Word to the Wise
Wednesday, June 6, 2007 - Ninth Wednesday in Ordinary Time
[Tobit 3:1-11A, 16-17A and Mark 12:18-27]Jesus said to them, "Are you not misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven. As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God told him, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not God of the dead but of the living. You are greatly misled."
Yesterday it was the Pharisees and Herodians with the question about paying tribute. Today it is the turn of the Sadducees and their "trick" question about the "Levirate law" (Deuteronomy 25:5-10) which was designed to assure continuity in a man's family. The Sadducees did not accept a belief in a final resurrection because they only accepted as scripture the first five books of the Old Testament. There is no mention of a resurrection (or so they thought) in those books. Their question is designed to show the absurdity of the belief. Once more, Jesus foils the effort. First of all, he denies a major presumption they have about the resurrection (and this is important to us as we'll see in a moment). Relationships in the afterlife are not the same as in this life. Second, he points to the incident in Exodus 3 where God says that he IS the God of Abraham, etc. - not in the past tense as if they were dead. Therefore they must be alive in some way - in a resurrected state. I know some folks who would have mixed reactions to Jesus' response. They might be relieved to hear Jesus affirm there is life after death. They might, however, be disappointed or relieved to know that human relationships are not the same in the afterlife. We popularly dream of being reunited with loved ones in the afterlife, but that same kind of dreaming could make us a bit uneasy. What if people we didn't like are going to be there? How can it be "heaven" if those with whom we struggled so much on earth show up in heaven? The whole thing rests on an assumption that heaven is a "place" just like St. Catharine,Kentucky or New Orleans, Louisiana are geographic places, and that we humans will be the same (of course, we'll be the age we liked the best, won't we?) as we are on earth. St. Paul also warns against idle speculation in regard to life after death, particularly the resurrection (1 Cor 15:36-57). The crazy question of the Sadducees turns out not to be as crazy as we first thought. It gives us all something to think about. AMEN
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