Gospel: Lk 20:27-38
Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to Jesus, 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 out ‘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.”
Homily
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As I read the Gospel passage for this weekend I remembered that incident because the Sadducees had the very same attitude as that young man. In the Jewish world a woman’s worth was tied to the ability to have a child. A woman who bore no children was considered under a curse. We remember the acclamation of Elizabeth after John the Baptist was conceived, “The Lord has done this for me now that it has pleased him to take away the humiliation I suffered in public.” Jesus refutes the claim that a woman’s worth must be linked to her success in child-bearing. According to the Sadducees, if after being married to seven brothers a woman had no child she was totally useless. “Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.” In other words; who would want to claim her, since she was totally useless? The Sadducees were also asking Jesus rather sarcastically; whether heaven would be populated with persons who were cursed by God. Jesus answers by making a distinction between children of this world and children of the resurrection. Children of this world and children of the resurrection have different value systems. Children of this world define themselves by their ability to have children or not to have children, and so they spend time marrying and remarrying. They find their self-worth in producing children. Children of the resurrection define themselves by their total allegiance to God and what God asks of them. Jesus uses as examples of children of the resurrection, three iconic figures of Old Testament history, Abraham; Isaac and Jacob. Through these three and their obedience to God the history of salvation evolved.
The lesson for us is very simple. Like the Jews of the time of Jesus, we often define ourselves by the externals. The academic degrees which we may have, the money accumulated in the banks, the places where we live etc. Producing these things is at times as painful as childbearing. Children of the resurrection however do not define themselves by the externals. What is important to them is a life lived in union with God coupled to a tremendous love of those who surround them. This is how the saints lived. If we want to be considered by God children of the resurrection, the value system by which we live must lead us to a life lived in union with God and love of neighbour in obedience to what God asks of us.
Prayer
All powerful and ever-loving God, the dominant culture of the world in which we live continues to tell us that greatness comes from possessing great wealth. Help us to recognize the fallacy of that statement and help what we know in our minds to be known in our hearts, that it is only in following YOU that we find true happiness. Help us to live lives of integrity understanding that it is in so living that we will be children of the Resurrection. We ask this through the intercession of Mary our mother and your son Jesus. Amen
