What are you willing to die for?

 

Thirty Second Sunday in OT  C  2022

 

 

I recently heard two teenage girls commenting on a rather good-looking guy that had their undivided attention:  “Isn’t he just gorgeous?  He’s to die for.”  (They weren’t talking about me.)

I would like to take that comment to another level.  So my question for you today is:  “Just what are you willing to die for?”  I realize this is a rather heavy question, especially if you haven’t had your first cup of coffee this morning.  This is the question the Scriptures invite us to consider.  Just what is big enough, important enough that I would give my life for it?

 

The Sundays of November bring us to the conclusion of the Church Year.  Today’s readings also call to our minds the conclusion of our own years on earth.  The mystery of life and death reside within each one of us. 

 

 

In  Bette Midler’s The Rose, she sings, “It’s the soul afraid of dying, who never learns to live.”  She is right.  Unless we have identified our ultimate values, we have not begun to live fully, for we are locked behind the bars of fear. What

This past Wednesday, I brought Communion to a woman dealing with significant cancer.  She was just given the sobering diagnosis that statistically she had only another year to live.

Understandably this is frightening news.  This challenges us to dig deeply into our faith and trust in God. What does it mean to be given a statistical timeline on the length of one’s earthly life, and in faith how do we believe that yes one day all of us will enter into a different kind of life – our life in union with Christ for all eternity. It is in dying that we are born to eternal life

 

In the first Scripture reading from the Book of Maccabees:  “It happened that seven brothers with their mother were arrested and tortured with whips and scourges by the king to force them to eat pork in violation of God’s law.  One of the brothers, speaking for the others, said:  “What do you expect to achieve by questioning us?  We are ready to die rather than transgress the law of our ancestors.”

The brothers and their mother had drawn a line in the sand.   Their trust and faith in God was that important to them.  Their trust in a resurrection faith was non-negotiable.  It was to die for.

Bette Midler was not singing about these brothers and their mother with the words:  “It’s the soul afraid of dying, who never learns to live.”

The Scriptures today invite to reflect on the lives of people who place God first in their lives.

Today’s Gospel passage comes late in Luke’s Gospel and late in the liturgical year.   In the Gospel, the Sadducees were the religious leaders who denied that there was life after death.  To prove their belief, they asked Jesus a trick question about a woman who ended marrying seven brothers.  Then they Jesus the absurd question:  whose wife will this woman be in the resurrection?

The Scriptures calls us to reflect on the last things – on death and the mystery of the resurrection of Jesus.

The resurrection of Jesus is the linchpin of Christian faith, the source of our hope, the cause of our joy.  In the light of a resurrection faith, we seek to place God first in our lives.

We do not know with any empirical certainty; nevertheless we anchor ourselves in the sure faith that ours is a living God and a loving God who has accomplished our salvation in the dying and rising of Jesus.  In this faith is also founded our hope, and this hope gives meaning and purpose to our days and nights until such time as death takes us beyond time unto life everlasting.

We have to live with the reality that we don’t all the answers about the mystery of eternal life.  What we have is our faith that God’s love leads us onto a fuller sharing in life everlasting.

 

It is true because we trust in the power of the resurrection of Jesus.  Through and through, as the disciples of the Risen Lord, we are a people of hope.  Our hope is rooted in our trust that the risen Lord goes with us in all experiences of life.  The risen Lord is with us in our parish community.  Yes, we still are a sinful, stumbling group of people who make mistakes.  But we believe that the risen Jesus is with us in this celebration of the Eucharist.  We believe that the power and grace of the Risen Lord enables us to trust our God never abandons us.  Our God cares for us.  We are a people who can sing Alleluia.

 

 

The mystery of life and death, like holy twins, reside within each of us.  Both of these holy twins have voices for those who have ears willing to listen.  Death speaks of the urgency of growing one’s soul larger and larger by acts of love.  Death constantly admonishes us not to take for granted those we love and not to miss the countless opportunities to live well.  Listen to death.  Your death is only a door that leads to home; do not fear the hour it will open.  Live watchful of that Grand Opening and prepare for it with prayer.