Sunday 32 C (2022)

Each Sunday we say in the Nicene Creed

‘I look forward to the resurrection of the dead

and the life of the world to come’.

Today’s gospel directs our thoughts to this mystery of our faith.

And it is a true mystery: we are allowed insights,

but, in this world, we cannot have full understanding.

On All Saints Day, on Tuesday,

we heard the first letter of St John teach:

we are already the children of God

but what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed;

all we know is, that when it is revealed

we shall be like him because we shall see him as he really is.

(1 John 3:2)

we shall be like him…

Insight into our destiny therefore comes from focussing on God,

revealed in the person of Jesus: from focussing on who God really is.

Chapter 15 of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians,

contains much profound teaching on resurrection, Jesus’ first, then ours:

perhaps today’s gospel can be a stimulus to read it.

That chapter also contains the following sharp remark:

Someone may ask,

‘How are dead people raised?, (and)

what sort of body do they have when they come back?’

They are stupid questions.

(1 Cor 15:35-6)

You can hear Paul’s exasperation.

The questions are too narrow, too material: they obscure the mystery.

The Sadducees’ question,

which, in case this isn’t clear, is actually about having children,

is similar; its focus is wrong.

Jesus redirects attention to God, directs attention to who God really is:

the God, not of the dead, but of the living:

for to God every person is in fact alive.

Jesus in his own person is the deepest expression of who God really is.

In the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

the God of love and life

reveals both the pattern and the promise of what is to come.

(Philippians 3:20-21)