginning with Daniel, which is apocalyptic literature, resurrection is more literal, denoting a coming to life after death through God s action via a transcendental existence beyond history. Still, it was the elect people of God (Daniel 12:1) who were resurrected corporately, not an individual. Jesus proclaimed a kingdom of God, which entailed a new cosmic order, and it was set to come about very soon. God was working through Jesus and his disciples to bring it about. Jesus used a simile describing the resurrection as like angels in heaven (Mark 14:25) which is reminiscent of Daniel 12:3: Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. Some critical scholarship regards Jesus predictions of his own resurrection as creations of the post-easter event by his community. But his preaching of a coming kingdom could also imply resurrection. There is little question by scholars but that he saw corporate resurrection of his own people beyond his own death. But some say there is little in his agreed-upon authentic preaching to suggest that he expected an individual resurrection for himself. The resurrection was a real event according to unanimous testimony of the NT but some say it occurs at the point where history as we know it ends and God s end-time kingdom begins. The earliest account of an appearance after the Resurrection is not in the Gospels but in I Corinthians 15:3-7 which Paul received after his apostolic call, and not later than 35 CE when he first met Cephas (Peter) and James (Galatians 1:19-19) who also received appearances of Jesus. The early community interpreted these events as rapture, resurrection, and exaltation. There are three models apparent: (1) Jesus was taken up or received in heaven (Ascension). (2) Jesus was raised from the dead (I Corinthians 15:4) where the use of passive voice was raised denotes an act of God (Acts 2:24). (3) The third approach was exaltation which is seen free-standing without reference to the resurrection, in a pre-pauline hymn very early found in Philippians 2:6-11. This hymn is thought to have originated within the first decade after the crucifixion. 5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form,

7 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (4) This same approach is followed in Hebrews where resurrection is not mentioned until the benediction is given (13:20). (5) In Acts, both resurrection and exaltation are seen. But resurrection is the approach that proved more persistent in the Christian community over time, absorbing or replacing the others. Jesus was raised as the first of God s elect and heralding a renewal of the entire cosmos (I Corinthians 15:20, 23) as well as making possible all other resurrections. The word which is used -- appeared -- reflects a visionary experience and is the same word used when angelic appearances are mentioned (Luke 1:11). These appearances should not be regarded as mere subjective experiences nor as hallucinations: something occurred which revealed Jesus as alive. People lived and died for this belief. Paul was cautious, stating that believers resurrection was shared with Chris through baptism, obedience, but will not be complete until the parousia or second coming. The Epistles of Colossians and Ephesians, regarded by some as deutero-pauline and coming in the next generation, say we are already risen with Christ through baptism, but we have responsibilities to live out on earth and it will not be fully realized until the end (Colossians 3:1-4). The 4 th Gospel teaches that resurrection and eternal life are already realized (John 5:24) but a future completion to also be awaited. I Thessalonians, the earliest known written Christian letter says that the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first (4:16). I Corinthians 15:51-53 says we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, that the dead will be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed, and this mortal must put on immortality. The earliest Church Fathers explicitly taught that resurrection was bodily and physical, that we will be raised in incorruptible bodies. Just what this means to each of us is part of our spiritual search and ongoing process. For myself, it s not a place where I spend a lot of time trying to figure it all out, and my faith does not require that I know. What is certain to me is that we shall not be separated from the love of God. Exactly what is on the other side, I do not know. When I don t know, the beautiful, mystical words of I Corinthians 13 come back to me:

8 8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.