32nd Sunday C

This week’s readings, given that we are in November, the month of the Holy Souls, are, I think, a clear invitation to reflect for a moment on the subject of death and what lies beyond it. Clearly the Sadducees, like many today, did not believe there was any life beyond death and we know that their question to Jesus about the woman and the seven brothers was no more than an attempt to ridicule the whole notion and make fun of it. The mistake they made, however, was to imagine that life beyond death is like life as we know it now and it’s this fundamental misunderstanding that Jesus addresses in his reply, pointing out that things in the resurrection are not the same as they are here. And that is something I suggest we need to be very clear about ourselves if we are to express the christian belief in life after death in a way that even begins to make sense to the men and women of our time. Because it’s obvious from the way we talk sometimes about life after death that we make exactly the same mistake as the Sadducees did.

So what do I mean by this? Well, if you were to ask me what kind of life those who have gone before us are living, I would have to say that I have no idea. I may be able to offer some thoughts on the matter, and will do so in a moment, but, essentially, I don’t know. After all, as many of us learned as children, ‘Eye hath not seen nor ear heard what God has prepared for those who love him.’ And yet, despite these words from Sacred Scripture, unable it would appear to live with not knowing, we do what the Sadducees did and speak as if it were little more than an extension of what goes on here. And so we talk sometimes as though our loved ones who have died are sitting around in heaven drinking cups of tea, reminiscing about old times and waiting for us to join them. But while this way of thinking and the idea that when we die we will see people again in the same way we see them now can be consoling sometimes, it is also, I would suggest, one of the main reasons why so many today find the whole idea of life beyond death incredible. They simply don’t believe in these cosy images and, consoling as they may be at times for us, they are basicaly right not to believe them. And this is because the life our departed relatives and friends are living now is something far beyond and infinitely greater than this. It is quite simply beyond both our comprehension and our imagination at this stage, and would make much more sense to people nowadays if we just admitted that. It is what happens anyway when death strikes those near to us, We just stand there, lost, bewildered, not knowing, not comprehending, not understanding. We are in the presence of a mystery far beyond us and the only thing that can we can rely on at that point is faith. And even that is not enough sometimes.

And if we could just settle for that; if we could just live with the not-knowing, feel the depth of the mystery and call out to God from that painful place of not-understanding, would our witness not make so much more sense to people who have no faith. They, after all, feel all those things too. They feel the pain and bewilderment just the same as people of faith do and it is surely by standing shoulder to shoulder with them in that place that what we have to say about God will eventually make some sense to them.

And there is further common ground we share with the men and women of our time. With or without faith, an experience common to most human beings on the planet today is an immense sense of wonder and awe at the sheer immensity of the cosmos. Hardly a month goes by without some new photograph of the universe or some new discovery which leaves our minds reeling. And it’s by plugging into this kind of experience, rather than by hanging on to out-dated ways of thinking and talking about life after death, that we can help nurture faith in today’s scientific and technological world. Ultimately all we can do is substitute one inadequate image for another, but modern theories in physics about perhaps up to nine dimensions, only two of which we are aware of and which could involve parallel worlds occupying the same space as we do without our being even aware of them, at least shake our old certainties and force us to re-examine a lot of the ideas we have up to now taken for granted. And although it made as much sense as the one the Sadducees asked in today’s gospel, in other words none, science has also answered the old chestnut about how there could be enough space for everybody in heaven. Even on our terms, there are enough stars out there for us all to have one each.

But there is one other image – and like all the others, it is only an image - that I invite you to think about today. And it is the one Jesus himself uses. The children of the resurrection, he says, ‘do not marry, because they are sons and daughters of God.’ So what does this mean? Well, it takes us to the very heart of what it means to say that marriage is a sacrament, an outward sign of something much deeper. And what I understand by that is that the love and intimacy which marriage, at its best, brings to people is no more than a sign, a glimpse of what awaits us all in the future. To love in this way is to glimpse in one person what God sees in every human being. Given the limitations of our present existence, of course, it is no more than a glimpse and even now we often lose sight of it. In the fulness of the kingdom, however, there will be no need for the sacrament of marriage because, set free from these limitations, we shall see the whole world and every person in it as God sees them. And what an experience that will be!

So, without understanding it, let’s look forward to it. And as we think of those who have died, whether recently or many years ago, let’s say together that great prayer of the Church down through the centuries.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them, May they rest in peace. Amen.

‘Eternal rest.’ Now there’s an image for you.


BIDDING PRAYERS


We begin our prayer today by holding up before God all our relatives and friends who have died over the years. Without understanding exactly how it will happen, and without needing to understand it, we ask God to do in them everything he has promised: to share his own life with them, to fulfil all their deepest longings and desires and to give them eternal rest………………………..…Lord hear us

And we pray, too, for all who live on a daily basis with the pain of bereavement. We pray, in a particular way, for all those for whom that pain is recent and the wound still raw. We pray that, in the midst of this most fundamental of all human experiences, when we feel what men and women have felt since the beginning of time, they will meet God and find comfort in the promise of resurrection and eternal life which he has made to us in Jesus……………….Lord hear us

Millions of our contemporaries say that they no longer believe in life after death. The whole idea makes no sense to them and so, in a world where truth is so often defined by what we can understand, they have rejected the whole idea. And yet, when death strikes, people today experience the same feelings and the same questions faced by our ancestors in every age. And so we pray that, by our facing up to these questions in a new way, the modern world will come again to faith………….Lord hear us

If we are to be able to say something helpful to the men and women of our time, then we must be willing to let go of images which belong to another time and and confront in ourselves the not-knowing, the not-understanding, the not believing even at times which characterize the world today. And so we pray for the courage to do this so that we can experience something of the immense mystery that is death, trusting not in human thinking but in God thinking………………….Lord hear us

The discoveries being made today about the nature and size of the cosmos are truly mind-blowing. As a result, humanity is starting to realise how little we actually know about these things. At the frontiers of science and technology we are confronted over and over again by the limits of our knowledge, and we pray that this experience will help us become more humble in the face of truth in all its forms……..….Lord hear us

This Sunday is Remembrance Sunday, when we pray for all those who have died, not only in the two great wars of the twentieth century, but in the many other conflicts which have afflicted and continue to afflict our world. And so we pray for them all, regardless of who they were or on whose side they fought. And we pray, too, that the world of the third millennium will finally put an end to war as a way of dealing with conflict among nations………………..Lord hear us