Shawn Reeves

By Shawn Reeves

Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time/Nov. 10

2 Maccabees 7:1-2,9-14; Psalm 17:1,5-6,8,15; 2 Thessalonians 2:16 — 3:5; Luke 20:27-38

Rarely does someone grow in understanding without asking questions, but not all questions are honest ones. In today’s Gospel, Jesus is encountered with a rather insincere question about a hypothetical situation. The question is insincere insofar as the Sadducees were well known antagonists of the belief in resurrection, and the question they pose to Jesus is an attempt to disingenuously gauge Christ’s convictions about resurrection and present a cunning obstruction to this belief.

Jesus’ response is not only a stern affirmation of the resurrection but also of the angels, which the Sadducees also rejected. At any rate, Jesus makes clear that the Lord “is not a God of the dead but of the living” and that the destiny of “the children of God” is to “no longer die” but to rise and be “like the angels.”

It is important to note that Jesus does not say they become angels but that they are like the angels, meaning that resurrected life is not encumbered by the limitations of and obligations to the body that exist in this life. “This age,” as Jesus puts it, is rife with difficulties, discomfort and injustices, and many of our complaints to God are tied to the needs and desires of the body in this life. Indeed, both the first and second readings are testimonies of this reality.

Because the Sadducees did not believe in “the coming age” Jesus spoke of, the experiences of the body of “this age” appeared to them to be all there is. Like the burning bush shown to Moses (which Jesus references in today’s Gospel), marriage is at once a reality filled with grace and a paradigm that beckons a “coming age” beyond itself. But to the Sadducees, marriage was not a sign of a “coming age.” They could only envision marriage in connection to “this age” because they measured God’s faithfulness only by what was supplied for the body as it is now.

GOD’S PERMANENT SOLUTION

Because our experiences are tethered to our bodies, which are in a nearly perpetual state of want, we often judge the faithfulness of God in respect to the degree in which those bodily needs are met. And that is what makes the figures in our readings this Sunday so remarkable.

God’s faithfulness is evaluated not in respect to a temporary alleviation of bodily woes but in light of God’s permanent solution to them. Any cessation of bodily duress in “this age” or enjoyment of pleasure and satisfaction will always, by nature, be temporary and incomplete. The pleasantness of the present moment will always shift into the past, and death always looms around the corner.

The brothers in our first reading knew this well. The second brother knows that the enjoyments of “this present life” are ephemeral, incapable of being enduring. And, echoing Jesus’ well known declaration “I lay down my life in order to take it up again” (John 10:17), the third brother accepts the imminent loss of his hands, announcing His hope in God to “receive them again” in the next life. Their vision of God’s faithfulness is wholly in respect to what is enduring and permanent. In this way, all seven brothers stand as a kind of prefiguring of Christ, each accepting the path of sacrifice “for the sake of His laws,” and each confidently determined that “the King of the world will raise us up again to live forever.”

Likewise, while St. Paul clearly wishes to be “delivered from perverse and wicked people,” his confidence in the Lord’s faithfulness is not in this but in assurance that God will strengthen and guard them “from the evil one.” Wicked people are a temporary threat. The evil one is a lasting one.

Respite from the sufferings of the body for a time is a good. The “everlasting encouragement” of resurrected life is far better. While God sometimes provides the former, His faithfulness is proven in the latter.

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SHAWN REEVES has served as the director of religious education at St. John’s Catholic Newman Center in Champaign since 2001. He and his family attend St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church in Thomasboro.