Living in the Afterlife
Jun 5: Wednesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s readings offer us different perspectives on the afterlife. Paul’s letter connects the past to the present, while asking us to look to the future. In the Gospel, the Sadducees ask Jesus about life after death, not because they’re curious, but because they want to trick Him with (what they think is) a logical inconsistency.
Reading 1
2 Tm 1:1-3, 6-12
Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God for the promise of life in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my dear child: grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
I am grateful to God, whom I worship with a clear conscience as my ancestors did, as I remember you constantly in my prayers, night and day.
For this reason, I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control. So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord, nor of me, a prisoner for his sake; but bear your share of hardship for the Gospel with the strength that comes from God.
He saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began, but now made manifest through the appearance of our savior Christ Jesus, who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel, for which I was appointed preacher and Apostle and teacher. On this account I am suffering these things; but I am not ashamed, for I know him in whom I have believed and am confident that he is able to guard what has been entrusted to me until that day.
As a devout Jew, Paul likes to connect Christianity with the Hebrew tradition. HE worships "as [his] ancestors did."
The laying on of hands as part of ordination is, like Paul's prayers, an ancient Israelite tradition. He connects the ancient past with his radical present.
What's so radical about Paul's teachings? The fact that we can never "earn" salvation. It came to us through Christ's death and resurrection. Now, it falls on Timothy (and us) to continue that action of sacrifice.
Priests today (who are part of that continuity of laying on of hands) may preside over the mass, but we in the congregation must participate, as well. It's been entrusted to us, as it was to Timothy and Paul. But we don't own it; we also must pass it on.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 123:1b-2ab, 2cdef
R. (1b) To you, O Lord, I lift up my eyes.
To you I lift up my eyes
who are enthroned in heaven.
Behold, as the eyes of servants
are on the hands of their masters.
R. To you, O Lord, I lift up my eyes.
As the eyes of a maid
are on the hands of her mistress,
So are our eyes on the LORD, our God,
till he have pity on us.
R. To you, O Lord, I lift up my eyes.
As participants in God's work, we still have to keep our eyes on Heaven. Everything we do has a purpose: working towards the salvation Jesus paid for first.
Alleluia
Jn 11:25a, 26
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord;
whoever believes in me will never die.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Jesus offers life, not death.
Gospel
Mk 12:18-27
Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and put this question to him, saying, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us, If someone's brother dies, leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first married a woman and died, leaving no descendants. So the second brother married her and died, leaving no descendants, and the third likewise. And the seven left no descendants. Last of all the woman also died. At the resurrection when they arise whose wife will she be? For all seven had been married to her."
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."
The reason God placed so many restrictions on marriage and sex is because it’s the only relationship that can produce more humans. In this case, the Sadducees are referring to “law of the levirate,”1 whose purpose is to continue the dead husband’s family name, so that none of God’s chosen lineage would pass away.
So, they apply this law to the idea of life after death. But they’re misunderstanding what resurrection is. As N.T. Wright explains in The Resurrection of the Son of God: “Resurrection will not simply mean resuscitation, like Jairus’ daughter or Lazarus. It will not mean starting off again in exactly the same kind of world as at present. It will mean going through death and out the other side into a deathless world.”
“A key point, often unnoticed, is that the Sadducees’ question is not about the mutual affection and companionship of husband and wife, but about how to fulfil the command to have a child, that is, how in the future life the family line will be kept going.”
None of which applies in the hereafter, when everyone lives forever. It’s an idea that’s difficult to contemplate. Life will be so different that even the most basic human relationships don’t really apply.
What we do know is, it will be life.