Saturday of Week 33 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 20:27-40
Today we move on to the middle of chapter 20 of Luke’s Gospel. In previous passages which are not included in these readings, Jesus had rebutted a challenge to his authority and left his critics literally speechless (Luke 20:1-8). This was followed by his speaking a parable about tenant farmers (Luke 20:9-19). He was clearly referring to his questioners and identifying them with the wicked tenants who abused all the emissaries (the prophets) sent by the owner of the vineyard—an episode which culminated in the killing of his son. The identity of the tenants and of the Son is clear. This is followed by Jesus’ being confronted with a seemingly innocuous question about paying taxes to Caesar which again resulted in the silence of his critics (Luke 20:20-26).
Today another group, the Sadducees, thought they might do better. The Sadducees, among whom were numbered some of the most powerful Jewish leaders, including high priests, restricted their beliefs to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, reputedly written by Moses and containing the essence of the Jewish Law.
For that reason, unlike the Pharisees, they did not accept some beliefs which occur only in later books of the Old Testament. Among these, for instance, were the existence of angels and the resurrection of the dead.
The Sadducees thought then they could stump Jesus with an unanswerable conundrum. They first quote a prescription from the Law of Moses by which a man was expected to marry the widow of his eldest brother, if there had been no children by the marriage. They then propose an imagined situation of seven brothers. The first brother married, but was childless when he died, so in accordance with the requirements of the Law the second married the widow, then the third and so on. Eventually, all seven brothers married the woman, but there were still no children.
The unanswerable question they proposed was that, if there really was a resurrection after death, which of the seven men would be the woman’s husband in the next life? For them, there was no problem; they did not believe in the resurrection. Death was the end of everything. For one who believed in the resurrection, it was an embarrassing difficulty—or so they thought.
Jesus quickly brushes the problem aside. To begin with, in the next life there are no marriage relationships:
Those who belong to this age [i.e. those who belong to this world] marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.
In the new life, all live face to face with God in a life that never ends. All are equally children of God—brothers and sisters to each other—taking their life and existence from him. That is now the focus of their relationship and it is through that relationship that they are bound together.
Jesus then goes on to challenge the Sadducees’ unbelief about life after death. He shrewdly quotes from a part of the Bible which they recognise as true. He reminds them of the scene where the voice from the burning bush identifies itself to Moses:
I AM the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. (Ex 3:6)
God, says Jesus, is the God of the living and not of the dead (i.e. of those who no longer exist). If Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are alive, then the Sadducees’ argument fails. Perhaps we would not be convinced by such an argument, but it clearly worked in this case.
Some scribes who were listening in were delighted at the refutation of the Sadducees. Most of them were Pharisees and believed in the resurrection. At the same time, after these replies of Jesus to both the Pharisees and the Sadducees:
…they no longer dared to ask him another question.
We, of course, believe in the resurrection not so much because of Jesus’ arguments here, but because of his own resurrection and his promise to share his life with us forever.
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Saturday of Week 33 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on 1 Maccabees 6:1-13
We read today of the end of the reign of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who caused such sufferings to the Jews, as we have seen. Disasters now overtake him, resulting in his sickness and death. For the author of First Maccabees the reason is clear—his desecration of God’s holy city of Jerusalem.
In terms of strict chronology, this episode of the king’s death should really be recorded before the Dedication of the Temple which we saw in yesterday’s reading. The reading begins by telling us that Antiochus was making his way through the Upper Provinces of his empire, that is, inland to the east. Reports had reached him of a city called Elymais which was extremely wealthy with silver and gold. There was a temple there full of golden armour which had been left there by Alexander the Great, who was the son of Philip of Macedon, the first king of all the Greeks. This was the temple of Nanaea-Artemis.
In fact, there is no town of this name known. ‘Elymais’ is the Greek form of Elam, which refers to the country around Susa, the old capital of Persia, close to where the River Tigris runs into the Persian Gulf. The term more strictly refers to the mountainous region north of Susa.
Antiochus attacked the city, but was unable to take it because, as we are told, the inhabitants had forewarning of the attack. In Second Maccabees we read:
When the leader reached Persia with a force that seemed irresistible, they were cut to pieces in the temple of Nanea [a Persian counterpart of the Greeks’ Artemis] by a deception employed by the priests of the goddess Nanea.
(2 Macc 1:13)
First Maccabees does not mention this and may not know of it. The author says that the king was routed in battle and had to retreat to Babylon which lay some distance to the northwest on the River Euphrates.
On top of this, more bad news reached the king. His armies which had invaded Judaea had been routed, and one of his top generals, Lysias, in particular, who had advanced with massive strength, had been forced to flee before the Jews. The Jews, in turn, were now more powerful than ever thanks to the large amounts of weapons they had captured in their victories.
They had also pulled down the “abomination”—the altar to Zeus which Antiochus had erected in the Jerusalem Temple—and rebuilt the old walls which surrounded the sanctuary and fortified Beth-Zur, one of the king’s cities.
All of this was too much for Antiochus, who was shocked and profoundly shaken by the turn of events. These defeats—and perhaps the overthrow of the statue of all the all-powerful gods, Zeus and Baal (in whom he believed), filled him with grief and undermined his health. He took to his bed, fell sick with grief because things had turned out so badly for him. After spending some days confined to his bed, with recurrent attacks of melancholy and depression, he realised that his end was near. It was time for him to make his peace with his gods.
On his deathbed, he summons all his “Friends”, that is, his close associates and ministers, and makes a deathbed speech. He cannot sleep and he is overcome with anxiety about his fate. He wonders how he could have come to such a state of distress, considering how generous and well-loved he was in his heyday. He remembers only the favours he showered on those who were close to him, but seems to have been completely unaware of the depth of suffering that he had caused in the peoples he had conquered and over-run. How many other authoritarian tyrants have felt the same—that all they did was for the good of their people? Dictators come to believe their own propaganda.
However, Antiochus does remember now how wrongly he acted in Jerusalem, when he plundered the Temple of all its sacred vessels and ordered the extermination of the people of Judah “without good reason”. He is now convinced that this is the reason why so many misfortunes have overtaken him and why he is dying miserable, “perishing of bitter disappointment in a strange land”. It is the just punishment for all he did against God’s people. There is an element of true repentance in his words and for this he lays himself open to God’s mercy.
Technically speaking, he was not dying in a “strange land” because Persia still was part of his Seleucid Empire. This book says the king’s death was punishment for the pillaging of the Temple in Jerusalem, but Second Maccabees says it was for plundering the temple of Artemis. Second Maccabees also says, as we saw from the quotation above, that the king died in this temple, having walked into the trap set for him and his ‘Friends’ by the priests of the temple.
Actually, Antiochus must have died before all of this, but the author has to adapt his story to fit the time frame he has chosen. As we saw in speaking of the Dedication feast yesterday, it is likely that it was because the king was already dead that Judas Maccabeus was able to seize the Temple in Jerusalem. As far as we are concerned, it is not an important point because it does not alter the basic meaning of the story and what it might say to us.
How do we think our lives will be evaluated by those who have known us in life? Do we believe ourselves to be more kindly and compassionate than we actually are? What actions of ours in the past do we now see were very wrong and unjust? What amends can we make, for it is never too late to turn ourselves round. We cannot undo what has been done, but we can act to make a radical change in our lives and relationships from today on.
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