Gospel Reflection Nov 6 – Deacon Steve
Sunday, November 6
Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Luke 20: 27-38
Gospel:
Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection,
came forward and put this question to Jesus, saying,
“Teacher, Moses wrote for us,
If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child,
his brother must take the wife
and raise up descendants for his brother.
Now there were seven brothers;
the first married a woman but died childless.
Then the second and the third married her,
and likewise all the seven 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.”
Jesus said to them,
“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.”
Gospel Reflection:
One of my favorite memories of being a young parent was the questions my little children used to ask. They sometimes kept coming to the point of my exhaustion, but it was ok because the questions were always honest.
Unfortunately, as we grow older, we sometimes forget how to ask honest questions. Like the Sadducees in today’s Gospel, our questions can stop being inquiries and instead become attacks. Our pride can turn the honest search for truth into attempts to catch others with a turn of phrase or verbal riddles that seek to embarrass and dominate. This corrosive questioning is highly damaging to us, those around us, and to our relationship with God.
One of best starting points is to recognize that it takes God’s help to drive out the pride and snarkiness in our hearts and replace it with humility, openness, courage, and trust. Only then will we be able to ask honest questions and give ourselves over to God, even in times of doubt, anger, and darkness. God wants to answer all our deepest questions and guide us to truth and there is nothing we cannot bring to him.
Let us pray that we turn away from corrosive questioning and become people who ask honest questions and respond to questions honestly with love and true guidance. This is how we bring God’s love and the life of the resurrection into the world and into our hearts.
Deacon Steve Petrill