Politicians have
a way of often not answering the question they are asked. Instead, they
speak out of the agenda they have for that day or hour. You would think they
learned this from Jesus who usually did the same sort of thing. You
will have noticed that Jesus often does not offer a rational answer to some of
the questions he is asked: "Who is the greatest? Is it lawful to pay taxes
to Caesar? Are you the one who is to come? etc.." Instead
of offering a clear answer to the questioner, Jesus leads him or her
to a deeper and more mysterious level; to look through a wider lens.
This Sunday's
Gospel offers a little classic in this regard. Jesus has been given a
conundrum to solve about a woman with seven serial husbands, and asked,
"At the resurrection, whose wife will that woman be?" There's a
question for the ages, especially our own age and culture! For one thing, the
ancient Jews married not so much for romance as to ensure the survival of
the tribes of Israel. Some psychologists say there's a deep seated concern for
the survival of the race buried somewhere within us. Marriage as we know it
appears to be tied in to life on this planet, whether to keep the
race going, or so man and woman can become more richly themselves together
than going it alone. Christians see marriage as a sign of God's irrevocable
commitment to the wellbeing of his people, and something that will be subsumed
into the "one Christ loving Himself" to the end.
Paul reminded the
Corinthians long ago that eternal life is not at all
like anything we experience on earth - 1 Cor 2,9.
He's implying that marriage in this world is not the
same thing as marriage in the world of eternal life. The Sadducees
in this Sunday's Gospel didn't believe in the resurrection of the dead,
and probably assumed that the eternal life Jesus was preaching about
is another life that begins after a person has died, like retiring
from a lifetime of work in a downtown office and then re-locating to an
easier world at a fancy beach resort.
Jesus preached the
resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Eternal life is our relationship
with the Lord, which begins now and which death cannot destroy. "I am the
Resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will
live," said Jesus to Martha - John 11,25. Jesus didn't take away the pain
of death - "the negation and collapse of all that makes me human"
(Newman, "The Dream of Gerontius"). Death has no dominion over us
because our life is the mysterious relationship baptism give us with the one
whose name is I AM. Death destroys everything in us, but not that loving
relationship with the one who overcame it.
The Sadducees imagined
that Jesus was preaching a form of immortality where those seven hapless
husbands would be stumbling about forever in the afterlife looking for
their long lost bride. The seven Maccabee brothers of Sunday's first
reading suffered martyrdom in the hope that there would be a new kingdom, a new
order, a world unlike the unjust one of Antiochus that yoked them into
religious slavery. This new time and world was what Jesus tried to broaden
his questioner's faith to see, when God will rule with justice and peace and
love. That was the agenda out of which he spoke that day, the message he
came to preach to us all.
PASTOR EMERITUS
