32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5; Luke 20:27-38

VIDEO

In this month of November—
adorned with falling leaves,
and begun with the commemorations 
of All Saints and All Souls—
the Church turns our attention 
to the passing away of this world
and our hope for the world to come.
But what is it that we hope for?
Certainly, we hope that 
whatever has given life in this world 
meaning and joy
will be somehow continued 
beyond this world,
that the things and people 
in whom we have delighted in this life
will continue to delight us in the next.

But in today’s Gospel 
Jesus seems to throw cold water on those hopes.
Asked whether those 
who will be raised from the dead
will still be married,
Jesus responds, “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.”
Jesus seems to suggest that marriage
is a temporary provision 
necessitated by the fact that we all die, 
and if we did not procreate 
the human race would die with us.
His words also suggest that all those relationships
that are so important to our life in this world
are perhaps simply temporary provisions 
and will no longer be relevant in the life to come.

Maybe to think that God’s kingdom 

involves having husbands or wives
or parents or children or friends
is simply a failure of imagination
and an inability to grasp 
how different eternal life will be,
where we will no longer die, 
and will be like the angels,
who know and love God 
in a direct and unmediated way.
Perhaps to mourn the passing of those loves
is to be, as the philosopher Eleonore Stump suggests,
“like a child who reacts with dismay when he is told 
that he won’t be sucking his thumb when he grows up.”

Is it simply the case 
that the loves forged in this life
vanish into the love of God—
are something that we, as it were, outgrow?
Do we forget the personal histories
by which we became who we are,
in which spouses and parents 
and children and friends
played vital, irreplaceable roles? 
Is all of this simply swallowed up 
when God becomes all in all?

Maybe this is not the whole picture.
If our Gospel suggests that the life of the world to come
is radically different from our life in this world,
our first reading suggests that even in this radical difference
there remain threads of continuity 
between this life and the next.
We hear in this reading a part of the story 
of the torture and execution
of seven brothers and their mother 
during the Greek persecution of the Jews 
who remained faithful to the Law of Moses. 
Our lectionary spares us 
the gruesome details of their dismemberment,
but we do hear the words of the third brother,
who, as he extends his tongue and hands to be cut off,
says to his tormentors,
“It was from Heaven that I received these;
for the sake of his laws I disdain them;
from him I hope to receive them again.”

This story gives us an example 
not simply of faith and courage,
but of hope as well. 
Read alongside Jesus’s words in the Gospel,
it suggests that the life from God for which we hope
is somehow in continuity with the life
that we have already received from God,
and yet it is unimaginably more;
it is a blessedness toward which 
the blessings of this life gesture,
but which they ultimately cannot express.

In the case of the blessing of marriage,
St. Paul tells us in the letter to the Ephesians
that the love of husband and wife
is not only for the sake of procreation,
but is also a sign of the love 
between Christ and the Church.
Even amid struggle and misunderstanding,
the sorrow and the loss,
that seem to mark all our loves in this life,
our faithfulness to the bond of marriage 
gestures to the ultimate union with Christ in love
that we hope for in God’s kingdom come.
But in the blessedness of God’s kingdom
we will no longer need signs,
we will no longer need to gesture,
because we will possess that love in its fullness. 

And yet, while the sign of the marriage bond will pass away,
surely the love that forged that bond will not.
In this life, the bond of love between spouses,
always faltering and imperfect,
is a sign by which we orient ourselves in hope
toward the unimaginable love of God;
when we possess that divine love in its fullness,
surely we will find encompassed within it
the love had by spouses in this life,
no longer marked by struggle and misunderstanding,
no longer afflicted by sorrow and loss,
no longer faltering and imperfect,
but gloriously transfigured by the light of Christ.

And so too with all our loves forged in this life:
the love of parent and of child and of friend.
Our hope is that they too 
will be present in the life to come,
no longer as signs and gestures 
that dimly hint at the love of God
but healed, perfected, and transformed by the light 
that streams forth upon them from the very heart of God.

