I recently had the opportunity to visit the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC.  Like other museums, one could spend a week or even a month experiencing this museum in its richness.  I started at the top level of the museum and a multi-media presentation of the native cultures extending from Alaska all the way down to the bottom of Chile.  The most striking aspect of these native people is precisely their inherent experience of the wholeness of creation and the universe.  The question of being separate as humans from the “rest” of the universe does not even occur to them.  The dark contrast to this mindset becomes most horribly obvious in the plunder and destruction inflicted on these Native cultures by the European conquerors and colonialists.  A quote by Pedro de Cieza de Leon [Spanish chronicler of Peru (1553)] in the museum truly captured this divergent dualism which, in dramatic lack of appreciation, blindly violates the Wholeness of the universe in which we are part:

“It is a sad thing to reflect that these idol-worshiping Inkas should have had such wisdom in knowing how to govern and preserve these far-flung lands, and that we Christians have destroyed so many kingdoms.”

In the first reading today from 2 Maccabees (2 Mc 7:1-2, 9-14 ), we have somewhat of a similar picture.  Seven brothers and their mother are being one by one tortured and put to death upon their refusal to eat pork in violation of God’s law.  All seven of the brothers and the mother end up being killed for their refusal to break God’s law.  One of the brothers before dying says:

“It is my choice to die at the hands of men with the hope God gives of being raised up by him.”

 The Gospel story also speaks about resurrection (Lk 20:27-38) when it presents us with the story of seven brothers and a woman, only this time the situation is that seven brothers consecutively marry the same woman, in accordance with the Mosaic law:

“If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother.”

 In their case, each brother failed to “raise up descendants” for the preceding brother who had died.  It is the Sadducees that pose this predicament to Jesus, as a way to express their disbelief in the resurrection.   They posed this question to Jesus:

“…all the seven (brothers) died childless. Finally the woman also died.

Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be?  For all seven had been married to her.”

Of course, Jesus realizes that these Sadducees have their own agenda, and retorts by saying:

“The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise. That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called out ‘Lord,’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”

The prohibition to eat pork and the requirement to produce descendants for a brother who was unable to, prior to death, results in 14 deaths in the two scripture stories.  There is a repetition going on in the stories.  In the first reading, seven brothers along with their mother all are tortured and put to death for holding fast to the law, while the seven brothers in the Gospel story end up marrying the same woman in order to fulfill the Mosaic law to “raise up descendants” for a deceased brother who was unable to do so before death.  Each figure in the scripture stories is striving to be faithful in the manner in which they interpret faithfulness in life and death.  What is this saying about what resurrection or “new life” may mean?

If we bracket much of the “legal issues” in both the Maccabean scripture and in the Gospel, we may be able to see something more fundamental about what is possibly being said here.  Jesus points out that the “children of this age marry and remarry,” while the “children of God,” are the ones who will never die, because they have a different understanding or experience of what life (and death) may mean.  I don’t believe that this is a Gospel story that denigrates marriage in any way.  Just as the story of the seven brothers and their mother who are put to death in the first reading is not literally about stubbornly holding to the requirement not to eat pork.  Both stories seem to also be saying something about how we approach life and death.  The question is, in a way, how do we “raise up descendants,” or pass on the gift of Life in a way that enhances even in a transforming way the lives of others…All others?

The “children of this age” – our age – are us when we fall prey to repetitions of patterns of “morality” that may appear on the surface as in line with “legal prescriptions,” but in fact are driven by sometimes stale and quite selfish motivations that end up creating divisions in the Wholeness of the wonderful Universe in which we live.  Our tight-fisted clutching to sometimes “destructive” understandings and ideologies result in repetitions of the failure to “raise up descendants” of NEW LIFE!  We can see this in racial and religious bigotry and ignorance, and in all the various ways that we fail to honor and respect all Life.

Jesus mentions the “children of God,” who (we are told) realize that, as Moses encountered in the burning bush, the God of our Universe, the loving God who gives Life IS LIFE!  These are the ones who do not continue to “die without fruit,” but realize that they belong to a God not of the dead, but a God of the living! In fact, the Gospel tells us that “death,” at least as we understand it, is not on God’s radar.  The translation is “…he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”  God sees only LIFE!

I was profoundly struck by this same thing as I walked through the Museum of the American Indian.  I heard the tour guide say more than once about different native cultures that they do not believe in “death.”  These native cultures and people believe in the Wholeness of Life, wherein all “deaths,” or “passings” are just that…the pattern of LIFE as it moves forward.  As the seasons rise and fall along with the sun, moon, and stars, so does all of life.  Everything is alive.  Unfortunately, the Western European culture has not grasped this, or perhaps forgotten it.  As we see daily, this repetition of forgetfulness causes division, strife, exclusion, violence and isolation.

If everything and everyone is alive for God, then the “deaths” that we experience can be seen as steps toward new or re-NEWED life.   The experiences of our lives, joyful and sorrowful, mysterious and painful, can in fact be embraced as movements of transformation that do not just include us, but reaches out to others.  We then can become the “brothers” in the Gospel Story who do bear fruit or “descendants” by respectfully and holistically entering into relationships where the “children of God” are born – Hope, Peace, Justice, Compassion, Forgiveness, Faith, Truth, the list goes on and on…

We can perhaps then begin to appreciate that death is truly part of Life, and that is one of the great mysteries of what we mean by Resurrection.  Can we allow ourselves to be raised up beyond sometimes rote and dangerous practices of prohibition?  This is not throwing out the “laws” that we find in our Christian and religious heritage, but approaching them from the side of Life and not death.  Death can never be greater than Life.  This is what God seems to be saying.  And when we start living into this realization, we are transformed and we do feel “new” and we see anew all those things that we have “forgotten” or cast aside, or not noticed.  Everything in the universe then can shine as the burning bush!

This life task demands the enduring faithfulness of the seven brothers and their mother in the first reading and the ability to allow “descendants” of NEW life to spring forth from our lives, as we are reminded in the Gospel story.  It requires that we be alive by giving life to and for others – for-giving NEW LIFE!  This is a way of “descending” in Wholeness, by allowing God to raise us up.  Joining with Paul in his address to the Thessalonians (2 Thes 2:16-3:5 ) I pray for all of us:

“May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the endurance of Christ.”

Peace

Thomas