Sunday Sermon 11/10/13

Today's readings discuss the resurrection of the dead. The first reading is in Maccabees where the widow and her sons are tortured to death as they defy the sadistic king with their confidence of an afterlife. In the New Testament reading Christ is challenged by the Sadducee (who deny the concept of resurrection) who ask who is husband in the afterlife of a widow who, over her life, has had multiple husbands. This is a crucial question that most religions face. How are the righteous rewarded? What is the motive for action in a secular world? More, why would a god care? Investigation into these questions have not resulted in good cheer. At the best, modern life sees itself, without revelation, as multiple drifting canoes without a unifying theme, each one trying to be consistent within itself. Strangely, this results in an intense individualism that superficially mirrors the responsibility demanded by Christianity.

Christ uses the question to reemphasize the distinction between the spiritual and the corporeal. Children of the next world do not marry but, of course, they do not die either. Different laws apply.

(Later in the chapter Christ says "Beware of the scribes...Who devour the houses of widows..." He really did not like the hypocrisy and the arrogance of these people. It wasn't questions He disliked, it was insincerity. What He demanded in us was truth.)

This is a difficult distinction for many. Mormonism has a lot of problem with this concept and has included the idea of family in the resurrection in their canon. They have a gigantic data base for families and, like their interest in the archeology of Central America, this has stimulated tremendous interest in genealogy. Also, Maccabees is not universally accepted in all Christian canon. It is part of the Apocrypha and is accepted in the Catholic Church, some eastern Christian churches but not most  western Protestant churches. Nor is it in the Torah.