32nd week Nov. 7, 2010
Oh my God, who are you? – God is not one of the dead but of the living!
Four Catholic ladies are having coffee together. The first one tells her friends, “My son is a priest. When he walks into a room, everyone calls him ‘Father’.”
The second Catholic woman chirps, “My son is a Bishop. Whenever he walks into a room, people say, ‘Your Grace’.”
The third Catholic woman says smugly, “My son is a Cardinal. Whenever he walks into a room, people say, ‘Your Eminence’.”
The fourth Catholic woman sips her coffee in silence. The first three women give her this subtle “Well…...”
She replies, “My son is a gorgeous, 6′2″, he weighs 400 pounds. When he walks into a room, people say, ‘Oh my God…’.”
Oh my God, who are you or how do I understand? Clearly, the theme of today’s readings is life and death. Intertwined within those themes are the words of Jesus, “He is not the God of the dead but of the living” (Lk 20:38).
The manners in which these themes occur in the readings seem to suggest the fact that belief in life after death was not necessarily a universal Jewish belief. This is obvious in the gospel reading. The Sadducees (a Jewish sect) came up to Jesus with the hypothetical case of a woman who married seven brothers as each of them successively died. The Sadducees accepted the teachings of only the first five books of the Old Testament and in these books belief in the afterlife is not specifically mentioned. But by the time of the Maccabees, about one hundred and fifty years before the coming of Christ, belief in the resurrection of the dead was clearly established. For example, in today’s first reading, when the seven brothers and their mother were being put to death for refusing to accept Greek practices unacceptable to the Jews, one of the brothers says to the Antiochus Epiphanes, their persecutor, “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” (2 Mac 7:9). By the time of Jesus, the resurrection from the dead was accepted as an article of Jewish faith, except for the Sadducees. In fact, Jesus claimed that he was the resurrection and the life (John 11: 25).
The case created by the Sadducees was meant to impress upon others the futility of belief in the afterlife. Jesus begins his answer to the Sadducees by pointing it out to them that the belief in life after death is actually found in the Pentateuch. That is why he declared at the end of today’s gospel reading, “That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called out ‘Lord,’ that the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead but of the living, for to him all are alive” (Lk 20:37-38). The last statement of today gospel reading becomes the most hopeful statement in all of scripture. The God we believe in, is a “God of the living and not of the dead and to him all are alive.”
Three practical implications!
1. The first implication of the readings is the tremendous consolation and the hope they offer to those of us who have experienced the death of a dear one. The greatest gift God had given us is a participation in the life of God. Christ opened the door for us to participate in the God’s very life. Christ, then, eliminates death. We move from life to life.
2. The abuse of the belief in the life after death was one of the reasons that Karl Marx called religion the “opium of the poor.’ Belief in the next life was offered as a consolation to the poor so that they may not claim their human rights. In other words, the poor were told not to let their misery trouble them because God would reward them in the next. Such opinions come from a totally skewed understanding of this life and the next. Rather, belief in the next life makes this present life even more important for how we choose to live on earth has an eternal implication. Look at the miseries and difficulties of people, they have believed when it was most difficult to believe, hoped when they were confronted with hopelessness, and were grateful to God when it was the most difficult to do so.
3. This Eucharist is very important from the perspective of life here on earth and life with God. As Catholics we believe in the communion of saints. This means that at every Eucharist we gather not only as this community but we worship God with all the angels, saints, our ancestors and all those who are with God. Our God is the God not of the dead but of the living. This Eucharist, then, is our real time connection with the God of the living in whose presence all those who have died constantly worship God. This Eucharist is a celebration of life. That is why Jesus said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life (Jn 6:54). Let us celebrate the God of the living who offers us eternal life.
As we continue to celebrate the Eucharist, let us allow the life of Christ to bring us from despair to hope, from darkness to light, and from death into life. Amen
