November 6, 2022, Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)
Today’s passages offer explicit verification about the existence of bodily resurrection for those who doubt its possibility.
The first comes from the second book of Maccabees (2 Macc. 7:1-2, 9-14). This was the time period during Israel’s history when the Greek Empire was the dominating world power. As a part of their effort to control those they defeated, the Greeks insisted that all of their occupied territories adapt their Hellenistic culture. This included, among other things, language, food, social practices, architecture, and religion.
Some of the Jewish people in Israel accepted the Hellenistic culture, but others could not be coerced to do so and thus rebelled against the Greeks’ agenda. One particular group of rebels were the Maccabees led by the Jewish priest, Judas Maccabees, for whom the book is named. They resisted even to the point of violence in order to retain their Jewish identity and way of life. Today’s story is a gruesome example of the type of brutality the Jewish protestors endured in their fight against their enemy.
The story reflects one of the purity laws forbidding the consumption of certain foods which they considered to be impure or unclean. Their abstinence from these foods, in this case pork, was one way to keep them separate from other nations and thus maintain their sanctity and holiness. It was a part of the covenant they had made with God through Moses during the time of the Exodus hundreds of years earlier.
On this one occasion, seven brothers and their mother were arrested and tortured by the king to force them to eat pork in violation of God’s law. Their heinous mistreatment would serve as an example of what might happen to other Jewish people who tried to resist. The king ordered that one of the brothers, who first tried speaking on behalf of his family, be scalped and have his tongue, hands and feet cut off before being killed in front of his brothers and mother (2Macc.7:4).
Each brother, in turn, suffered the same fate as did the mother and each victim faced their execution bravely, knowing they would be redeemed by God in the afterlife. Some of them even had words of praise for God before being put to death because they believed in the promise of the resurrection. One brother is quoted as saying, “It is my choice to die at the hands of men with the hope God gives of being raised up by him; but for you, there will be no resurrection to life.” (2Macc. 7:14).
This narrative from 2Maccabees is one of the first concrete descriptions of belief in the afterlife and resurrection of the body found in the Old Testament. By the time of Jesus, the belief in the resurrection had become well established among certain religious groups of Jews, for example the Pharisees, but it was still denied by the adversaries of Jesus known as the Sadducees, who we find in the Gospel today (Lk. 20:27-38).
As usual the Sadducees are trying to trick Jesus into saying something in contrast to the laws of Judaism by way of a riddle or hypothetical situation. In this case they use as their bait the Jewish practice of levirate marriage. This was a tradition where a woman would marry one of her husband’s brothers after her husband’s death in order for his legacy and property to be passed on to children. They ask Jesus if such a woman marries seven brothers in turn after their deaths without the presence of offspring, when she dies whose wife will she be at the time of the resurrection.
Jesus responds by saying, “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.” (Lk. 20:34-35). The Sadducees fail to understand the meaning of the resurrection. They think it is just a continuation of all of the aspects of the current life, including marriage and children. Now there will be a physical component to our spirituality after the resurrection. We know this from the passages about Jesus’ own resurrection and interaction with his disciples – speaking, eating, embracing. But there will be nothing in terms of legacies, descendants, or property which the Sadducees are concerned with. In fact, we really have no concrete example of what we will be like when we are resurrected from the dead. As Christians we merely believe, and we don’t have to worry about proving it to anyone. In fact, we confess this belief every time we pray the Creed, “I believe in the Resurrection of the dead…”
So, when somebody who is not very strong in the faith or who is a nonbeliever asks us about the afterlife what do we tell them? We might respond with one of the following. We go as spirits to a place where we meet Jesus. We see our deceased relatives and friends. We go someplace where we will be eternally happy, with none of our earthly preoccupations. We’ll pray and sing with the angels in the worship of God and Jesus. And there will be no suffering or pain.
While some of this might happen after we die, it is not our final destiny, nor does it explain the concept of the resurrection. From our lack of understanding, we subconsciously equate life after death with going to heaven (or otherwise), but we do not consider the fact that what happens at the end of time, when all the living and deceased will retain their spiritual resurrected body in some form or another, like Jesus. This we might have to constantly remind ourselves about lest we lose sight of the biggest miracle of Jesus written in the Gospels – his resurrection. According to the English New Testament scholar and theologian, NT Wright, we might call it, “Life, after life, after death.”
