NewCreation

Homily for Thirty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time. This time we've jumped quite a bit in St. Luke's Gospel. You remember last Sunday Jesus was in the middle of Jericho with Zacchaeus, and that was on the eve of his departure for Jerusalem, walking up to Jerusalem and arriving in time to visit the Temple and go out to Bethany for the night. Thereupon begins the readings that we are used to having in Holy Week, starting with Palm Sunday: the procession of him coming into Jerusalem, his visitation of the Temple, and then the various discussions he has with authorities in the Temple. And this is one of those bits of teaching of Jesus in the Temple before the Passion. This is St. Luke's version. After priests, scribes, and elders have come to him, raising various questions with him and him answering them in ways that are difficult to understand, this is the turn of the Sadducees. So some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him. Okay, who were the Sadducees? Well, it was a mixed group, largely priestly but quite a lot of lay people as well. What they had in common was that these were rich aristocrats, these were system people, if you like, people who were very keen on keeping the status quo standing and well. In their religious beliefs they were strict adherents of Torah, meaning that it was only the five books of the Law that they regarded as binding. They were not interested in any of the writings or the prophets, and they were certainly not interested in the tradition of the fathers, which was something which the Pharisees, for example, took very seriously. The Pharisees had a much more open approach to what was in and what was not in the Scriptures. And in fact, one of the things that definitely was in the Scriptures from the point of view of the Pharisees was the book of Maccabees, because the book of Maccabees told the story of the brothers who had revolted against the Greek rulers in a kind of guerrilla war, had won, had been able to restore the Temple, and had really begun a new understanding of Israel with the refounding of the Temple in about 167 before the common era. So the story of the Maccabees was very important, and in the book of the Maccabees — it's the first text, apart from the book of Daniel, which comes from about the same time — it's the first mention of the resurrection of the dead that we have in Hebrew writings. And of course, therefore, the Sadducees didn't like it for two reasons. One, it wasn't in their books; it was only in books which were recognized by the Pharisees. And furthermore, it was in books linked to, let's say, social upheaval of the sort of which the Sadducees strongly disapproved. They didn't want truth coming out from, let us say, unstable people who might take over the state and do something exciting, and of course they were very keen on keeping in well with the Romans so as to make sure that nothing upset the apple cart. So from their point of view, the Pharisees and their rather too exciting doctrines were a bad thing. So that's who these people are. So no wonder they have questions for Jesus. And their question is, as you would expect, cunning and clever and really quite logical. It's meant to put Jesus on the spot. It's a catch-you question. It's a gotcha question. And it's supposed to be. "Teacher, Moses wrote for us" — so they treat him respectfully — "Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother." So they're quoting the law which we know as the levirate law, from "levir" meaning brother-in-law, and it's a law which is constructed out of two passages from Torah. One from Genesis 38 — excuse me, first from Deuteronomy 25, where there are five verses on it: "When brothers reside together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband's brother shall go into her, taking her in marriage and performing the duty of a husband's brother to her, and the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel." Okay, so there's the function of the levirate law. And they've linked it to the story of Onan in Genesis 38, where Judah — that's the leader of the tribe of Judah — his firstborn son dies, and his second son Onan is told by Judah: "Go into your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, raise up offspring for your brother." So what they're doing, they're quoting both: "If a man's brother dies leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow" — and then they quote the Onan passage — "and raise up children for his brother." Now note the word for "raise up" in the Gospel. Let me quote it exactly: "ex anastēsei." And in the original, in the Greek of Deuteronomy, of Genesis, it's from the same verb — "anastēsis": you shall raise up. Literally, "you shall resurrect" in our language. So the same verb for the resurrection and for the raising up. So they're actually producing the key texts and they're making a very good point. If Moses had known about the resurrection of the dead, why would he have told people to raise up children for their brothers? Why would the only mention of resurrection have been the sort which a brother can do for a brother by giving him offspring posthumously? It's a sensible question, because you can assume that if Moses had known about the resurrection, he would have therefore said, "Well, in that case, it doesn't really matter if a brother dies without offspring, because there's a good chance that he may live in the resurrection life anyhow. He doesn't need an offspring to guarantee that." I hope you can see that is really quite a logical argument on that point. So what do they do? They quote the Levirate Law, and then they tell him a tale. This is a case. "We want you to sort this one out for us." And it's a clever case, because guess what? They're going to use the Maccabees. In other words, the pet project of the Pharisees, whom they disliked. So they're going to, by reference — not by name, but anybody listening would have picked it up at once — because it's about seven brothers, and our first reading for Mass this week brings that out perfectly. "Now there were seven brothers; the first married and died childless, then the second, and the third married her and so on in the same way. All seven died childless." So you have these brothers, each one passes the widow to the next in the hope that someone will raise up offspring for all of them, but none of that happens. "Finally the woman also dies." You'd have thought so. Actually, I would have thought that she would probably be investigated by police, since to be a widower once is a problem, twice is a problem, third time, you know, detectives come calling. But anyhow, that's not part of the story here. "Finally the woman also dies. