Dear Parishioners, Today’s challenge for Jesus is with the Sadducees. They were a small but powerful and elitist group in the Jewish hierarchy in the time of Jesus. They had both wealth and power. The literal meaning of their title was “the righteous ones”. They were adamant that there was no after-life.
They were totally convinced that their scheme of the widow and the brothers would reduce Jesus’ teachings about the resurrection to total absurdity. Of course, Jesus quickly placed the absurdity package in the Sadducees home court.
In responding to the Sadducees’ disagreement, Jesus highlights that the resurrection is a totally new form of life that transcends any form of marriage. Likewise, Jesus is teaching us that God is a God of the living. Thus, our relationship with God goes beyond the experience of death. St. Paul explained this in his Letter to the Romans: “I am certain that neither death nor life…nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God that comes to us in Christ Jesus.” (Rom8:38-39) Our faith is clear. Death is only a passage to a richer life with a God who loves us.
In today’s Gospel story the Sadducees challenge Jesus with a simplistic and ridiculous story about seven brothers marrying the same woman. Jesus turns the story into a profound truth that we profess in the Apostles’ Creed: the resurrection of the body. But before the new life where, in the coming age, we neither marry nor are given in marriage, we must face death. This truth is central to today’s liturgy.
We are in the final weeks of the Church year. The liturgy weaves a very fascinating story of the end and the beginning. In the process it invites us into the mystery of time.
Today we are confronted with the reality our bodily death. Next week we are challenged with the end of the total historical venture that we call the end times. Then the first three weeks of the new year give us the Advent message and cry for the new reality, “Come, Lord Jesus!” In between the message of the ending, and the plea for the new beginning, we celebrate Christ the King. This is a bridge that connects the transiency of our human reality, our mortality, with our ultimate purpose and goal of life: to be in the eternal embrace of our loving Lord, our immortality.
In these fascinating times of ending one year and beginning again a new year in the cycle on the path of salvation with Jesus our Crucified and Risen Savior, we are asked to ponder the Christian perspective on time.
We learn that time is relentless. It waits for no one. We learn that it is pregnant with life and hope. We learn that ultimately it is gracious in the victory of Christ. While It is urgent, it is calling us to be patient in trust while longing for the coming of the Lord. The final two verses of the Book of Revelation and the final verses of the Bible say, “The one who gives this testimony says, Yes, I am coming soon. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. (Rev 22:20-21) It is, indeed, calling us into a merciful and compassionate future of new life even in the face of death.
