Life and resurrection
A sermon for the Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, from Mthr Pirrial Clift.
For a moment, imagine our world to be one of those fanciful ‘worlds’ enclosed in a ginormous bubble depicted in a science fiction movie: constructed to accommodate and protect humanity when the surrounding atmosphere is not conducive to human life. Inside the ginormous bubble is everything necessary for life to flourish. Venturing beyond the bubble walls is to vanish into the Great Unknown. Occasionally some foolhardy adventurer breaks out, but never returns - so the Great Unknown is shrouded in mystery.
Our lives reflect this fantasy to a degree. Created within a bubble of time: we are born and live within the constraints of time.
Indeed there are accounts of people experiencing a temporary suspension of time in momentous events – those micro-seconds that it takes for the train to hit or the child to fall or the car to crash seem to belong to a different dimension. Some know a moment of profound love or beauty when they feel transported to a different place for a moment that seems like forever – we say ‘time stands still’: however we are only truly freed from the rule of time by death, which for mortals is the Great Unknown.
Saint Francis spoke of ‘Sister’ Death - a kindly guide, leading the human soul into eternity or what we call Heaven - the place where God is. Or should we say led into God, where everything, known and unknown, is – where all things are in Christ. A deep mystery is death, for sure.
Our finite minds balk at the prospect of imagining heaven’s shape or substance – and rightly so, for who can describe what is outside human comprehension?
I rather like John Henry Newman’s attempt at describing heaven: ‘Heaven at present is out of sight, but in due time, just as when melting snow reveals what has been hidden underneath, so will earth fade away before those greater splendours which are concealed, and on which it depends.’
The Sadducees denied the possibility of resurrection, and in today’s gospel attempt to trick Jesus with a question about life after death. The Sadducees recognised only the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, as authoritative, and there is no reference to the after-life within those books. However, Jesus responded by citing an implicit reference from the story of the bush in Exodus 3.6, where God spoke to Moses: I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Not I was, I am. ‘For to him, Jesus said, all of them are alive’.
The second part of the Sadducees’ question – if an after-life exists, which of seven brothers will be the much-married woman’s husband after death –- seeks a definitive answer to a question regarding the nature of resurrected life, which is impossible to give.
Can anything be said about the resurrection life? Enough. The resurrected ‘cannot die anymore, because they are children of God… children of the resurrection’ said Jesus. We also trust Jesus’ promise in the Farewell Discourse of John 14 that he is preparing places for his disciples in the place where he is going. We are able, in the strength of that trust, to celebrate the lives of Christian Saints and pray for those we love who have already met Sister Death, as we did at All Saints and All Souls recently.
God, the great I AM, unlike human beings, is present in both heaven and earth, and sometimes offers tantalising glimpses of the mystery awaiting us all. Some instances include God’s spoken word, heard by Moses, Abraham, Job, Samuel, Mary etc throughout the ages, either directly or through messengers or angels. (I diverge for a moment with a word of caution. There is a need for anyone who hears God speak to distinguish between God’s word and their own imagination or misunderstanding. We can all be prey to self-delusion. Teresa of Avila taught that God’s voice is always congruent with commandments, will accomplish what it says, and will effect significant change in the hearer.)
The mystics relate instances when time appears to be suspended and they receive mountains of knowledge or experience which become engraved on their memory in seconds. Read about St Paul, ‘taken to the “seventh heaven’, ‘I know not how”, he said. Read Julian of Norwich. Teresa of Avila’s describes ‘raptures’ where the senses are suspended. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses to transformative events, timeless moments, when people were seized and transported into the life of God. Not to mention the multitude of unknown Christians who feel God’s presence. Often there just aren’t words to explain these phenomena because they are beyond normal human experience. All these glimpses into another life encourage and strengthen our faith.
Love we know, also transcends time and space. St Paul teaches that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, not even death. Love never dies.
Resurrection and how it unfolds remain unknown. We can only wait in childlike trust until the snows of this life melt away and what has been hidden is revealed in all its splendour. St Paul says: ‘no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him’.