Conduits of Love
Helen Weber-McReynolds, RCWP
November 6, 2022 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
2 Macc 7: 1-42 abbrev; Ps. 16; 2 Thess 2: 16-17; Luke 20 27-40
You may have heard me talk about my family’s annual Metzger Reunion, every Labor Day weekend, a 4-day affair attend by around 250 people. This year was our 95th Reunion. It is always the highlight of the year for our family, because we love seeing one another, and it’s a fantastic party. But some of the best parts about it are thinking back to the ancestors who started the Reunion. Having just celebrated the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls, their spirits seem close. As immigrants, they were eager to preserve family unity and keep alive the memory of past generations. They were generous, hard-working souls, who passed on the ideas of sharing with whoever needed help, staying close to God as a family, and actively engaging in local politics, to make sure things were fair for everyone. At the Reunion we remember our ancestors, by singing songs and tell stories about them. And by offering up prayers to them at a service on Sunday morning, including singing a litany listing all our deceased members. We want to keep these charitable, fair-minded folks alive in ourselves. We want them to live on in us by being kind and doing what’s right ourselves.
To me, our readings today center on the same idea, of keeping alive the spirits of charity and justice. As Christians, we are resurrection people. We believe Jesus the Christ is still alive, having risen from the dead, so that his Spirit and teachings can continue forever. In us, the ideal of the unconditional love of God continues to work, continues to strive, as we labor to establish the Beloved Community. Jesus told us that the Kingdom of God is among us, and our job is to build up that family of love, to make it accessible to everyone.
Our first reading recalled a strong, holy mother, and her seven sons, fighting for their religious freedom, against an empire that was trying to wipe out the Jewish nation, and its teachings about carrying on God’s love by caring for widows and orphans, and making sure everyone had what they needed. These Maccabean family members were willing to die for these teachings and their Jewish heritage, believing God would raise them up and keep their lineage of faith alive. They believed they would not die in vain- they would be alive in God to inspire future generations to keep God’s law of love.
In our Gospel, Jesus echoed this idea of eternal life in God, building the reality of God’s love, generation after generation. The Sadduccees believed God’s covenant meant that reward or punishment would be meted out during life on earth, and there was no afterlife. They were intent on accumulating wealth and heirs on earth, and they saw wives as instruments of procreation. So they issued Jesus a trick question- whose wife, after seven husbands, would the woman be in the hereafter? As usual, Jesus refused to fall for their ruse, but got straight to the point of the meaning of life for us: we are here to live the love of God, on earth and forever. He said that God is the God of the living, not of the dead. All are alive in God. Jesus said that Moses believed this and it is central to our faith. Marriage is a construct important on earth, but we will not need it in our resurrected lives. We will all be one in God’s love. In our second reading, Paul’s follower encouraged us to let this hope of resurrection energize our lives, to let it comfort, refresh, strengthen, invigorate, and enliven us, as we keep working to build the Kin-dom, day by day.
Theologian Barbara Holmes said, “We live in a world saturated with the love and intentionality of an ever-present God, and we are not alone.” We are destined for life after life, and God is always here to encourage us to live and love as abundantly as possible. Our ancestors surround us from their resurrected lives, in their oneness with God, and in their hopes for our continual transformation.
Our ancestors are alive in us, or they can be, if we choose to be conduits of their flowing love, the love they learned from God’s love. All the kindnesses and unselfishness, all the times they stood up for justice for others, all the times they shared with us or other people- all that love flows down to us and can flow on out to the world, if we choose to let it. And we can be examples to our children and friends, to keep the loving flowing for generations to come. We can live forever in them, in God, in the earth, and in love, as it flows on and on.
November 6, 2022 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
2 Macc 7: 1-42 abbrev; Ps. 16; 2 Thess 2: 16-17; Luke 20 27-40
You may have heard me talk about my family’s annual Metzger Reunion, every Labor Day weekend, a 4-day affair attend by around 250 people. This year was our 95th Reunion. It is always the highlight of the year for our family, because we love seeing one another, and it’s a fantastic party. But some of the best parts about it are thinking back to the ancestors who started the Reunion. Having just celebrated the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls, their spirits seem close. As immigrants, they were eager to preserve family unity and keep alive the memory of past generations. They were generous, hard-working souls, who passed on the ideas of sharing with whoever needed help, staying close to God as a family, and actively engaging in local politics, to make sure things were fair for everyone. At the Reunion we remember our ancestors, by singing songs and tell stories about them. And by offering up prayers to them at a service on Sunday morning, including singing a litany listing all our deceased members. We want to keep these charitable, fair-minded folks alive in ourselves. We want them to live on in us by being kind and doing what’s right ourselves.
To me, our readings today center on the same idea, of keeping alive the spirits of charity and justice. As Christians, we are resurrection people. We believe Jesus the Christ is still alive, having risen from the dead, so that his Spirit and teachings can continue forever. In us, the ideal of the unconditional love of God continues to work, continues to strive, as we labor to establish the Beloved Community. Jesus told us that the Kingdom of God is among us, and our job is to build up that family of love, to make it accessible to everyone.
Our first reading recalled a strong, holy mother, and her seven sons, fighting for their religious freedom, against an empire that was trying to wipe out the Jewish nation, and its teachings about carrying on God’s love by caring for widows and orphans, and making sure everyone had what they needed. These Maccabean family members were willing to die for these teachings and their Jewish heritage, believing God would raise them up and keep their lineage of faith alive. They believed they would not die in vain- they would be alive in God to inspire future generations to keep God’s law of love.
In our Gospel, Jesus echoed this idea of eternal life in God, building the reality of God’s love, generation after generation. The Sadduccees believed God’s covenant meant that reward or punishment would be meted out during life on earth, and there was no afterlife. They were intent on accumulating wealth and heirs on earth, and they saw wives as instruments of procreation. So they issued Jesus a trick question- whose wife, after seven husbands, would the woman be in the hereafter? As usual, Jesus refused to fall for their ruse, but got straight to the point of the meaning of life for us: we are here to live the love of God, on earth and forever. He said that God is the God of the living, not of the dead. All are alive in God. Jesus said that Moses believed this and it is central to our faith. Marriage is a construct important on earth, but we will not need it in our resurrected lives. We will all be one in God’s love. In our second reading, Paul’s follower encouraged us to let this hope of resurrection energize our lives, to let it comfort, refresh, strengthen, invigorate, and enliven us, as we keep working to build the Kin-dom, day by day.
Theologian Barbara Holmes said, “We live in a world saturated with the love and intentionality of an ever-present God, and we are not alone.” We are destined for life after life, and God is always here to encourage us to live and love as abundantly as possible. Our ancestors surround us from their resurrected lives, in their oneness with God, and in their hopes for our continual transformation.
Our ancestors are alive in us, or they can be, if we choose to be conduits of their flowing love, the love they learned from God’s love. All the kindnesses and unselfishness, all the times they stood up for justice for others, all the times they shared with us or other people- all that love flows down to us and can flow on out to the world, if we choose to let it. And we can be examples to our children and friends, to keep the loving flowing for generations to come. We can live forever in them, in God, in the earth, and in love, as it flows on and on.
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