2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14 / 2 Thess 2:16 – 3:5 / Luke 20:27-38
We know what the riddle is, and it is always fun and challenging to solve a riddle.
A riddle is a question that is intentionally phrased so as to require ingenuity and creativity in solving it.
But if ingenuity and creativity is required to solve a riddle, then ingenuity and creativity is also required to think up a riddle.
So here comes a riddle. Why is the math book so sad? Answer: Because it has so many problems.
Yes, a math book has so many problems, and it can be said that the math book is like a book about life.
Life also has so many problems. But while the math book has the answers to the problems at the end of the book, the book about life does not have all the answers so readily available.
So the book about life is like a math book that does not have the answers at the end of the book.
We can try to solve the problems about life with ingenuity and creativity, but there is no guarantee, there is no certainty, that our answers are correct.
In the first reading, we heard about the seven brothers and their mother facing a big problem. They were forced to eat something which their religious law forbid.
As they were savagely tortured and put to death one by one for refusing to obey the king’s orders, they were united in one answer, that is, that God will reward them for their faithfulness in the afterlife. They believe in God’s promises that they will rise from the dead.
That is not just an ingenious or creative answer. Rather it is a faith response to the promise of God to a life that is beyond this world. But it takes a lot of faith to believe that, as the seven brothers and their mother had courageously shown.
In the gospel, there were the Sadducees who don’t believe in the afterlife or in the resurrection. For them, this life is all there is, so they must get the best out of it and enjoy the most out of it.
They would have known about the story of the seven brothers, but they twisted the story and made it into a question for Jesus, hoping to debunk the belief in the afterlife and in the resurrection.
So they came up with a story about seven brothers, the first married a woman, but he died childless, and according to a writing from Moses, the next brother must marry the woman, but he too died childless, and it went on and on till all seven brothers died, and finally the woman herself died.
Now the question of the Sadducees: At the resurrection, to which of the seven brothers will the woman be wife, since she had been married to all seven?
That was a tricky question, but it was an earthly question, and Jesus gave a Heavenly reply.
But how much of what Jesus said can be understood, well, that’s another question.
A woman came back from church and told her husband that the priest said in the homily that in heaven they would not be husband and wife anymore. The husband replied: That is why it is called heaven, and how I look forward to go there.
So Jesus tells us that our life in heaven is the life of the resurrection, and as much as our life on earth is a preparation for the life in heaven, let us also not be confused that the things of earth are going to be like the things above.
That was the Sadducees’ problem, so their book about life is like a math book that don’t have answers at the back or at the end. Their book is like a sad math book that only has problems but no answers.
Our book about life also has problems, but our faith in the Risen Jesus tells us what the answer is – that there is life beyond death, it is a new life in heaven, it is the life of the resurrection.
So the earthly death, as much as it can be quite disturbing, it is also God’s wonderful way of giving us the glorious new life of heaven.
And so while on earth, we prepare for this finality of death by our daily dying for our earthly desires and sinfulness.
So we die to anger, bitterness and resentment. We die to unnecessary complaining and useless arguing. We die to the laziness so that we can make a commitment to Jesus and keep running the race. We die to the addiction to our mobile phones so that we can have time for communication with God in prayer.
It is through our daily dying to selfishness and sin that we solve the problems in the book about life and come to see that the final question about death is actually the answer to a new life in God.
And may God, who is not God of the dead, but God of the living, write our names in the Book of Life and welcome us into the eternal life of Heaven.