+In this morning’s Gospel we have a little change of pace as the Pharisees give way to the Sadducees for the latest episode of “trick the Son of God.”
If a man dies and his brother marries the widow and then he dies and another brother marries the widow, ….to whom does she belong in eternal life? [ now here’s a little detour into why marriage was so important—— a widow had no standing in Jesus’ time. An unattached woman was looked on with an air of judgement. A woman should not, in Jesus’ time, be unattached. A woman needed a man to make her legitimate.]
It’s easy to skip over the specifics of this question by saying this Gospel is not about marriage but rather the resurrection—and indeed it is about the resurrection—-but it’s also about marriage, about belonging, about attachment, about connection, about whose we are, in this life and in the next.
I have to admit, this reading struck a chord with me this time around….for I myself was widowed two years ago yesterday—-previously I read this gospel with nary a thought of how it sounded to those among us who’ve been married, widowed and for some, remarried. But this year, this time, think about it I did.
One day I woke up and I was here and so was my spouse. Later that morning, in one fell swoop of a heart stopped by the ravages of chemotherapy I was still here, but my wife? She was not. I was in this life and she was in life eternal.
The resulting chasm felt wide and impassable. The separation, intensely painful. The loss, acute. And yet, as a firm believer in the resurrection, in a proclaimer of life everlasting, a lover of God and of God’s most holy mysteries I knew, I know, that for Pete life had simply changed, not ended and that for me? Life had also changed, not ended.
That’s the gift of faith in the resurrection—-we know that this life—this here and now is not the be all and end all. It is a moment in a much greater and never ending whole that is Life Everlasting.
But when it happens, when the love of your life is no longer by your side, that faith, that belief, that hope is challenged. Because all I could feel, all I knew in those first days and those first months and still at times to this day is the reality that she is not here. She is there. And I? I am here. It seems very black and white.
It’s this kind of thinking that the Sadducees were engaged in. In modern day language this is called “binary” thinking—-meaning there is yes and no, there is black and white, there is here and there, there is life and death. This binary thinking is something we humans have constructed —it is not, according to Jesus, how God thinks. For in God there is no time, there is no here or there, in God there is simply now. “Now" is all that has been. “Now” is all that is. “Now” is all that ever will be.
It’s a bit mind-blowing…which is why we humans constructed linear time and finite thought. It’s just easier!
After being widowed I was rudderless. I went from being married to being parted by death. No longer married. Who was I as a widow? How was I to live as a single person again? I was lost.
But then, as anyone who has lost someone very close to them can relate, I (slowly) began to find my footing, to move through life to live the “rest of my story,” to live the fullness of what is our story.
For while my attachment through love and commitment was strong and life-giving and a dream come true, the attachment I had to my spouse, the grip of love we felt for each other was not the whole story.
The love we have for others, for our parents, our spouses, our children, our siblings, our families, our friends, our neighbors….the love we share with them, the grip of that love, isn’t the whole story….the whole story, the source of love from which all these other loves pours? It’s God.
God is love. And out of that Love all of us…everything that ever has been and ever will be…..has been created. Any love that we feel, any love that we are blessed enough to receive, all that love comes from the source of all Love: God.
To me, this is the point of today’s Gospel——we belong to God——we did before, we do now, we will always. In the fullness of life eternal it isn’t about to whom we are attached, it is about how we’re all attached, all connected through the source of all love, the source of all joy, the source of all light: God.
In death we are reunited with those who have gone before and we rejoice at the heavenly banquet loosening our grip on our earthly attachments—-not because they weren’t/aren’t precious to us, but because once we enter into the fullness of resurrected life we, amidst the choirs of angels and the great cloud of witnesses, realize that all our attachments, all our loves gain their meaning through the one attachment that feeds us all: the love of God given to us through Jesus Christ.
As the old hymn puts it:
“In Christ there is no east or west, In him no south or north, But one great family bound by love…"
To whom do we and our beloved to belong when our earthly sojourn is over? We belong to the Love that created us, the Love that Redeems us and the Love that always and forever Sustains us. And for that we all can say, Amen.
