Rev Dr Mothy Varkey

“The resurrection of Jesu  s is not to be understood in good liberal fashion as a spiritual development in the church. Nor should it be too quickly handled as an oddity in the history of God or an isolated act of God’s power. Rather, it is the ultimate act of prophetic energizing in which a new history is initiated.”
– Walter Brueggemann, Prophetic Imagination
(2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14;
2 Thessalonians 2:16–3:5;
Luke 20:27-38)
In the Bible, resurrection refers to the concept of being brought back to life after death. The idea of resurrection is central to Christian belief, and it is mentioned throughout the Bible, particularly in the New Testament. One of the most well-known accounts of the resurrection in the Bible is the story of Jesus Christ’s resurrection. According to the Gospels, Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried in a tomb. On the third day, he rose from the dead, and this event is celebrated by Christians around the world as the foundation of their faith.
Other accounts of the resurrection in the Bible include the story of Lazarus, who was brought back to life by Jesus after being dead for four days (John 11:1-45), and the story of the widow’s son, who was raised from the dead by Jesus as he was being carried out of the city (Luke 7). In addition to these specific stories, the concept of resurrection is also mentioned throughout the Bible as a promise of eternal life for those who believe in God and follow his commandments. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul speaks about the resurrection of the dead and the hope of eternal life that it provides for believers. Overall, resurrection is a central theme in the Bible, and it serves as a symbol of hope and the promise of eternal life for those who believe in God.
At first reading, it may seem that there is little connection between the understanding of resurrection in 2 Maccabees 7 and the Gospel. Shortly before the revolt of Judas Maccabeus (2 Maccabees 8), Antiochus IV Epiphanes arrested a mother and her seven sons, and tried to force them to eat pork. One of the brothers said, on behalf of everyone, that even if they were all to die, they would not break the law. The angry king ordered to heat up the pans and cauldrons, and he ordered the first brother to have his tongue cut off, the skin to be removed from the head and the ends of the limbs cut off – All this was happening in front of the rest of the brothers and mother, who, in the meantime, encouraged each other to passively resist the tormentors’ demands. When the first martyr was inert and still breathing, Epiphanes ordered him to be thrown into a hot frying pan. When he died, the next one was brought in and the skin was stripped from his head along with his hair. Each of the seven brothers endured the same torture. The torment of the sons was watched by their tenacious and rather stoic mother, who had lost all her sons.

“Salvation is existential. It is both this-worldly and eschatological or otherworldly. It affirms that the witness of life is the first means of evangelization.”

As mentioned above, the Maccabees text reports on the successive deaths of seven sons and their mother, each of whom died as a martyr for their faith. In the Gospel, the Levirate law governs the conversation between Jesus and some Sadducees. This law provided for the marriage of a widow to her deceased husband’s brother to ensure the continuance of the family line (see Deuteronomy 25:5; Genesis 38:8). But at the heart of both of these sacred texts is the reality of resurrection (or the non-reality of it, depending on one’s beliefs).
Clearly, the brothers Maccabee and their mother had profound faith, and died professing it. Their faith invites us to examine our own. They believed that the just would live forever. Yet while the doctrine of an afterlife and of personal resurrection developed within Judaism around their time, 200 B.C., it was not universally accepted. As we see in today’s Gospel, the very idea of resurrection remained a matter of debate and was the source of many theological confrontations among Jesus’ contemporaries.
Walter Brueggemann warns us against trivializing this great gift of God (Reverberations of Faith). Resurrection is more than a feel-good belief about seeing loved ones again, says Brueggemann. A biblical sense of the resurrection of the dead should focus on the indomitable power and faithfulness of God in the face of every negation, including the ultimate negation of death. Although death is lamentable, there must also be an element of celebration in every death, for it is not the end but a new beginning that has no end. It is significant that almost every prayer of lament in the Psalter includes a movement from defeat to victory; from a plea for pity to praise for the God whose power over death and life is absolute.
In her book Resurrection, Pheme Perkins affirms that the truth of resurrection allows Jesus’ followers to emerge as a new faith community. That community’s claim that salvation has been realized through the cross and resurrection of Jesus also led to new formulations about God. In the sacred texts, resurrection is represented as the apex of the biblical saga of salvation, beginning with human need and culminating in God’s deliverance from every evil, even death. Perkins also insists that resurrection is not merely an assertion in the creed, but it is the condition for the emergence of Christian speech itself. To put it another way, were it not for the Resurrection, we Christians would have nothing to say to the world. In the resurrection, ‘life [had] replaced logic’ [Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment].
But Jesus has risen, and so shall we rise because of him; therefore, we have a message that cannot go unheard. Resurrection makes it possible to live in hope and to trust in the future. Like so many of God’s good gifts, the experience of resurrection should not be relegated to eternity. On the contrary, resurrection, like salvation, should be tasted here and now. As Pope Paul VI noted in his encyclical Evangelii Nuntiandi, salvation is existential. It is both this – worldly and eschatological or otherworldly. It affirms that the witness of life is the first means of evangelization. Working for social justice is not just a preparation for evangelisation, but an essential part of it. Pope Francis refers to it extensively in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium – on the joy of the Gospel.
As Patricia Sánchez argues, Salvation involves justice, that is, action toward reform of the oppressive forces and structures in society. Salvation is liberation from the concrete and historic forces of oppression. Everything said here about salvation also applies to resurrection. To experience Jesus’ resurrection means that the poor are lifted up out of poverty, the lonely are raised and restored to the community, and the sick are elevated to health. For those who suffer injustices and disadvantages of every kind, we will raise our voices and vote for our consciences until they too are lifted up.
Resurrection means feeding the hungry and housing the homeless; it means visiting the imprisoned and witnessing to the good news with our lips and our lives. Resurrection, like salvation, is both existential and eschatological. While we await the one who has died and risen so that we, too, may pass through death to eternal life, we are to devote ourselves, our time, our talent and whatever treasure we possess so that all can know the experience of resurrection.
“Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord’s Prayer is about.” – N.T. Wright