Homily for November 7, 2004
Year C - Cycle II
32nd
Sunday in Ordinary
Time
by
Dcn. Gerry Langner Topic:
Hope in the Resurection + + +
Gospel: Luke 20: 27-38 .
.
. Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came
forward and
put this question to him, saying, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us, 'If
someone's brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must
take the
wife and raise up descendants for his brother.' Now there were seven
brothers;
the first married a woman but died childless. Then the second and the
third
married her, and likewise all the seven died childless. Finally
the woman also died. Now at the
resurrection whose wife will that
woman be? For all seven had been married to her." Jesus
said to them, "The children of
this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain
to the
coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are
given in marriage.
They can no longer die, for they are
like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones
who
will rise. That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage
about
the bush, when he called 'Lord' 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."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After
listening to
the Liturgy of the
Word, I thought of several
questions I would like to ask each of you as individuals and of the
Church, IHM
parish, as a whole.Do you think you
are a beautiful person?Do you want to
continue to live as a beautiful person?Do you believe in the resurrection?Of course, being that we are in church we would each say, “I am
a
sinner, how can I be beautiful?”Answer---God loves each of us as we are because each of us is
beautiful
to him.The answer to the next two
questions
is yes because we do believe in the resurrection.The
answers depend on faith and the hope that God will provide us
strength to stay true to that faith.
Most
of what we see in the readings today is a strong faith that allows
people to
trust God will assist them when they are threatened.The idea or belief in a resurrection that will provide life, not
as we understand our life now, but as something much better, evolved
over time.One of the earliest references
to
resurrection is the passage we heard from Maccabees.We see the hope of the mother and her sons that if the stay true
to their faith, then God will be with them and provide them with
continued life
through resurrection.What makes this
reading so interesting is that, in general, people in this time in
history
believed that their name, tribe, family, their “eternity” resided in
their
descendants.Think of Abraham when God
told him that his descendants would be as numerous as the grains of
sand on the
beach.This meant that Abraham would live
forever through his descendants.They
would keep his memory alive.
Don’t
take too lightly the desire to cling to life or to be remembered.I believe most of us want to be remembered
by at least the generation that immediately follows us.We might have a simplistic comparison to
show this desire if we consider the winter season in a climate that
receives
and maintains, at least for a while, a good snowfall.I use this example because I grew up in Minnesota and saw a
certain behavior a number of times.I
grew up in a farming area near a small village.The
farms were small but each farm had at least one open field,
and all the houses in the village had a yard of reasonable size.After a fresh snowfall, all the fields,
yards, and the wooded areas would be covered with a smooth layer of
white.Almost every kid I knew had to be
the first
to walk across one yard, or one field or a portion of one field.After walking across this area, the kid
would stop, turn around and admire his work.We frequently got to see our first tracks many times over if our
first
tracks were on a path between buildings.You see, in winter in Minnesota the wind sometimes blows and can
cover
tracks in a matter of minutes.After
a while, we didn’t want to admire our new tracks, we just wanted to the
old
ones to stay where they were.By the
way, I have observed something similar in this county.Here, after a fresh snowfall, you can often
see a four-wheel drive vehicle searching for parking lot that hasn’t
yet been
driven through.The driver of the
vehicle just wants to be the first to imprint and admire his tracks in
a fresh
snowfield. So perhaps we can now say with some certainty that we all
want to be
and stay beautiful and we want to be remembered.
The
gospel is wonderful in that it tells about hope in life and God, the
promise
and beauty of resurrection, and the sacredness of death. It addresses
the very
issues we have been talking about.Let’s start with the Sadducees.They did not believe in resurrection, and they didn’t want to
learn
about it.They wanted to politically
discredit Jesus.They forgot about the
human dimension of life and death.The
human dimension shows respect for the dead---this can be seen in almost
any
culture.Our cemeteries have many
religious intonations throughout, the American Indian tribes had
various burial
methods that honored the dead, and in India, the river in which people
are
buried and sometimes burned on a funeral pyre in the river.Almost no one desecrates a burial site.Death is necessary to experience
resurrection; death, in a sense, is sacred.Although the Sadducees forgot about the holiness of death, they
were
smart.
Let’s
set the background a little better so it is easier to see the Sadducees
plot.If the oldest son in a family
married and died before producing a son, then his nearest brother had
certain
obligations.He was expected to take
care of the widow and any children.If
there was not a male child, he was expected to help produce one.This son was to carry his older brother’s
bloodline into the future, that is, it was recognized as his brother’s
son.The first born son was always
responsible for continuation of the family line.That
is one of the reasons why the story of Esau is so shocking
and why the story of the woman and her sons in Maccabees is so tragic.Anyway, the hypothetical case the Sadducees
put forward progresses through all of the brothers as a husband of the
same
woman and in the end the woman is left alone with no children.The question is, who gets the woman in
heaven after she dies. They make a point of using Moses and his
writings to
back up their case and their question.Instinctively you would think that the seven brothers would try
to hide
from this woman, but Jesus doesn’t take this way out.He turns the argument around.
Jesus
uses the very scripture the Sadducees quote.He says when God appeared to Moses, God is the God of the
living, the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.Key
words here are “the God of the living” and key names are “Abraham,
Isaac, and
Jacob.”You see, these men were all
quite dead well before God appeared to Moses.Jesus says that God is the God of the living, not the dead.He then says that the dead are the children
of God.This statement shows there is a
strong covenant relationship between God and the dead.Somehow they have life.Jesus
doesn’t describe this life here, but
elsewhere he indicates it is beyond our imagination.The bottom line is that Jesus used the reference cited by the
Sadducees to not only show there was life after death but also that
this new
life was more than what we have here.
All
of the above
is
based on the hope in the
resurrection.We have faith that the
resurrection will occur, but we must also have hope that God will help
us keep
that faith when we have problems.
The
only remaining issue is our desire to be remembered in a positive way.Some names of people that might help us be
remembered are:Jesus, the one we call
the Christ; Mary, the Mother of God; Joseph, Father of the Holy Family;
St.
Francis, our diocese’ patron saint; Mother Theresa of Calcutta; Dorothy
Day;
Pope John the XXIII.The list is long
and distinguished.If we can be an
instrument that allows others to have hope, we will be remembered. Keep
the
faith and hope things will be better. May
God Bless Us All.