Readings - http://www.usccb.org/nab/110710.shtml
We find ourselves in November. On Monday, we celebrated the Feast of All Saints, on Tuesday, the Feast of All Souls. During November, the final month of the Liturgical year before the beginning of Advent, the Readings on Sunday (and even during the week) call to mind ultimate questions regarding both our destiny after our death and that of the whole world.
This Sunday’s readings are about life after death.
In the first Reading from (second) Maccabees we hear of a time when Israel was under the Greeks and Jewish freedom fighters (known as the Maccabees) were fighting for Jewish independence from them.
It was during the time of the Maccabees in the centuries before the coming of Christ when belief in an afterlife entered into the Jewish religious consciousness. And it entered in large part on account of the suffering of the people at the time. Like the story of the seven brothers heard in this first Reading, many young men, many innocents, and at times entire villages or families were being killed in battle or murdered in reprisal by the Greeks, leaving no them descendants. How could one resist such brutality if the oppressors could take away one’s life and even the lives one’s descendants?
It is in this context that the people began to believe that God -- who they already believed to be just, all powerful (capable of doing all), all seeing and all good – would be capable of “raising the just” even after their deaths. It became the religious answer to an Oppressor who proved more than willing and able to take away the lives and futures of the people, especially the lives and futures of the people’s patriots as well as of the utterly innocent.
This faith, which entered into the Jewish religious consciousness during the time of the Maccabees (when the Jewish people found themselves fighting against the oppression and occupation of the Greeks), continued then during the time of Jesus when the Jewish people found themselves occupied and oppressed under the Romans.
And that then forms the context of the question posed to Jesus by the Sadducees in the Gospel Reading today.
A word about the Sadducees: The Sadducees were the Jewish aristocracy in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus. They could be thought of as the “old rich,” “the Jewish establishment,” in Jerusalem at the time, composing a large number of the priesthood serving the Jewish temple at the time. As such they would tend to be the “Conservatives” or “Traditionalists” of the time. And they did have something of a point as they asked this question of Jesus. The point was that the faith in the afterlife entered into the Jewish religious consciousness under the Maccabees was, in fact, “something (relatively) new.” And considering themselves to be the “Conservatives” or “Traditionalists”, the Sadducees, of course tended to oppose “innovations” or “changes in the faith” under the banner of Orthodoxy.
So it was the Sadducees who asked Jesus this question about the “woman who, following the Law of Moses, had found herself married to seven brothers, and yet each of those brothers died without producing an heir and so ‘in the afterlife’ whose wife then would she actually be?”
It was a pointed even sarcastic question that the Saducees asked and betrayed something else about them: Being the Jewish aristocracy in Jerusalem, “the establishment” in Jerusalem, they remained in their positions of (relative) power BECAUSE THEY COLLABORATED WITH THE ROMANS. If they did not collaborate with them, the Romans would have removed them.
So in contrast with the Maccabean freedom fighters of the First Reading or of the freedom fighters of Jesus’ time (the Zealots) or even the Pharisees (religious reformers who may have not completely supported the Zealots in their struggle for Jewish independence because of religious qualms about their often brutal/terroristic methods of ambush, assassination and so forth, but _were definitely concerned_ with the religious implications of the “death of the innocent”), the Sadducees who owed their continued positions of privilege to collaborating with the Romans DID NOT PARTICULARLY LIKE A RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE PROMISING A “RESURRECTION OF THE JUST” (and _presumably_ punishment of the UNJUST) because they did not feel to be particularly “just” themselves.
Having made a choice of casting their lot to live reasonably well in this life, they didn’t exactly look forward to being condemned for making this choice in the next.
So there we are. The Sadducees did not particularly like this teaching of the “Resurrection of the Just” and chose to poke fun at it with their question to Jesus, and Jesus was asked to respond.
***
Here I would note that the contrast between the Maccabees (freedom fighters from among the oppressed) and the Saducees (collaborators with those who oppress) is a contrast that has existed across time.
It has ALWAYS been that the old, the sick and the oppressed who have found it easiest, utterly natural, to believe in an Afterlife. Believing in a God who sees all and is capable of all, it makes sense to believe that God “will make things right” if not in this life then in the next.
In contrast, Kings, Dictators and Scoundrels across all ages have often tried to take away this hope from the oppressed.
Ivan the Terrible did not just kill his opponents but their entire families. Why? So that there’d be nobody to pray for them after they died. Many Dictators (Stalin, etc) were essentially Atheists who persecuted Believers. Why? It was an attempt to take away hope from the people based on something _beyond_ of the Dictator’s power.
***
And here then is an interesting implication of believing in the afterlife. By believing in an afterlife, beyond giving us hope in a life after death, it allows us to live _more fully_ even in this life.
Because if we don’t have this faith, the powerful of this world can come to dominate us. And each time we let this happen, we _die_ a little bit even in this life.
So Jesus who came so "that we may have life and have it in the fullest," to help us to "know the Truth that sets us free," took the side of the Maccabees (or more importantly the side of the oppressed and of the innocent) in this argument telling us by his teaching but most importantly by his Death and Resurrection that nothing of this world has the final word, that the final word belongs to God, and yes, that God will raise us up.
And that then can give us the confidence to live honestly, and not in fear of those who could hurt us or make our lives difficult in this world, because the final word does not belong to them. Instead, the final word belongs to God, who created us, who loves us, and created us to be happy.
So let then us remember this, and bring this message to others who may feel down, depressed or oppressed -- That God is with us, and nothing or no one, not even Death can take that away from us. And in the end, God who does know all (and all that goes on) is able and will set things right.
Amen.
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