2 Maccabees 7:1-2,
9-14, 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5, Luke 20:27-38
On the Gospel, Belief in the Resurrection
A certain foreign missionary in an Africa village
was charged with translating the New Testament into the local language. In his
good will, this missionary saw this as an opportunity to modernise the New
Testament so as not to pass over to the Africans what he saw as the “antiquated
and superstitious” world-view of the Bible. So he decided to remove from the
translation every reference to spiritual beings other than God and the Holy
Spirit. Evil spirits and angels, he argued, made no sense in the civilised world
of today. An African priest working with him tried to convince him that the
spiritual is part and parcel of both the biblical and African world-views and
should therefore not be thrown out, but he would not listen to him. One day
this missionary went to his favourite Christian community for Sunday service
and right there before his very eyes, one of his “best” converts in the
community began to act funny. She began swaying uncontrollably to the rhythm of
the drums and stopped only when the music stopped. The young woman was visibly
embarrassed with this development as she struggled in vain to keep herself from
swaying. Everybody in the congregation understood this behaviour to be the
first signs of spirit possession.
After the service, the people brought the young
woman to the priest and said, “Father, what do we do?” The priest, who was in a
state of shock himself, reached into his pockets and found aspirin tablets.
“Give this to her,” he said, “and let me know how she feels after some days.”
He came back to the mission house and literally fell sick and was unable to eat
as he tried to digest the experience. Of course he knew they would bring her
back to him in a worse state after a few days. Scales fell from his eyes as the
zealous crusader who wanted to convert Africans from “superstitious beliefs”
realized that it was probably he more than they who needed a conversion.
Like this missionary, many people today think that
being a modern Christian includes jettisoning the belief in spiritual beings.
But what people like this do not realize is that this is not a modern thing at
all. Even at the time of Jesus there were people who did not believe in
spirits, in angels and in the resurrection of the dead. These people who
subscribed to a certain religious and political ideology were known as the
Sadducees. In today’s gospel, some Sadducees came to Jesus and wanted to prove
to him how absurd it is for any reasonable person to believe in the
resurrection. They came up with the story of seven brothers who were all in
turn married to the same woman and asked Jesus, “In the resurrection,
therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her” (Luke
20:33). Jesus replied that it was impossible to understand the life of the
resurrection in terms of the standards of the present life since in the life to
come there would be no need for anyone to marry, to start with.
Notice that the problem of the Sadducees has to do
with how things are in the resurrection life whereas Jesus’ response
has to do with the why of the resurrection. There is a resurrection
because God is God of the living. God has created us for life and not for
ultimate extinction. God does not blow us into life like bubbles, here today,
gone tomorrow. No, God gifts us with life even after this earthly existence is
over.
If there is one belief that the men and women of our
world need today it is the belief in the resurrection. Why? Because it is the
effective antidote to the infectious disease of materialism. The story is told
of an American tourist who paid the 19th century Polish rabbi Hofetz Chaim
a visit. Astonished to see that the rabbi’s home was only a simple room filled
with books, a table and a bench, the tourist asked, “Rabbi, where is your
furniture?” “Where is yours?” replied the rabbi. “Mine?” asked the puzzled
tourist. “But I’m only a visitor here. I’m only passing through.” “So am I,”
said Hofetz Chaim.
Let us thank God today for revealing to us the
mystery of the resurrection. Let us reaffirm our belief in the life of the
world to come, since this is the most effective means to escape the
stranglehold of materialism in our lives here on earth. Do we understand
exactly how it will be in the life of the resurrection. Certainly, not. For we
are talking about “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart
conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians
2:9).
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