Homily for 32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C
2013
2 Macc 7:1-2, 9-14 • 2 Thess 2:16-3:5 • Luke 20:27-38 or 20:27, 34-38
Introduction
My grandfather had a sure fire way of
telling which kids had only book knowledge and which also had common sense. "There are ten birds on a tree,” he
would say. Then he would ask: “After I shoot
and kill one, how many birds remain?"
The smart kids quickly did the math and
came up with the answer, “nine birds remain on the tree.” But the wise students, after giving the
question a little thought, answered “zero.”
Surely no bird is going to remain a sitting duck, when the life of one
their own has just been taken.
Preserving one’s life is perhaps the one thing
all animals treasure. This is true
especially of human beings, supposedly the smartest and wisest of all animals. One wonders then; if life, especially our own,
is so important to us, what in the world would make somebody ready to give up
their life, whether it is the seven brothers we have just read about in the
first reading or all those men and women of the armed forces, whom we remember
this weekend?
Scripture and Theology
Men and
women put their life on the line in the military, for sake of something
greater, their nation. The seven
brothers and their mother gladly give up their earthly lives, for the sake of
something greater, eternal life. “You are depriving us of this present life,”
they said, “but the King of the world
will raise us up to live again forever.”
Unlike the nine birds in the story, which take off at the first sign of
danger, these seven brothers remained steadfast in their hope for eternal life,
even as they saw the others being butchered and tortured.
But not
all Jewish people believed in the resurrection.
The Sadducees, who were a Jewish movement like the Pharisees, denied the
resurrection. They believed that only the
first five books of the Bible were the Word of God; and since they did not say
anything about the resurrection, it must not be true.
And so,
in our gospel passage, they challenge Jesus, by setting before him a situation of
seven brothers who, one after another, married the same woman. They married her to raise up descendants for
their deceased brother, who had died childless. Perhaps also, because their
society lacked the social security net of our times, they married the widow so
that she could be supported, financially and socially. And so the Sadducees use this scenario to
trap Jesus with this apparently difficult question: “Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be?” If Jesus says that she will be the wife of
all seven brothers, he will be suggesting a ridiculous and impossible
situation. And in that way, they will win
the argument, by showing that belief in the resurrection is silly.
But like
a good debater, Jesus answers them by demolishing the question itself. He points out that their question meaningless
when it comes to things of the other world; resurrected life is entirely
different from our life here on earth.
·
In this life we die, like the seven brothers and the woman did. And that is why in this life, we need to
marry, so as to replace those who die. Death
and marriage are part of the human condition on this side of heaven.
·
But life on the other side is quite different. In that life, we do not die anymore; and that
is why we don’t need to marry and beget children. Those seven brothers and their wife, after
death, had no more need for descendants; for had reached the highest form of
life, where, as St. John tells us, we shall be like God and we shall see him as
he really is.
With
this answer, the score is, Jesus 1, Sadducees 0. Jesus goes on to score another goal, by
showing that God at the burning bush, called himself, the God of Abraham, the
God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, using the present rather than past tense,
to show that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, although deceased were still alive.
And so,
both sets of seven brothers and the woman in their life, have something to
teach us about the resurrection. The first
set of seven brothers and their mother, who died rather than disobey God’s
laws, teach us to believe steadfastly in the resurrection. The story of the second family of seven
brothers and their wife, who do not die and marry again in the afterlife, give
us a picture of what life after death is really like.
Christian Life
In a
few moments, and I promise it will be only a few more moments, we shall be
professing our faith in the creed. And
we shall say: “I look forward to the
resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”
Do we
really mean these words, that is, do we really look forward to that other life
with God? Do we live this life, like we
are preparing for that other life, or do we live like this is the only life we
have, enjoying it to the fullest, regardless of whether we obey God’s law or
not?
Earlier this week a friend sent me a link
to a youtube video. Now, probably like
you, I usually delete these kind of messages; for they are usually silly videos
of cats or emails that threaten misfortune if I do not forward them to ten
people. But I decided to click on this
link and see what it was all about. It
was the video of a nun at a hospice for children, interviewing an eleven-year
terminally ill boy. This was Garvan
Byrne’s last interview, before died. He
admits that when he first learnt that he was going to die, he was quite
frightened. But over time he felt much
better, because he believed in a life after death.
And then Sr. Francis Dominica asks him:
“What do you think happens to your body when you die?”
“I will leave it behind” he says. “This is only a reflection, a tag to say this
is Garvan. . . . When I die . . . the
real me . . . will go up to God. And I always believe that it is just like . .
. as though God says to you, ‘shut your eyes’ and you just go to sleep. And the
next minute you open your eyes and you find that you are in a lovely place,
just so beautiful that you want to stay there and be with Jesus forever. And all my friends, most of my friends who I
knew down on this earth, that I believe have gone to God; and I hope that when
my time will come, I shall see them and go up and say hello to everyone that I
lost. Like I never saw my grandma,
grandma Doherty, I hope to see her in heaven, and my grandpa, some of my
aunties, and my uncle Christy who I used to know down here very well. I will meet all those people back up there.”
Conclusion
I am sorry that in transcribing his words
and even in reading them, I could not express his sincerity, passion and
emotion, and of course his cute twelve-year old Irish accent. But this little boy expressed his belief in
the resurrection and in the afterlife very clearly, just like the seven
brothers and their mother.
What about you and me? Do we really believe in the resurrection? Of course the cynic in you and me might say:
“Well, they Garvan and the seven brothers had such clarity of their faith,
because they were about to die. But I
still have a long way to go.”
That may be the case. But still, none of us knows the day or the
hour, when the Lord will make a claim for my soul. I better be ready with a clear answer, when
he knocks on my door. Or even better,
let me take the Lord at his word, when he says: “I am the living bread that
came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever. I will raise him up on the last day.”
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