THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY HOMILY IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR C
2 Mac 7:1f.,9-14 2 Thes 2:16-35 Lk 20:27-38
Is This Life All There IS?
The Resurrection of the Body; Life after Death; Resurrection to Life; This World and the World of Resurrection.
1st Reading – 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14
1 It happened that seven brothers with their mother were arrested and tortured with whips and scourges by the king, to force them to eat pork in violation of God’s law.
2 One of the brothers, speaking for the others, said: “What do you expect to achieve by questioning us? We are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors.”
9 At the point of death he said: “You accursed fiend, you are depriving us of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever. It is for his laws that we are dying.”
10 After him the third suffered their cruel sport. He put out his tongue at once when told to do so, and bravely held out his hands,
11 as he spoke these noble words: “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.”
12 Even the king and his attendants marveled at the young man’s courage, because he regarded his sufferings as nothing.
13 After he had died, they tortured and maltreated the fourth brother in the same way.
14 When he was near death, he said, “It is my choice to die at the hands of men with the hope God gives of being raised up by him; but for you, there will be no resurrection to life.”
Responsorial Psalm – Psalms 17:1, 5-6, 8, 15
R. (15b) Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.
1 Hear, O LORD, a just suit;
attend to my outcry;
hearken to my prayer from lips without deceit.
R. Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.
5 My steps have been steadfast in your paths,
my feet have not faltered.
6 I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God;
incline your ear to me; hear my word.
R. Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.
8 Keep me as the apple of your eye,
hide me in the shadow of your wings.
15 But I in justice shall behold your face;
on waking I shall be content in your presence.
R. Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.
2nd Reading – 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5
Brothers and sisters:
16 May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement and good hope through his grace,
17 encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word.
1 Finally, brothers and sisters, pray for us, so that the word of the Lord may speed forward and be glorified, as it did among you,
2 and that we may be delivered from perverse and wicked people, for not all have faith.
3 But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one.
4 We are confident of you in the Lord that what we instruct you, you are doing and will continue to do.
5 May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the endurance of Christ.
Alleluia – Revelation 1:5A, 6B
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
5A Jesus Christ is the firstborn of the dead;
6B to him be glory and power, forever and ever.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel – Luke 20:27-38
27 Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to Jesus,
28 saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us, If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother.
29 Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless.
30 Then the second
31 and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless.
32 Finally the woman also died.
33 Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.”
34 Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and remarry;
35 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.
36 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.
37 That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called out ‘Lord, ‘ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;
38 and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
Homily
Ghosts and goblins — and life after death — are an attractive source of stories, novels, and movies. Many famous people have wrestled with the idea of life after death. “If there is no immortality, I shall hurl myself into the sea,” wrote Tennyson. Bismarck was calmer. “Without the hope of an afterlife,” he said, “this life is not even worth the effort of getting dressed in the morning.” Even Freud called the belief that death is the door to a better life “the oldest, strongest and most insistent wish of mankind.” Some modern literature is different. In Ionesco’s Amedee, the plot concerns a corpse that blows up larger and larger until it floats away in the shape of a balloon — a balloon that’s on the way to nowhere.
It is no wonder that we have concern about something so important as life after death. we haven’t experienced it, and it seems to exceed the bounds of reason. But many important things exceed the bounds of reason — our parents’ love, for example, and the trust of children, and genuine friendship — to all of which we give great attention. Now, as the end of the Church year arrives in two weeks, it is natural for our thoughts to turn to life after death. The Judeo-Christian tradition has a lot to say about it. Belief in a bodily resurrection after death started even before-the events of today’s liturgy.
With the Maccabees in today’s First Reading, the belief reaches a definitive statement. These events took place when the Seleucid Antiochus IV, King of Syria from 175 to 164 BC, ruled the Holy Land. Antiochus decided to eliminate the Jewish mindset by introducing pagan Greek thought and ways into Palestine. Like Alexander the Great before him and other ethnic purist dictators since, he wanted one culture for his kingdom (Hellenism), one language (Greek), and one religion (the Greek pantheon). That culture included the Greek dramas, which were really liturgies offered to pagan gods and goddesses. It included the athletic games and the gymnasium; these were in the nude, which was offensive to Jewish morals. Worst of all, Antiochus blasphemously erected a statue of Olympian Zeus in the Temple itself — the ultimate desecration (the “abomination of desolation” referred to in Dan 8:13 and again in the Gospels).
As with any such attempt, there was a group willing to cooperate to save their prestige, their wealth, and their lives. But most Jews resisted. So Antiochus’ armies attacked them. 80,000 Jews died and another 80,000 were sold into slavery. It became a capital offence to possess a copy of the Mosaic Law; mothers who had their children circumcised were crucified with their children hanging around their necks. Antiochus turned the Temple, courts into brothels, pilfered the Temple treasury, and turned the Temple’s great altar into an altar to the Greek god Zeus, on which he added the further insult of offering pigs’ flesh to the pagan gods.
