tomorrow belongs to God 32nd sunday C

In religion classes, among the first lessons taught to children are the Ten Commandments. Some
teachers require that they be memorized. Others prefer to stress the underlying principles of the
commandments. One teacher, who combined both approaches, would relate an incident to illustrate one
of the commandments and then ask the children which commandment applied. The dialogue went
something like this:
Teacher: John's parents went shopping at 9 a.m. Before leaving the house, they told John to get out of
bed and wash the breakfast dishes before they returned. The parents returned at noon. John was still in
bed and the dirty breakfast dishes were still on the table.
Student: HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER.
Teacher: Helen was with her mother in a supermarket. While mother was busy unloading her basket
at the checkout counter, Helen took a candy bar from the shelf and slipped it into her pocket.
Student: YOU SHALL NOT STEAL.
The young students did very well on the simple illustrations. But they could be stumped by more
complex examples. For instance:
Teacher: George sometimes had a nasty temper. One day he got into an argument with his sister.
When it seemed that George was losing the argument, he grabbed his sister's pet kitten and tried to pull
its tail off. The children were puzzled. There was a long pause. Then a student raised his hand
triumphantly and blurted out: WHAT GOD HAS JOINED TOGETHER, LET NO MAN PUT
ASUNDER!
The Ten Commandments form the centerpiece of the Law of Moses -- God's first great gift of
revelation. In today's Gospel, Jesus encounters some men who were experts on the Ten
Commandments. These men were known as Sadducees -- members of an ultra-conservative religious
party who accepted as authoritative only those things written down in the Law of Moses (the first five
books of the Old Testament). Because of this religious outlook, they rejected many of the things Jesus
was teaching. For example, they rejected the notion of bodily resurrection. Their view of afterlife was
pessimistic, joyless. The abode of the departed was called "Sheol." It was a nether-world, deeply
imbedded in the earth, where the soul lived a shadowy sort of life. A grim picture of Sheol is found in
the book of Ecclesiastes: "Whatever work you propose to do, do it while you live, for there is neither
achievement, nor planning, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in Sheol where you are going" (Eccl. 9:10).
"Sheol" is described as "a land of darkness, with death's shadow over all." However, during the two
centuries immediately preceding Jesus' birth, an expanded awareness of the hereafter-state had begun
to emerge in the Old testament people's consciousness. This included a notion of bodily resurrection,
more or less in harmony with Jesus' teaching on the "last things." But this was anathema to the
Sadducees. The purity of the old doctrine was at stake. What better way to neutralize this doctrinal
contamination, they reasoned, than to make Jesus look foolish before His followers? Thus, in today's
Lesson, we find the Sadducees challenging Jesus' vision of afterlife. They present Jesus with the
hypothetical case of a woman who had been widowed seven times. After her seventh husband was
gone, the woman herself died. Given this situation, Jesus is asked the following question: "At the
resurrection, whose wife will she be? Remember, seven married her" (Luke 20:33).
Jesus rejects the Sadducees' effort to read the conditions of time-and-space into the unknown eternal.
He rejects their effort to place earthly limitations on eternal life. Tomorrow belongs to God. We can
but glimpse eternity, within the limits of our finite understanding. Beyond that we may look toward the
eternal future only through eyes of faith in the Resurrection Power of God ...
A Resurrection faith in God's plan of salvation that admits of only two eternally enduring relationships:
the Fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man in union with the Lord Jesus.
A Resurrection faith in Jesus' prescription for our sweetest foretaste of the Father's eternal love,
namely, our own acts of loving service to one another.
A Resurrection faith in Jesus' teaching that our works of peace and brotherhood signify our willingness
to serve God, to trust God, and to love God.
A little boy asked his dad for permission to go outside and "have a game of 'catch' with God." Dad was
puzzled. "How do you play 'catch' with God?" he asked. "Easy," answered the little boy, "I just throw
my ball up in the air and God throws it back!"
If we want to experience wholeness of life, we need to acknowledge that tomorrow belongs to God.
We need to trust in God's tomorrow with the childlike attitude of the little boy who trusted in God to
send his ball back. The ball will come back. The sun will come up tomorrow. God will keep His
promise to us that our life is going someplace; that life is worthwhile; that the pieces of life's puzzle
will fit, ultimately ... all in God's time, God's tomorrow.
"God is not the God of the dead but of the living. All are alive for Him," Jesus said (Lk. 20:38). God,
the God of the living, wants us to point our life toward tomorrow by living today (unlike the Sadducees
in today's Gospel Lesson who preferred to live in the past).
If you somehow have been turned off to the infinite possibilities of God's Resurrection Power, if you
have been losing faith in your ability to do what needs to be done in order to achieve your full human
potential, you are spiritually dead. That is to say, you are blocking the God of the Living out of your
life.
God's Love does find a way. Nothing we have done in life prevents God from giving us a new
tomorrow. No mistake, no wrong decision, no wrongful act of any kind can defeat God's Will to
forgive us, to bind up our wounds, to show us the way to new life in a new tomorrow -- sometimes in
the most surprising, most wondrous ways.
Especially in times of turmoil and tension, we need to put our childlike trust in God's power to move us
confidently into a new tomorrow.
A gigantic retrospective showing of the late Pablo Picasso's works was held at the Museum of Modern
Art in New York City. More than 900 of Picasso's works were displayed chronologically, beginning
when he was a very young boy. Most of the earlier works were traditional landscapes and still-lifes.
Then, as the artist advanced in age, brilliant colors began to emerge, and the still-lifes were no longer
very still. Finally, of course, the works turned into the kind of bold, zesty experiments for which
Picasso is best-known today. One art critic who saw the show recalled that once, when Picasso was
eighty-five, he was asked the reason why his earlier works were so solemn and his later works so
exuberant and exciting. "How do you explain it?" asked the interviewer. "Easily," Picasso answered,
his eyes sparkling. "It takes a long time to become young!"
To become young! For some it takes a long time. For others it takes an even longer time. But Jesus
promises eternal salvation to those who become young enough in spirit to trust God like a little child
trusts a good, loving parent.
Believe in tomorrow because tomorrow belongs to God! Place your eternal life in God's good hands!