KEEP THE FIRE BURNING

Homily for Wednesday of the 9th Week in Ordinary Time, 3 June 2020, Mk 12:18-27

Sometimes, without realizing it, people reveal a lot about themselves by the kind of questions that they ask and the way they ask them. Like the Sadducees in our Gospel Today. The Biblical basis for their question is Deuteronomy 25, the so-called law of “Levirate Marriage”. The text says, if a man dies childless, and he has an unmarried brother, this brother has to marry the widow so that he could have a child with her who will carry the brother’s name.

The Sadducee who is asking the question creates a ridiculous situation in which the woman is widowed childless seven times and marries seven brothers one after the other. Therefore the question, “At the resurrection…WHOSE WIFE WILL SHE BE?”

The one asking the question is of course also revealing his doctrinal biases. Remember I mentioned this to you a few days ago—how Paul succeeded in dividing the Sanhedrin Council that was united against him by talking about the resurrection? Unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees did not believe in Resurrection, the Afterlife, the existence of spirits and angels.

The question also reveals the sexist bias of the Sadducees towards women. When they ask, “Whose wife will she be?” what they are really saying is, “Who will she belong to?” Or “Who will own her?” Meaning, he still operated from that perspective about marriage as an act in which a man takes possession of a woman as his wife, like he acquires a piece of property.

There were some Jews in the time of Jesus who still looked at women this way. That only the men were made in the image of God. That the woman could only be an image of her husband. It took many centuries before this sexist attitude was corrected in Israelite society, already around the 6th century BC, during the Deuteronomistic reformation.

One of the test questions I used to ask my students in the course on the Pentateuch was “How many are the Ten Commandments?” It’s a ridiculous question, of course. It’s like asking “On what day is Good Friday?” But if the student has followed my lecture, he would normally answer, “IT DEPENDS.” We have two versions of the so-called TEN COMMANMENTS: and older one in Exodus 20, and a relatively more recent one in Deuteronomy 5.

Strangely, in the Exodus version, there are only nine commandments. The last one says, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, wife, his male or female slaves, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to him.” The wife is only second to house in the list of a man’s properties. In the book of Deuteronomy, the wife is removed from the list of properties. The commandment against coveting the neighbor’s wife becomes the ninth commandment, and coveting the neighbor’s goods becomes the tenth.

Woman was not treated like a person yet but as an object or property. Take note, this is 2,600 years ago. In the time of Jesus, there were people like the Sadducees who continued to treat women that way. Well, perhaps even up to the present, there are still some men who treat women this way.

Even if it becomes clear that both male and female were created in God’s image and likeness, it took a pretty long time before Judaism and perhaps to some extent Christianity too, outgrew their sexist, androcentric and patriarchal attitudes towards women. Only Jesus dared to recruit women as disciples in his movement. It was the reason Martha was uncomfortable in the kitchen when her sister Mary sat at the feet of Jesus the Rabbi.

Jesus reacts to the question WHOSE WIFE WILL SHE BE?— because, for him, a woman is never to be regarded as anyone’s property. She is a dignified person in her own regard. Jesus says, in the afterlife, we belong to no one but God. In God, we live and move and have our being, says Acts 17, 28. (In case you wish to understand a little more as to what resurrected life is about, I advise you to read 1Corinthians 15. Let it be your assignment.)

But let us wind up now with the question, “Where does the hope of the resurrection come from?” The Apostles’ Creed should answer that. We say, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” And that goes with “the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.” Meaning, it is only through the Holy Spirit that we can have hope in the resurrection and eternal life.

It is through the Spirit that we receive the gift of eternal life. But, as Timothy is reminded by Paul in our first reading, we have to “stir this gift to flame,” meaning, we have to keep the fire burning, kindle it with care. We must not allow it to be extinguished while we live our earthly life.

If I am to give a name to this gift, I’d call it LOVE. Read 1 Corinthians 13. This is what St. Paul calls the “greatest gift” of the Holy Spirit, without which faith and hope are not even possible. Our capacity for love and self-giving is the only thing that truly gives dignity and beauty to our humanity. It is love that makes us attain God’s image and likeness, not wealth, not power, not fame. What does it profit us if we gain all of these but never learn to love, and die of Covid 19 anyway?

Without love, we are like empty shells with no grains, like chaff with no hope of ever being planted. Without love, we have no hope for resurrection or eternal life. Without love, life has no meaning or purpose. Without love, we are unable to forgive. Without love we cannot build family or community. Without love, there is no hope; nothing else follows after death.

Christianity is the way of LOVE, as taught to us by Jesus Christ. It is the way of total and unconditional self-giving that he exemplified on the cross. The Liturgical song HIRAM SA DIYOS says it beautifully:

“Kung di ako umibig, kung di ko man bigyang halaga ang buhay kong handog, ang buhay kong hiram sa Diyos. Kung di ako magmamahal, sino ako?”