Wednesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
June 7, 2023
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/060723.cfm
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, both Tobit and Sarah stand on the edge of a psychological cliff:
- Tobit – because he has lost his ability to see, both physically and spiritually
- Sarah – because she is ridiculed and accused of killing seven husbands
The beautiful thing about both of them is that in their desperation they turn to God. Ultimately, God hears them and gives healing.
Sarah’s Marriage to Tobiah after Raphael Kills Demon- Jan Steen
In our Gospel, the Sadducees present Jesus with a puzzle reminiscent of Sarah’s situation.
Now there were seven brothers.
Mark 12:20-23
The first married a woman and died, leaving no descendants.
So the second brother married her and died, leaving no descendants,
and the third likewise.
And the seven left no descendants.
Last of all the woman also died.
At the resurrection when they arise whose wife will she be?
The Sadducees could not have been more insincere in their question. They didn’t even believe in life after death, so why were they posing the question? The Sadducees accepted only the first five books of the Bible as scripture. They rejected the inspirations of the prophets and wisdom writers where the first Biblical ideas of an afterlife arise.
Given their rejection of the developing insights into God and God’s dealings with his people over the intervening centuries, and expressed so beautifully in the prophets and much of the wisdom literature, they did not accept any possibility of life after death. Persons lived on through descendants. The centrality of descendants was the reason also for their obsession with property rights and inheritance. The consequences of human behavior did not echo into eternity. Their horizons were firmly limited to the here and now.
Father John McKinnon – revered Australian priest and teacher
Jesus clearly saw the intention of the Sadducees’s question. Feeling their elite status to be threatened by his teaching, they wished to trap Jesus in an indefensible position. If they could undermine his authority and influence, their own would be bolstered.
Jesus unperturbedly but directly tells them that they are not only wrong in their calculations, but are clueless regarding God and the scriptures:
Jesus said to them, “Are you not misled
Mark 12:24-25
because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?
When they rise from the dead,
they neither marry nor are given in marriage,
but they are like the angels in heaven.
Haven’t you wondered what heaven will be like? Jesus’ answer gives us a little insight. I really like how Father McKinnon describes Jesus’s perception:
Jesus’ view of resurrection was of unbelievable qualitative difference, beyond the capacity of people to imagine or understand. It would be the power of God at work: pure gift.
Father John McKinnon
We may want to spend some prayer time imagining that “unbelievable qualitative difference”, an imagining which ultimately saved Tobit and Sarah from their desperation.
Poetry: The World is not Conclusion – Emily Dickinson
This World is not Conclusion.
A Species stands beyond -
Invisible, as Music -
But positive, as Sound -
It beckons, and it baffles -
Philosophy, dont know -
And through a Riddle, at the last -
Sagacity, must go -
To guess it, puzzles scholars -
To gain it, Men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion, shown -
Faith slips - and laughs, and rallies -
Blushes, if any see -
Plucks at a twig of Evidence -
And asks a Vane, the way -
Much Gesture, from the Pulpit -
Strong Hallelujahs roll -
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul -
Music: Can Only Imagine – MercyMe
Lavish Mercy 