Heavenly Bodies

This morning we are looking at red and blue again, and blues are feeling, well…blue.  Two years ago some of us had blue yard signs that said CHANGE.  Two years ago we couldn’t help being swept up in a sort of Messianic fervor, looking for somebody who could save us from what was.    And sure enough, we found out that the messianic figure that we elected ran into a few walls.

Jesus had his walls too.  The structures that were in place were holding him back from this love, love, love thing: The Father loves me, and so I love you, and so love each other.  It seemed like he fought all sides. 

There were the priests and the Levites, the ones who conducted sacrifice and codified Jewish law, who controlled the religious aspects of Jewish life.  The Romans left them with that power, to mollify them and weave them into the fabric of sustainable control.  There were the Pharisees, who looked at external conformity, while Jesus looked deeper.  And this Sunday, Jesus takes on the Sadducees, who recognize only the first five books of Scripture, the history and law, and reject even the prophets.  They also believe that there is no afterlife, and that is what they take up with Jesus in the form of argument.  They come up with a conundrum, a hypothetical case of law regarding a woman with seven widowed husbands and no children.  Which of them, they ask him, will be her husband in heaven?  Their intention is to make him look foolish, along with the whole idea of the afterlife.

The readings put me in a jam.  I’m not sure about this heaven thing. 

In the Old Testament reading, seven brothers accept martyrdom rather than violating religious law, to honor their mother.  They go bravely into the next world.  And now Jesus refers to the resurrection of the dead, and I realize that when in church I recite the Creed, including the line that says “the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting, amen.  So now I’m concerned. 

But what moved me to action yesterday morning was the fact that I’d be sharing that Scripture with a small group of Catholic men in our parish, and I needed to respect their ways of looking at this heaven thing.  I looked in the Catholic Encyclopedia, for the first time in my life.  And there are some things that I found there that resonated with my Faith, my desire to follow the example of Jesus, to try to believe in the love of his Father and the guidance of his spirit despite my lack of confidence in the human failings of church politics. 

Our risen bodies, according to the publication, will have four qualities:

• The first is "impassibility", which shall place them beyond the reach of pain and inconvenience.
• The next quality is "brightness", or "glory", by which we shine freely, like the sun.
• The third quality is that of "agility", by which the body shall be freed from its slowness of motion, and endowed with the capability of moving with the utmost facility and quickness wherever the soul pleases.
• The fourth quality is "subtility", by which the body becomes subject to the absolute dominion of the soul.

You know, I like these.  And I think they’re worth striving for now.  Tomorrow I’ll share more about that.