Remembrance Sunday
“he will quickly grant justice to them.”
Summary
On Remembrance Sunday, when we honour and mourn all those who have lost their lives in war, our readings seem to offer comfort: hope of the resurrection of the dead. Both readings speak of a future time when those, like Job, who seek justice will be vindicated and when those who have died will live again as “children of the resurrection.” Yet to focus on life after death may prevent us from engaging in the hard work of justice and peace in this life. Our readings, however, offer another common theme: the perils of needing to be proved right. Job wishes to prove that he does not deserve to suffer. In Job 19:23-27, he wants his words to be remembered because he wants to prove that he is in the right and God is in the wrong. As a result he is stuck. He cannot move forward into new life. The Sadducees in Luke 20:27-38, are also seeking to prove that they are right and Jesus is wrong. They too are stuck, unable to grasp the possibilities of a new and different way of living. Throughout history and across the globe we see how the desire to be proved right at any cost prolongs conflict and inflicts death and destruction on God’s people. Both Job and Luke ask us to embrace life, to prioritise all that is life affirming and life giving, over the rights and wrongs of any position. This is does not mean that we abandon justice but that we see that justice can only ever be achieved when the sanctity of life is honoured. Job pleads for God to be seen on his side but God never chooses sides. God chooses life.
FIRST READING
Job 19:23-27
“O that my words were written down!
O that they were inscribed in a book!
O that with an iron pen and with lead
they were engraved on a rock forever!
For I know that my vindicator lives
and that in the end he will stand upon the earth;
and after my skin has been destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see on my side,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
My heart faints within me!”
GOSPEL
Luke 20.27-38
“Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question: “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”
Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.”
