32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
November 6, 2010
4 PM Liturgy
J.A. Loftus, S.J.
The gospel stories over the next several Sundays (right into the new
Advent season) will be talking about the so-called “Last Things”:
Death,
resurrection, life after death, the final Second Coming of Jesus.” The end of
one liturgical year and the transition to the next always provides a meditation
on end things. It can be depressing; it can be sobering; it can get frightening.
But it need not be any of these things. It is an invitation.
Questions about our existence after death have intrigued human beings
for centuries. And after centuries of devising schemes to satisfy our hopes, we
are still left with far many more questions than we have answers. And our
questions are often strange. Noted scripture scholar N.T. Wright, who has
spent a great deal of his life pondering questions about life after death from a
scriptural point of view, offers C.S. Lewis as a helpful guide. As Lewis once
pointed out, “many of our questions are, from God’s point of view, rather like
someone asking, ‘Is yellow square or round?’ or ‘How many hours are there
in a mile?’” (Wright, Surprised by Hope) The questions themselves sometimes
don’t make any sense. Sort of like what Jesus is confronted with in today’s
gospel.
The ancients did not always believe in life after death–at least not life in
any sense that we now know. The ancient Greeks had a concept of an
immortal soul, but that was just an unembodied spirit floating around
somewhere. The Israelites, likewise, came only late to the notion of life after
death. In fact in Jesus’ own time, there were two distinct camps on the
subject. The Sadducees (whom we see in today’s gospel) did not believe in
any resurrection of the body, and the Pharisees (with whom Jesus agrees) did.
But this belief was only a hundred years old for the Israelites.
In fact, our first reading from 2 Maccabees seems to be the first written
record anywhere in the bible of the notion of surviving after death in a kind
of resurrection. That’s probably why we read it today. But the Sadducees
of Jesus’ time would have none of it. In fact they scoff at the very notion. In
their confrontation with Jesus, they take a mocking tone and ridicule any
notion of life after death. The are deliberately setting up a “straw man” in
order to poke fun at Jesus and the Pharisees. As theologian John Shea notes:
“Mocking other people’s beliefs, especially when they seem preposterous, is
always fun.”
But Jesus meets their mocking challenge by returning to Moses. Jesus
notes that God is always described as the “God of the living,” the God of the
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patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But they are all gone now–but surely
God is still their God. So they must be living still. Touche.
So Jesus “gets ‘em,” but, unfortunately leaves just as many questions
for us. Even his own resurrection will not solve the puzzle completely. And
we are left only with an invitation. As Shea puts it: “Resurrection of the
dead does not look to a future time when the dead will rise and go on just as
they did when they were alive. It is a whole new order of existence. To
speak of the resurrection of the dead is to think outside the box.”
But none of us knows exactly what this means. “At the heart of the
knowledge of faith is a humble not-knowing that keeps us off-balance and
fearful; but it is also this not-knowing that leads to trust” (Shea). We all
want certitude–especially about life after death. We want to know what it is
(or will be) like. Where is Aunt Bertha? Where is Uncle Harry? What is it
like?
Some of you have heard me say this before, but it’s one of my most
vivid memories. As my sister lay on her own death bed, she lovingly looked
to her baby brother, the all-knowing priest, and asked this question: what will
it be like? She meant, of course, death. All I could say is that I don’t know.
And I told her I suspected she would be the first to find out. She was. But
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she trusted and left this world open to surprises, open to the God of surprises
who had never disappointed up to then. Just look around you. God in all
this!
Is that not most what any of us need in the transition to death: trust and
a capacity for surprise? The gospels today and for the next few weeks
confront us “with the truth that our physical eyes do not see all secrets.”
And they never will. This can be a boundary-breaking revelation. As you
and I face death, we can plan to let ourselves be “ravished by mystery,
thrilled and alert with the consciousness of uncertainty” (Shea).
Yet we all continue to dare and to hope because of Easter morning.
Many of our questions about death are good ones–to us. Just remember C.S.
Lewis’ caution. Is yellow square or round? And how many hours are there
in a mile? Some questions may make no sense to God. But just because we
do not have many certain answers, does not mean we cannot live in God’s
enduring Promise. So we do live in hope, and trust in God’s Promise–the
same Promise given to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and to us.
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