Homily for November 11, 2007 Thirty Second Sunday

Gospel: Luke 20: 27-38. The Sadducees, who do not believe in the Resurrection questioned Jesus about a brother who married and left a wife childless. He had seven brothers. The second, then the third and finally all seven married the woman. They asked, “In the Resurrection, whose wife will she be?”

I was happy to see some of you laugh and smile when I read the Gospel and got to the question, “In the Resurrection, whose wife will she be?” It shows that you were following, and that you got the joke that they were trying to pull on Jesus. I really had difficulty figuring out what to do with this Gospel. Frankly, it didn't do much for me when I first read it. It was one of those Sundays when I was tempted to say, "Could you give me another Gospel to talk about?"

But then I got to thinking: How many of you have ever found yourself speculating about questions of life after death? How many have ever asked similar questions? All right. Maybe not just like that one, but, what are some of the questions that you've found yourself asking?

[inaudible] You'd like to know what it feels like. Right.

[inaudible] When you're resurrected, how old will you be?

Somebody told me a joke the other day. It doesn't fit the homily, but it's a good joke.
This man and woman were in a deep argument, and the prayer angel appeared and said, "I'll give you each a wish."

The woman went first and she said, "I'd like a million dollars." And, poof! there was a million dollars on the table.

Then the man, who was really still angry, said, "I'd like a wife 30 years younger than me." So there was a moment of silence and, poof! a flash of lightning, and he was 90 years old. [laughter] So, you'd like to know how old will you be.

[inaudible] Who will you see there, and who won't you see there?

[inaudible] Is there a rainbow bridge for the pets that entered your life?

[inaudible] Who came for your past ancestors, and who will come for you?

[inaudible] You have a list of questions for God, and you  by the way, I hope you indulge me
another joke that came to my mind. You know who T. D. Jakes is? He's a black preacher on television, very popular. Well, he and Billy Graham died, and they went to heaven. And they said to St. Peter, "Which one of us is the Lord like?"

And St. Peter said, "Well, he's around the corner. I'll ask him." And he said, "Hey, Lord, we have a question for you."

And the Lord came out and said, "Buenos dies!" [laughter]

Yes? [inaudible] Will the answers even be relevant to us?

That's a good segue-way. It wasn't set up this way, but you see, many of our questions involve projecting what we know of this life into the next life, the same conditions, and that's normal. But what if the questions are no longer even important?

That's what Jesus seems to be answering the scribes and the Pharisees. In a way, I imagine that he's saying to the Sadducees, "Get a life! I mean, the question isn't even relevant to the resurrection."

I read a commentary by the theologian John Shea on this Gospel. He had a very good treatment of it, in which he quoted a woman; Patricia Monaghan was her name. And there is an article by her in a book that was published, The Best American Spiritual Writings from 2004. It's an anthology of writings, and her article was entitled, "The Physics of Grief." She recalls a conversation with somebody where somebody asked her, "What helped you deal with your grief?"
She said, "Physics." What she talked about was a time when she lost her keys, and she was feeling sorry for herself and suddenly realized she was angry at her husband for leaving her. She said, "Find my keys for me."

Well, then she thought how she was challenging all the laws of nature. She then thought of modern physics, which teaches us that time and space are far more mysterious than we can imagine, and that time and space are full of probabilities and possibilities that we haven't even conceived. She thought of Einstein and his theory of relativity, and she could imagine Einstein saying, "Everybody's alive to God." And isn't that what Jesus was saying? God is God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and he is God, not of the dead, but of the living.

Somehow that opened her to a sense of hope  not certainty, in the sense of being able to visualize what life after death is like, because none of us can do that  but that basic sense of hope, that God is God of the living, and that union with God that we enjoy now will never be taken from us, however we might imagine it.

I found then, further, as I was reflecting on this and reflecting on my time several years ago in the hospital  and I didn't know how bad I was; I slept through all that, and you all were doing the worrying  but when I woke up, I realized that the idea of faith didn't mean near as much to me as the idea of hope. Somebody asked me if I believed, and I said, "I don't know, but I sure hope it's true." I think hope comes from our sense of communion with God, and that's what I think Jesus points us to in the Gospel today.