Mass readings for the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time:
2 Maccabees 7.1-2, 7, 9-14 Psalm 17.1, 5-8, 15 2 Thessalonians 2.16-3.5 Luke 20.27, 34-38
If for whatever reason you didn’t listen carefully to the gospel today, you may be under the impression that this is Jesus teaching. I mean that in the sense that he has people in front of him who’ve come to learn, have brought genuine curiousity to this encounter, and are engaged in finding the truth of things.
That’s not what’s going on. This is a confrontation: those who ask the question of Jesus are not interested in his answer. They are not looking for an explanation to further a conversation. This is more like a political debate; but even that is being too generous an analogy.
The Sadducees, we are told at the beginning of the gospel passage, do not believe in the Resurrection. So, the point of their question is to ridicule belief in it, and to embarrass Jesus.
So, we are pay attention to this is not so much to learn about the Resurrection, per se. We do have Jesus explaining to us that eternal life will not be like this life, but rather we’re to learn how to respond to our enemies when they try to do to us what the Sadducees are trying to do to Jesus.
This exchange between Jesus and the Sadducees reminds me of Question Period in the House of Commons, an aspect of our system of governance that that over the past fifty years has steadily degenerated.
The original intent of “Question Period” was to actually have the government provide information on matters of concern. It’s fascinating to read how this historically was something negotiated between the opposition and the government prior to entering the House so that when a question was asked, the government would provide an actual answer. Now, of course there was politicking, but it was not at all what we see today.
Today, the questions aren’t questions properly speaking, but little speeches laying out the talking points of the opposition. The answers aren’t answers, but the government offering their talking points. It’s farcical, but we know the reason for it: television and other media over the course of decades conditioned us to shortened attention spans such that we no longer listen to actual debates where ideas, policies, and information are layed out at length. It’s asserted that we prefer what are known as “sound bites” – this is politics done through slogans that are more about being catchy than they are about communicating substance. The people in charge of our media, and much of the political elite have judged us all as too stupid to actually follow a proper debate and to evaluate the substance of arguments.
Yet, we know from the phenomenon that is online video, YouTube, Rumble, Patreon, Twitch, and so on; that millions and millions of people will sit down to watch hours-long lectures on all sorts of difficult subjects, all with a desire to understand their complexities. Which is to say, while human beings can be pretty stupid, they don’t have to be – we are quite capable of doing better than we are right now.
Now when the Church, either as a community, or you as its representative as a believer, is confronted by a question, put publicly, either in the media, or to you at Christmas dinner that has the intention of embarrassing the Church and discrediting the faith, what are you supposed to do? How are you to answer?
We watch Jesus in this gospel and we learn how.
You answer the question calmly, as a teacher to a disruptive student, speaking with authority, not your authority, but with the authority of the Church. You speak not on your own behalf, but on behalf of the Saints, the faithful departed, on behalf of the grandmother who taught you about Jesus, on behalf of the religious sister who taught you history, the priest who celebrated your first communion, the neighbour from your childhood who put up a manger scene in his front yard every Christmas. Remember, you and I are not offering our personal opinion on things like abortion, marriage, sexuality, we’re not to be offering personal speculation on what our obligations are to the poor, or how we are to uphold justice even for the rich. What does our faith tradition say? What did Jesus teach on this? From those questions, and the answers we get, we can then discuss how these apply to a current situation, our conversation leading us to deeper understanding of the doctrine by asking, why does the Church teach this?
What you offer must be what the faith actually teaches. The incredible thing about our current day is that where once one had to be a person of considerable learning and fantastic memory, most of us have these things, these devices, phones that connect to the internet. I can actually search for the Catechism of the Catholic Church, look up the subject at hand. And if you don’t carry such a device, I bet the person asking the question does. So, at the very least, when asked something provocative, you can tell them to look it up – and not on their favorite church-bashing website, but actually go to the Catechism on the Vatican website.
This is what Jesus does in the sense that he points out what the scriptures actually say when engaging with these hostile Sadducees; and he offers teaching that, frankly, is not original to him. Belief in the resurrection predates Christ’s incarnation. However, Jesus is the most articulate teacher on the subject; and, of course, he furnishes the proof of it as true.
We have to do better as a Church, both in terms of our leadership, and as individual disciples, as parish communities and families. The hostility toward us is growing. That first lesson, the story from the Book of Maccabees that I hope we all heard as uncomfortable as that story is to hear is about young men being tortured to death for their faith. The Greeks who conquered Israel are trying to suppress the faith, trying to get the Jews to surrender to the Greek religion and its gods, to adopt their foreign culture. This has led to rebellion; and we should be horrified by the martyrdom of these men.
Let’s not be mistaken about the torturers. The Greeks think they are the good guys, the upholders of enlightened religion and superior culture; and they do these horrible things feeling quite justified.
We find ourselves in a similar situation today with a whole cadre of educators, policy-makers and politicians, activists and lobbyists, corporations and professional associations who are advancing ideas that are destructive of who we are as a people, as Christians, frankly, as human beings. Yet, they do not see themselves as villains anymore than those ancient Greek torturers murdering those young men, or those Jewish Sadducees who thought Jesus was a fool.
The torture of the young men put me in mind of the confusion that is being sown among our children and youth, leading them to do irreversible harm to themselves through belief in what is known as “gender theory”; and with news that major school boards like Toronto’s public board are going all in on this and other radical theories, all the while telling parents it’s none of their business what they teach children, I am sincerely worried about these students, and for our future as a civilization.
When I look at a lot of Catholic politicians, leaders, people in authority such as school trustees who support policies that are contrary to Catholic teaching and use their Catholic identity as somehow legitimizing their defiance of the apostolic faith, I scratch my head puzzled by this. What has happened? Is it that caught off-guard by an issue, having a poor grasp of Catholic teaching and then from a mix of embarrassment and, I believe, a sincere concern to do the right thing, they concede? In the days of the Maccabees there were Jews who sided with their Greek masters; perhaps they thought that making concessions would avert the catastrophe of war, or maybe they had a strong personal survival instinct and wanted to be on the side of power. In either case, they are not remembered as heroes of the faith.
Brothers and sisters, St. Paul writes, pray that the word of the Lord may spread rapidly and glorified everywhere, so that people may be rescued from the wicked and the evil; for not all have faith.
We have in this parish opportunities currently to educate, to deepen and broaden understanding of our faith: the RCIA; 33 Days to Morning Glory, this Advent some of our parishioners will be promoting our Catholic traditions for that season, encouraging us all to keep them; the Knights of Columbus continue in their efforts to recall men to faith, and to offer resources to all in their faith journey, and so on.
In a couple of weeks, we celebrate Christ the King, the end of our Church year, I invite you all to consider your resolutions for the New Year begun in Advent, and to do so with hope, resolve and confidence in Jesus Christ as people who live now in anticipation of Resurrection to Eternal Life.
Amen.