This week’s readings, given that we are in the month of the Holy Souls, are, I think, an invitation to reflect for a moment on death and what lies beyond it. Clearly the Sadducees 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 our belief in life after death in a way that even begins to make sense to the modern world. Because it’s obvious from the way we talk sometimes that we make exactly the same mistake as the Sadducees did.
So what do I mean by this? Well, if you are asking me what kind of life those who have gone before us are living now, my answer has to be that I simply don’t know. I may offer some thoughts on the matter, and will do so later, but, in the end, I don’t know. Even as children, many of us learned that ‘Eye hath not seen nor ear heard what God has prepared for those who love him.’ And yet, despite these words from Scripture, we do exactly what the Sadducees did and speak as if it were merely an extension of what goes on here. And so we talk 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 suggest, one of the main reasons why so many today find the whole idea of life beyond death impossible to accept. They simply don’t believe in these cosy images and fundamentally they are right not to believe them. And this is because the life our departed relatives and friends are now living is quite simply beyond anything we can imagine at this point. And so would it not make more sense if, when death strikes, we were able to just admit this and stand there beside the atheists and agnostics of today in their pain and confusion, neither knowing nor understanding, but believing? In the presence of something so far beyond us, all we can really do is believe. And even that’s not enough sometimes.
But if we could just learn to live with that; if we could just accept the not-knowing, feel the depth of the mystery, and call out to God from that painful place, would our witness not make more sense to the people around us. They, after all, feel the same pain and bewilderment in the face of death as we do and it’s surely by standing shoulder to shoulder with them, sharing their doubts, questions and sometimes their disbelief, that what we have to say about God may one day make some sense to them. I remember once being at the funeral of lady who had loved fruit scones with coffee and the Ayrshire coast. ‘And she’ll be up there now’ said the priest, ‘With her coffee and a scone looking over Ailsa Craig.’ And as I looked at her grandchildren, one of whom had a PhD in Physics, I could have wept.
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 anxiety of the old lady I knew whose great question about life after death was how would we all fit in. We now know that there are enough stars out there, galaxies even, for us 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 fullness 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 in every age.
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 to conjure with.
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 us through Jesus, his Son, who in his own person is the Resurrection and the Life: to share his own divine life with them, to fulfil all their deepest longings and desires and to give them the eternal happiness which, deep within ourselves we all long for......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 in the face of death since the beginning of time, we 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 have anything helpful to say about death to the men and women of our time, then we must be willing to let go of images which belong to the past and confront in ourselves the not-knowing, the not-understanding and the not believing which are the experience of so many today. Only if we are able to enter deeply into this experience and be with the people of our time in it, will what we say have the ring of authenticity about it and have meaning for them. And so we pray for this grace........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. We pray, in particular, that, as the 21st century progresses, science will bring humanity closer to God again.....Lord hear us
In the first reading today from the book of Maccabees, the story of the seven brothers and their great courage in the face of persecution and torture, was written to encourage the people of the second century BC in the face of the threats they were facing at that time. But in every age there have been men and women willing to suffer and even die for what they believed. And so we pray for some of their courage and commitment in the very different circumstances of our own day.......Lord hear us
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment