 |
Saturday, November 19, 2005 Meditation Luke 20:27-40 Choices can be agonizing. In our human condition, every choice we make limits us. If I do this, I cannot do that. What if I had taken a different job? Said “no” to a powerful temptation? Sought reconciliation before it was too late? Jesus’ interlocutors didn’t really believe in life after death. When they imagined such a life (in order to ridicule it), they extended into it the limitations of this life. Following the directive of the Mosaic Law which is aimed at perpetuating a deceased man’s name, seven brothers serially married one woman. Whose wife will she be in the resurrection? Obviously she can’t be married to all of them! Jesus might have replied, “And why not? Why can’t all resurrected human beings enjoy the same degree of intimacy? Your poverty of imagination doesn’t mean it couldn’t be so!” Instead, he accepted their accurate but limited vision of marriage and sought to expand their conception of heaven. What are relationships like in heaven? Jesus pointed to God’s intimate relationship with the great heroes of Genesis, one of the few Old Testament books the conservative Sadducees accepted. God revealed himself to Jacob as “the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac” (Genesis 28:13). There was no hint of the past tense. God didn’t say he used to be Abraham’s God until the patriarch died, or that he will be Jacob’s God only after Isaac passes on. No, God is able to be in an intimate relationship with every person who seeks him, and that relationship is “changed, not ended” when our earthly existence ends. In heaven, there will be no regrets, no limits, no poor choices. Instead, there will be opportunity for endless exploration, limitless intimacy with God and each of his beloved children. These limitless choices have been opened up to us because of the most essential choice of all. Before any conscious choice on our part, God chose each of us to be his own. After many sinful choices on our part, God chose to limit himself by taking on our human flesh and bearing it to the cross. Our appropriate and grateful responses are myriad. “Jesus, you have bound yourself to each of us in love. Unite me with you and transform all of my choices into responses to your great love.” 1 Maccabees 6:1-13; Psalm 9:2-4,6,16,19 |
|