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her." It seems a sensible question — presupposing resurrection to be some sort of continuation of human life, and the bond to have been made between husband and wife to have been real — whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her. Now, here we have Jesus's answer, and he gives the state of things first before offering his proof. He does the reverse of them. They offer the proof and then give the story. So Jesus says to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage." Understanding that "this age" refers to a quality of the life in which we are currently living. It doesn't necessarily refer to chronological time; it refers to a mixture of chronological time and the particular quality of the time, which may or may not be open to the age to come. And the age to come doesn't necessarily mean something future; it means something starting now. But it's a quality of time as well. There are different qualities of time. So those who belong to the current quality of time marry and are given in marriage. And that's a perfectly good translation — it refers to both genders. "But those who are considered worthy of a place in that age" — worthy to obtain a place in that age, or to attain that place in that age — is referring… to the age that is to come, again which can refer both to a chronological element of time, but not one starting in the future, and the quality of time, which can be starting now. These are the predecessors of our notion of eternal life. "Those who are considered worthy to obtain that age and are placed in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore." So the presumption is that they have died before this question becomes interesting. They cannot die anymore because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. Now that simply sounds as though he's saying something. It doesn't actually sound like an argument. I think that it's worth trying to bring out some of the heft of what is behind that, because it's for our ears a difficult thing. He's suggesting that in this age marrying and giving in marriage is for the production of offspring, and that's perfectly fine. But the age to come, the resurrection works on an entirely different principle. The resurrection is not something that happens to dead people. It's a form of being alive that God has already begun in some people before they are dead. And once they're dead, they become alive in the resurrection. In other words, the driving force, if you like, behind their being alive comes from God, and that can start now. The same was hinted at when Jesus told the disciples to rejoice not that the evil spirits obeyed them, but that their names were written in heaven. The notion of the name being written in heaven means that the driving force of who you are is something that is coming from elsewhere and turning you into a witness to it, rather than you being started from here and becoming a simple reproduction of a system going on indefinitely. So it's the driving points that are different. So having suggested that what's important here is not whether your driving point is the reproductive one, but whether your driving point is the one from heaven who has, as it were, brought you into being and turned you into a witness to its presence in the world during your life — in which case your marital status is neither here nor there. It's part of your relationship to other people that has reproduced God's original Adam and Eve as one person. You're going back to a zero point, an omega point before creation. That's what's being brought into being. So being married or not married is not very important. So he uses the term "you are like an angel." And it's interesting that that was quite a polemical term, because It's clear that he means by "angel" something that is incarnate. Whereas there was, if you like, what we would now call heretical discussions at the time about humans who were purely carnal and angels who are purely spiritual. Jesus is saying no, the people who have found themselves becoming given their name from above, and therefore being turned into who they are — children of God, sons and daughters of God from above — they are like angels. In other words, angels are carnal but with a different sort of flesh. And then he gives them the conclusive argument, and he treats them to their own authority. I think this is one of the things he doesn't argue by mention of other books — by Maccabees. He says, "and the fact that the dead are raised, Moses himself showed," or bore witness to, "in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." And in fact, at the beginning of Exodus, when God introduces himself to Moses, first of all he says, "I am who I am," and then he says, "I am the Lord, the God — I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." And then he tells Moses, "This is what you shall tell people: you shall tell them I am he who comes from the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." So he repeats that at least three times in the early part of Exodus. It says, "Now he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive." In other words, when God said "I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob," he said that to Moses, indicating therefore that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were alive in him. In other words, the resurrection is God's life. It's the utter livingness, the effervescence of life of God, which here on earth turns people into sons and daughters, inviting them to share in God's life. It's a dialogical thing. It's not to do with "am I immortal?" — it's "is my name written in heaven?" In which case I am being brought into life by the utterly living, effervescent God. I want to bring this up because it's important for us. So many of us have an understanding of immortality, the resurrection, eternal life, as things which start from here. Is there something immortal in me, and am I going to last forever? Whereas it's quite clear from Jesus' understanding that none of this starts from here. The whole point of God is that the utter effervescence and aliveness of God — everything starts from there. And we are, if you like, dialogically called into it. We are being created, started from above, given a name from above, so that our flesh becomes the life of a son and daughter of God in the midst of this age, but not run by this age. That's his picture: we are started from elsewhere, and this elsewhere is utterly alive, which is why we don't need to be… frightened of death and its consequences. The starting being started from elsewhere is so difficult for modern individualists to understand, and something which of course was disconcerting to people who want a very stable social order – one above all where unhelpful things like hope are not encouraged, lest it lead to uprisings and changes to the social order, which of course carried on happening in the immediate aftermath of Jesus's life, as we all know, with relation to Jerusalem and the Romans. But the utterly alive life of God starting us from elsewhere is what we are being summoned into. And then some of the scribes answered, "Teacher, you have spoken well." For they no longer dared to ask him another question. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.