Jesus tells us in the Gospel that our God
“is not God of the dead, but of the living,
for to him all are alive.”
So as our minds turn,

amid November’s falling leaves
and remembrances of the dead, 
to the passing away of this world,
let our hope be renewed 
that the loves with which God has blessed us in this life
will not finally pass away but be restored to us,
for these loves are eternally alive 
in the God of love who is their source,
from whom we have received them,
and in whom we shall possess them in eternity.

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Maccabees7:1-2, 9-14; 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5; Luke 20:27-38

The hypothetical situation posed to Jesus by the Sadducees
presumes the practice, based in the Old Testament Law,
of what was called “levirate marriage.”
It is prescribed in the book of Deuteronomy
that when a man dies without a son
his widow is not to marry anyone outside of the clan
but rather the dead man’s brother is to marry her,
so that, “the firstborn son she bears
shall continue the name of the deceased brother,
that his name may not
be blotted out from Israel” (Deut. 25:5-6).
Notice that the purpose is to secure offspring
in whom the name of the dead man might live on,
so that he will not be forgotten.
For the Sadducees,
who rejected belief in the resurrection of the dead,
this was the only sort of immortality on offer.
They believed that the situation that they posed to Jesus
regarding the woman who was married
successively to seven brothers,
and the question of whose wife she would be
when they were raised from the dead,
pointed out the absurdity
of believing in such a resurrection.
Much more sensible, much more realistic, they thought,
was to focus on this life and on this world
and on finding our hope of immortality
in securing offspring to carry on the memory of our name,
so that it “may not be blotted out from Israel.”

Whether it is a matter of having offspring
who will carry on our name,
or of having a life whose achievements
will merit monuments and memory,
we humans often live our lives
as if our only hope of immortality
was in leaving our mark on history,
so that our memory will endure.

But Jesus knows how fragile such hope is.
Jesus knows that even if we have children
who carry the memory of our names,
and even if our children’s children,
and their children in turn,
carry that memory,
the day will come when human memory will fail.
The day will come—
for some sooner,
for others later,
but for all eventually—
when our names will be forgotten,
when our tombstone and monuments will crumble,
when all record of our too-brief life
will be obliterated.
The idea of living on in human memory,
rather than being more realistic
than belief in resurrection,
is in fact a fantasy.

But Jesus offers us a better hope.
In responding to the Sadducees,
he brushes aside their hypothetical scenario,
because it misses the point
of belief in resurrection from the dead.
To be raised by God is not simply
to resume the life that you lived before,
but is to live in a new way.
It is not a matter of taking up again this life,
with its fears and anxieties
and its desperate attempts to keep death at bay
by making our mark on history;
rather, it is a matter of entering into
the undying life of God.

But even if we abandon the fantasy of immortality
gained though the memory of our achievements,
we can still be tempted to think
that our faith in resurrection
is based on there being some immortal “spark” in us
that is incapable of dying.
Of course it is true that we possess an immortal soul,
but faith in the resurrection of the dead
is not based on a belief about who we are—
possessors of immortal souls—
but on our faith in who God is.
For our God is the one who knows and remembers us,
even though all others should forget.
As St. Paul says in our second reading,
“The Lord is faithful.”
To be held in the memory of our children
or of those who admire our achievements
is simply a temporary respite from death’s obliteration
and a shadowy imitation of life.
But to be held in the memory of the eternal God,
is to live more truly than we have ever lived before,
for our God “is not a God of the dead,
but of the living,
for to him all are alive.”

During the month of November
we remember our beloved dead:
we remember the multitude of unknown saints
whom we celebrate on All Saints Day,
and we remember those still awaiting
the full vision of God
for whom we pray on All Souls Day.
But we do not remember them
because they live only in our memory,
as if their last remnants would vanish from life
if we were to forget them.
No, our hope for them is that they are now
more alive than we are,
because they look upon God with unveiled faces
and know the God of life even as they are known.
We remember them because in our remembering
we are sharing in God’s act of remembering,
and we touch and taste
a tiny share of their immortality,
the immortality that is promised to us
in Jesus Christ.

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5; Luke 20:27-38

I have a confession to make:
When it comes to life after death
I am something of a Sadducee.
The idea that death is not simply the end
sometimes strikes me as just a bit too good to be true.
God has blessed me with a family that loves me,
meaningful work to do,
a Church community that challenges and supports me,
and I sometimes think that that would be enough,
that eternal life is sort of gilding the lily,
and that if my death were definitively the end of me
I would still believe that God is good;
I would still thank God
for all the blessings of this life.
So I am, at least by disposition if not belief,
not unlike the Sadducees in today’s Gospel
who look for their rewards
in the blessings of this life.

Of course, when you find yourself
identifying with Jesus’s opponents
it is usually a sign
that you have gotten into theological trouble,
so we should reflect a bit more
on the Sadducees and their disbelief.
The ancient historian Josephus notes
that the Sadducees were a group within Judaism
who had their support primarily among the rich.
I suppose this makes a kind of sense:
enjoying in this life what they take to be
their just deserts from the God whom they serve,
they hold to the ancient Israelite belief
that God justly rewards people
for the good they have done in this life
with blessings bestowed in this life.

But what about those
who do not receive blessings in this life?
What about those who faithfully serve God
and, like the seven brothers in our first reading,
receive as their recompense torment and torture
at the hands of a tyrant?
What about those who seek to do God’s will
and end up abandoned and alone?
What about those who, through no fault of their own,
lead lives filled, not with blessing,
but with disappointed dreams?
If our hope is only in this life
then it becomes difficult to believe
in a God who is either just or good;
if we allow ourselves to remember
all of the kindnesses that have gone unrewarded,
all of the injustices that have gone uncorrected,
all of the sufferings that have gone unrelieved,
it becomes difficult to believe that,
as Martin Luther King put it,
“The arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends towards justice.”
To believe this we must believe not only
that justice in this world
will one day be achieved;
we must also believe that all those
who have suffered unjustly
or had their goodness unrewarded,
will one day find vindication,
will one day receive the reward that they deserve,
will one day have the wounds of injustice healed.
And to believe this is to believe in resurrection,
to believe that there will be justice
for all those whose lives
have been ground beneath the injustices of history.

A few years ago, Pope Benedict XVI wrote,
“I am convinced that the question of justice
constitutes the essential argument,
or in any case the strongest argument,
in favor of faith in eternal life. . .
only in connection with the impossibility
that the injustice of history should be the final word
does the necessity for Christ's return and for new life
become fully convincing” (Spe Salvi n. 43).

If agreeing with Jesus’ opponents is a sign
that your theology has gone wrong,
the perhaps agreeing with a Pope
is an indication that you’re on the right track.
For me, the most compelling argument for eternal life
is not my own desire to avoid death,
but rather my conviction
that the God we know in Jesus Christ
is a God of justice,
who will heal the injustices of history.
I still find it difficult to imagine
what eternal life would be like.
Of course, in this I am not all that different
from the Sadducees in today’s Gospel,
who think eternal life would be simply
an extension of life in this world.
But perhaps my difficulty in imagining eternal life
is simply the difficulty of imagining true justice.
We cannot imagine how God could set right
the injustices of the past,
could restore wholeness of body and soul to the tortured,
could heal the indignities already suffered by the disabled,
could assuage the hungers of those who have starved to death.
But we do know that our God
is a God of the living, not the dead,
and the promised eternal life that we cannot imagine,
we can still believe to be true,
we can still hope one day to see,
we can still love as our true homeland.

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5; Luke 20:27-38

“You can’t take it with you.”

That is at least part of Jesus’ reply

to the Sadducees in today’s Gospel.

The Sadducees were a group within Judaism

who held to a very traditional interpretation of the Law

and who, in particular, rejected what they considered the novel idea

that in God’s kingdom those righteous one’s who had died

would be raised to new life.

We see this belief testified to in our first reading,

from the book of Maccabees:

“the King of the world will raise us up again to live forever.”

For the Sadducees, this idea was a dangerous innovation

that undermined their more traditional view

that people were rewarded or punished by God in this life.

