2nd Sunday Year C
“The children of the resurrection do not marry. They become like angels and are no longer liable to death”. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: Amen.
Good morning my brothers and sisters in Christ! Today, as most of us have known by now already, is the 32nd Sunday of the year C. Let me begin our liturgical reflection this morning with this story. A certain foreign missionary in an Africa village was charged with responsibility of translating the New Testament into the local language of the people. In his good will, this missionary saw this as an opportunity to modernize the New Testament so as not to pass over to the Africans what he saw as the “antiquated and superstitious” world-view of the Bible. So he decided to remove from the translation every reference to spiritual beings other than God and the Holy Spirit. Evil spirits and angels, he argued, made no sense in the civilized world of today. An African priest working with him tried to convince him that the spiritual beings outside of God and spirit are part and parcel of both the biblical and African world-views and should therefore not be thrown out, but he would not listen to him. One day this missionary went to his favorite Christian community for Sunday service and right there before his very eyes, one of his “best” converts in the community began to act funny. She began swaying uncontrollably to the rhythm of the drums and stopped only when the music stopped. The young woman was visibly embarrassed with this development as she struggled in vain to keep herself from swaying. Everybody in the congregation understood this behavior to be the first signs of spirit possession.After the service, the people brought the young woman to the priest and said, “Father, what do we do?” The priest, who was in a state of shock himself, reached into his pockets and found aspirin tablets. “Give this to her,” he said, “And let me know how she feels after some days.” He came back to the mission house and literally fell sick and was unable to eat as he tried to digest the experience. Of course he knew they would bring her back to him in a worse state after a few days. Scales fell from his eyes as the zealous crusader who wanted to convert Africans from “superstitious beliefs” realized that it was probably he more than they who needed a conversion.Like this missionary, many people today think that being a modern Christian includes jettisoning the belief in spiritual beings. But what people like this do not realize is that this is not a modern thing at all. Even at the time of Jesus there were people who did not believe in spirits, in angels and in the resurrection of the dead. These people who subscribed to a certain religious and political ideology were known as the Sadducees. In today’s gospel, some Sadducees came to Jesus and wanted to prove to him how ridiculous it is for any reasonable person to believe in the resurrection. They came up with the story of seven brothers who were all in turn married to the same woman and asked Jesus, “In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her! (Luke 20:33). Jesus replied that it was impossible to understand the life of the resurrection in terms of the standards of the present life since in the life to come there would be no need for anyone to marry, to start with.What lessons can we Christians of today learn from this teaching? The first lesson is that procreation is an essential part of Marriage. It is because here on earth people died therefore we need replacement. But in the life of resurrection, we will not die at all, we shall be like angels. Therefore there is no need for marriage. Notice that the problem of the Sadducees has to do with how things are in the resurrection life whereas Jesus’ response has to do with the why of the resurrection.The second lesson is that there is a resurrection because God is God of the living. God has created us for life and not for ultimate extinction. God does not blow us into life like bubbles, here today and gone tomorrow. No, God’s gift of life to us will continue even after this earthly existence is over. Even if we die we shall live eternally with God in the life of resurrection.The third lesson is if there is one belief that the men and women of our world need today it is the belief in the resurrection. Why? Because, it is the most effective antidote to the infectious disease of materialism. The sickness of materialism is that we want to acquire more and more and more and very often at the expense of other peoples life. The story is told of an American tourist who paid the 19th century Polish rabbi by name Hofetz Chaim a visit. Dumbfounded to see that the rabbi’s home was only a simple room filled with books, a table and a bench, the tourist asked, “Rabbi, where is your furniture?” The Rabbi answered the man with a question and you “where is yours?” the confused tourist, replied, “Mine?” “But I am only a visitor here. I am only passing through.” “So am I,” said the Rabbi Hofetz Chaim in this world. If every one of us will realize this truth, we will not kill ourselves with worries before our time over material things of this world.
Let us thank God today for revealing to us the mystery of the resurrection. Let us reaffirm our belief in the life of the world to come, since this is the most effective means to escape the stranglehold of materialism in our lives here on earth. Do we understand exactly how it will be in the life of the resurrection? Certainly, not. For we are talking about “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Lastly it is better to believe in life after death than not to believe in it at all. Belief in life after death is common to many religions. It is central to Christian. St. Paul in particular, insisted on it. He said, for instance, in 1 Corinthians 15: 16-1 7: “For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” That explains why belief in life after death is an article of the Christian Creed. We say that we believe “in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting”. The famous French philosopher, Blaise Pascal had a simple pragmatic response for those who did not believe in life after death in his time. We call it “Pascal’s wager”.
He said: “I believe that there is life after death. You say there is none. Now, when we both die, if there is no life after death, I lose nothing, you gain nothing, because none of us will be there to gain or lose anything. We shall both have perished and ceased to exist. But if there is life after death, I gain heaven because of my belief in life after death and you lose heaven because of your lack of belief. Therefore, to be on the safe side, I would rather believe in life after death, and you will be well advised to do the same in your own interest”. I find it a consoling thought that death will not put a permanent end to our existence. Death will not see the end of us; we shall see the end of death. That will be our victory over death, as St Paul says mockingly to death: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting” (1 Cor 15:54-55). As Christians we know that a person’s life story is not limited to what happens to them between the day they are born and the day they die. Our story starts before we are born, at our conception, and goes beyond the day we die, to all eternity. .” That explains why belief in life after death is an article of the Christian Creed. We say that we believe “in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Finally let us ask ourselves: What do we really believe? –the teaching of the Sadducees or the teaching of Jesus who through his own death overcame the devil and death and promised a happy end for all those who believe in him?Have a gorgeous Sunday and amazing week!
+Ab Matthew Audu – Jos