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Dulwich Hill & St Mary's Cathedral32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time By + George Pell Today, as 2000 years ago, people disagree about the reality of life after death, and what that after-life will be like. Amongst the Jews in the time of Our Lord there were two or three main groups with different theologies and styles. The Sadducees were the people asking the question of Our Lord about the woman who married seven brothers in turn and saw them all off into eternity – you would reckon that the younger brothers would have been a little bit frightened about the prospect of entering into such a marriage - but it is only a story which these Sadducees asked Our Lord to put him down. It highlights the context in which most of Our Lord's teaching took place. It was generally out in the open air, in the public space. There were three types of people who listened to him: followers, those who were seriously interested; a small number who were deeply hostile; and those who were just curious or searching. There were many more then with little to do; few schools, and few sources of entertainment. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the body. They came generally from the wealthy section of society and they were much more tempted to skepticism than they were to fanaticism. They were very different from the Pharisees whom Our Lord criticized so often. The Pharisees were a very strict set of people. Many of them, I am sure, were very fine people. But they had a very carnal view of heaven. They certainly did believe in the resurrection of the body. One Jewish Pharisee writer, almost certainly male, thought that heaven would be where the women had a child per day. I don't know whether that would have been heaven or if it would have been hell. Years ago after preaching on the text that we had to be like little children to enter heaven, a mother with young children told me that if heaven was full of young children she did not want to go there! But the Sadducees were, as we would say, a very different kettle of fish. And the point of their question was to demonstrate that there could be no such thing as the resurrection of the body, that there was no such thing as a physical continuity after death, and very possibly to ridicule the whole idea of life after death. The Jewish teaching on life after death was quite uncertain until about 150 years before Our Lord, the time of these Maccabees whom we heard about in the first reading, who rose up in rebellion against the paganism that has been imposed on them. We have explicit references urging the people to pray for their souls, especially those who died in battle (which has been incorporated into our theology too). The Jews were much more inclined to believe in something called Sheol, a lower indeterminate form of existence. Given that they were deeply committed to belief in the one true God they had to try to get justice to work out in this life (which it doesn't). I think that is one of the strongest reasons for the existence of an after-life, for a heaven and hell. Because in this life it seems that a good percentage of people do not get their deserts. Some suffer much more than they should and some crooks seem to prosper mightily. Last year a German philosopher wrote a highly-controversial article on "The Curse of Christianity", where he listed the Christian notion of the Last Things, death, judgment, heaven and hell, as one of Christianity's seven congenital defects; because of the fear and terror they produced over the centuries. Generally, but not always, the hostility of the neopagans in our world is more understated. The idea of God is more likely to die in our world through neglect and indifference, the polite conviction that God is not needed. Quite a number of our agnostics would still regret the demise of God and accept much of Christian social morality. Nearly everywhere in the Western world practising Catholics, indeed practising Christians, are a minority. We are influenced heavily by another minority; the neopagan minority, which dominates the media and advertising through their disproportionate influence. In this climate even good Catholics can be uncertain, confused, short of hope. Heaven, hell, death and judgment have been partly covered by this confusion, often left in silence. One could say limbo has disappeared from the charts, purgatory has slipped into limbo, hell is left unmentioned, except perhaps for terrorists and infamous criminals, while heaven is the final and universal human right; or perhaps just a consoling myth. The dead are always silent, but this confusion on the nature of Christian hope reflects the challenge to faith, to belief in the one, true God and his redeeming Son, which is the central challenge in Western religious life. The confusion is also a reaction against the excessively punitive image of God which flourished in some places fifty years ago and more. God is certainly not cruel or cranky! A current Western temptation is to doubt the existence of serious evil, perhaps because of the excess violence on out T.V. screens. The September Eleven attacks might begin to change public consciousness here. However, this reluctance to distinguish freely chosen evil from ignorance increases the difficulty of reconciling the actions of a good God with any concept of punishment after death and certainly with the eternal punishments of hell. Just as evil is a mystery, so is God's punishment of evil, so is God's acceptance of a human decision to definitive exclusion from His love. The punishments of hell, Gehenna, are certainly one theme of Christ's preaching and must be seen as part of the realization of an eternal, universal justice (the punishment of evil-doers and the vindication of innocent victims), which is frequently not attained in this life. Much more congenial to the modern, Western mind, although often found to be surprising, is the Christian belief in the resurrection of the body, a wonderful consequence of Christ's Paschal victory. The Western yearning for immortality is still overwhelming spiritual, ghost-like, focused on the survival of the individual soul, so that the Christian teaching that there will new heavens and a new earth (2 Pet 3:13), a perfectly re-established universe centred on Christ, is regarded as beautiful and beyond human hopes. And so it is. Only in faith and on Jesus' authority can we hope for the new Heavenly Jerusalem, where God will wipe away every tear and death shall be no more (Rev 21:5). In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. |
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