| November 11, 20012 Maccabees 7:1-2,9-14 + 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5 + Luke 20:27-38 |
| This question about death comes to us in Luke at two levels, andit is not at all difficult to identify with one of them.Thefirst is theliteral level of a conversation between Jesus and the Sadducees.It is cold, impersonal, theoretical, and full of subtle threat.Their aim is to argue, embarrass, and force Jesus into one school of thought or another.There is no spirit of inquiry or a desire to learn.They want to divide the audience, and they are simply baiting Jesus with one of their classic “what if’ questions.It is a question they have already decided.They do not believe in the resurrection of the dead. J esus answers their question, not their attitude.The second is the personal, pastoral level of the Lucan church which is experiencing the death of friends and relatives creating a mood of unrelieved grief, sadness, and mourning,much like the mood that has settled upon our country in the past six weeks. |
| This Gospel is for us, not the Sadducees.The specific response of Jesus leads us beyond trying to imagine what it’s like on the other side of death to reflect on what matters on this side and what matters on that side.The “how” and “what” and “when” and “where” of resurrected life is not what we are given,and our Christian ancestors knew no more about it than we do. What is revealed to us in the Gospel is that we are to anchor ourselves in a sure faith that we have a living and loving God who has accomplished our salvation by the death and resurrection of Jesus.This faith gives us hope that provides meaning and purpose for our days and nights until we shall move beyond time into everlasting life. |
| There is nothing revealed to us that should lead us to be swayed or confused by ideas that lead us to an unhealthy and unholy fascination with popular phenomena like seances, mediums, psychics and advisors who claim ontact with the dead.Out of body experiences have nothing to do with faith and life everlasting.They are distractions to a people who are urged by the Gospel to keep their feet on the ground and stick with what we know to be true:that God is a God of the living and our relationship with thatGod is all that matters.What we know to be true is that all life, here and hereafter, consists in friendship with God.Death may put an end to physical existence, but not to a relationship that is eternal.Consequently, Jesus says, the relationship of those brothers (in the silly story of the Sadducees) to each other and to this woman is of no consequence whatsoever.At death, we lose everything except our relationship to God. |
| What is revealed to us is that all the effort, concern, worry, and anxiety that fills our lives over what people are going to think of us, what they may say about us, how well they will like us, is as silly as the story of the Sadducees.This Gospel proposes that we take a look at how much of our energy and time is spent on things that are irrelevant and on relationships with others in this life in terms of what they can do for us, or how they are going to help us get ahead.It proposes that we look at how much time and energy we put into the relationship we have with God, because in the end,that’s the only relationship that is going to get is anywhere at all. |
| The Lucan church was beginning to figure this out as things fell apart all around them,and family and friends suddenly and violently began to be taken from them.They began to realize that what really mattered was their sound and deeply rooted relationship with God.Friendship with God is what constitutes life here and hereafter.Death cannot take that away nor change it.On this truth rests our expectation of resurrection. |