So they pose to Jesus,

who teaches this dangerously innovative idea of resurrection,

the following puzzle:

If a woman’s husband dies, and she marries his brother,

who in turn dies, and she marries another brother,

and so on and so forth through seven brothers

(if I were the seventh brother

I would think twice before marrying this woman),

when the dead are raised to new life,

whose wife will she be?

Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees is twofold.

The first part of his answer is to make clear

that the kind of life led by those

whom God will raise from death to new life

is something quite different from the sort of life we live now.

Those who live in the kingdom of God

“neither marry nor are given in marriage.”

No doubt in God’s kingdom we will still love

those whom we have loved in the time of this life,

but the institution of marriage itself,

tied up as it is with creating households and raising children,

is for this world, not for the kingdom.

People say, “you can’t take it with you,”

and it would seem that, according to Jesus,

marriage is one of those things you can’t take with you.

The second part of Jesus answer to the Sadducees

is that we believe that the dead shall be raised

because we believe that our God is the God of the living;

what it means truly to live is to live in relationship with God

and God’s relationship to those whom God loves

cannot be defeated, even by death.

As Paul says in our second reading,

“the Lord is faithful;

he will strengthen you and guard you.”

Those whom we think of as dead are not dead to God,

and when God’s kingdom is manifested in its fullness

we shall see and know the fullness of life

that is enjoyed by those righteous ones

who have died in God’s cause.

While the saying “you can’t take it with you”

applies to many things in this world,

it doesn’t apply to our relationship with God.

In fact, it seems that this relationship

is the one thing you can take with you.

So Jesus’ response to the Sadducees is to remind them

that the things we think of as making up the fabric of our life –

institutions like marriage,

political structures,

economic systems,

and even the outward forms of the Church –

are in fact simply temporary bulwarks

that we construct against the terrifying reality of death,

and in the age to come they will give way

before the one reality that is the true fabric of our life:

God’s love for us.

You can’t take these things with you

because you don’t need to take them with you;

in the fullness of God’s kingdom,

God’s love alone will unite us with God and with each other

and we will not need those temporary structures

that form the fabric of our lives in this world.

But, of course, we do not yet live

in the fullness of God’s kingdom.

In the time of this life

people still marry and are given in marriage,

they vote and run in elections,

they invest and spend money,

they gather weekly as Church

to hear God’s Word spoken in human words

and to encounter God through sacramental signs.

In the time of this life these things,

provisional though they be,

are the warp and woof from which our lives are woven.

In the time of this life these things,

provisional though they be,

are of crucial importance

to the life that we hope to live in the kingdom of God.

In the time of this life these things,

provisional though they be,

are the means by which we bear witness in this age

to the life we hope to live in the age to come.

Though there will be no marriage in the kingdom of God,

how we live our committed relationships in this age

can become a sign

of how we will live our risen life in the age to come

if we live those commitments

with integrity and honesty and self-sacrifice.

Though there will be, thank God,

no politics or economies in the kingdom of God,

how we inhabit the political and economic structures of this age

can become a sign of our dwelling in God’s kingdom

if we inhabit those structures in such a way that we always look,

not to our own concerns and well-being,

but to the concerns and well-being

of the poor, the outcast and the defenseless.

Though there will be no need

for sacramental signs in the kingdom of God,

how we gather as Church in this age

can become a sign of the heavenly liturgy

that we will celebrate in the kingdom

if we give ourselves generously and without reservation

to the worship of God.

Marriage, power, money,

even the outward structures of the Church. . .

you can’t take them with you

into the risen life of God’s kingdom.

We can, however, use them in this age,

in the time of this life,

as a means by which we begin to live that risen life now.

They are the strands from which

the fabric of our lives is woven,

the lives that we are called to place

at the service of God and neighbor.

Next week we will be asking you to consider again

your financial support of our parish.

I always tell people that if they do not give more money

our doors will not close,

our current staff will not have to be let go;

we will find a way to make do.

But that is not why we give.

We given because even though

both our money and our parish community

are simply provisional realities,

neither of which will go with us into God’s kingdom,

the two of them together

can become a sign of that kingdom here and now.

You can’t take it with you,

but you can use it now in such a way

that it becomes a sign

of the risen life we will lead in the age to come.