The Jewish resistance fighters were led by a single family, the Mattathias — or, as they were called, “The Hammers” — the Maccabees. Today’s reading is part of the inspiring story of their bravery. (For the sake of the squeamish, the reading omits verses 3 through 8, telling the details of their inhuman martyrdom — cutting out the tongue of one who had spoken up, scalping him, cutting off his hands and feet, and frying him while still alive; and with a second, tearing off the skin and hair of his head.) Each of the seven brothers, as he approached death, was inspired by their mother. She urged them all to be strong, put their faith in God, and die like men. Their hope was in the glory of the resurrection to come.
The Maccabees and their band won their epic struggle. Joyous lights were put up in the Temple and in every Jewish home, giving the feast its second name, the Feast of Lights — appropriate because of its meaning to the light of freedom. Judas Maccabaeus decreed that the days of the rededication of the altar should be observed with joy and gladness on the anniversary every year for eight days (1 Mac 4:59). The feast is still commemorated as Hanukkah, and to this day Jews celebrate it with lights in their windows.
One of the many New Testament affirmations of the resurrection of the body is the dialogue between Jesus and the Sadducees in today’s Gospel passage. The only immortality they would accept was for the community of Israel; they didn’t believe in individual resurrection. They posed to Jesus a trick question, disguised in the form of a rabbinical
debate. It was so phrased that Jesus would either be caught in the quagmire of rabbinical casuistry or be forced to deny the reality of the resurrection of the dead. ‘
It was natural that the Sadducees should bring forth the Law of Moses. For them, that was the sole religious authority. What they brought up was the “Levirate Law”, whereby a widow was to marry a brother of her dead husband in order that through their children her husband’s name and family line might not be obliterated (Dt 25:5) — another way of bringing about immortality. Their point was not the Levirate Law itself, which was no longer in effect, but the matter of being raised from the dead. For them, the impossibility of a woman being reunited after death with seven husbands was proof enough that no resurrection was possible. Modern living poses similar cases. How is resurrection of the body possible, for example, for people bombed into apparent nothingness by a nuclear explosion? ‘
In the first part of Jesus’ answer, he took the opportunity to give a deeper understanding of the nature of the resurrected life. He said that we shouldn’t speculate about the other side of the grave in terms of this earth. Life there is quite different. The resurrected life, for example, is the life of a completed human person, no longer defined in marital or generative terms. In the resurrected life, we are not just resuscitated, but resurrected — not the kind of life we have here, but rather a life fulfilled on a wholly other plane. When Jesus spoke of the resurrected becoming in a sense like angels, he did not mean that we will no longer have bodies in the life to come, or that we won’t recognize or be interested in seeing each other as well as God. But at that point, any further discussion» with the Sadducees — who were materialists incapable of conceiving of anything spiritual — had to come to an end.
Then, since the Sadducees held only to the Law of Moses, Jesus returned to that, citing the remarkable incident of Moses encountering God in the burning bush. God called out to Moses from the bush, identifying Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Ex 3:1~8). When Moses heard from God, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were dead. Yet God had said, “I am the God” of these three patriarchs — not “I was”, but “i am” their God. So Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob still lived! So the creative power of God brings about life after death! The Sadducees became silent. Jesus had met them on their own ground and won.
While we should be concerned about our life after death, we needn’t be over-anxious. That is what St Paul wrote to the young Church at Thessalonica, which was upset because many expected the end of the world and Jesus‘ Second Coming in a short time. Today’s reading, which comes from the centre of St Paul’s letter, preaches peace of soul. The prayer (2:16f.) is that God may comfort and strengthen the people at Thessalonica as they strive to live out the Gospel in their lives. After his own prayer for them, Paul in turn movingly requests the weak Thessalonians’ prayers for himself and his work.
The stories in today’s liturgy present human situations which cry out to teach us the resurrection of the dead. Innocent suffering on behalf of truth, as depicted in the Maccabees, demands that the just God give a final rationale for human suffering. The human situation behind the Gospel story — that is, the attempt to have one’s name remembered and passed on to the future — recognizes a basic human yearning to give life a sense of purpose.
All of us have a desire for immortality, which some seek in various surrogate ways. There is the immortality of fame, like that of movie stars whose names live on after death. There is an immortality of influence, like that of rich people who might donate art, politicians who might have a lengthy obituary, and statesmen who have monuments erected in their honour. And there is an immortality of power, usually accomplished through the establishment of foundations or charitable institutions.
Christian belief in immortality, on the other hand, is unique and special. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the Good News of fullness of life in this age, and of resurrection in the age to come. For us death is a door, not a wall — not a wall that ends growth and action like the Berlin wall, but a door into a Christmas—tree room full of surprises. Someone has compared death to standing on the seashore. A ship spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the open sea. She fades on the horizon, and someone says, “She’s gone.” Just at the moment when someone says, “She’s gone,” other voices who are watching her coming on another shore happily shout, “Here she comes.” Or to use another metaphor, what the caterpillar calls “the end”, the butterfly calls .“the beginning”.
When in a moment we say the last line of the Creed, “We believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting,” we are asserting our belief that, in a way that no one fully understands, at our resurrection our body joins with our spirit to continue our existence in eternal life.
So our body as well as our spirit is holy, and for both of them this life is not all there is.
