Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Haggai 1:15b-2:9
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Luke 20:27-38
Our lectionary readings for this week take us to the heart of our anxiety for control, power, and security. From Haggai’s assurances that the glory of Israel was never in the accomplishments of her rulers but in the LORD and his inscrutable ways, to Paul’s comforting words to the people of Thessalonica, to Jesus’s re-orientation of the Sadducees’ question about marriage in the resurrection—these passages simultaneously challenge and assure the Christian, especially the Christian in the midst of personal, social, and/or political turmoil.
Above all, in these passages, we are challenged to become a people of Life, of the Living God. We are assured, having become a people so conformed to the exuberant and abounding Life of the Lord, that we will not only share in that Life in the resurrection, but that even our present works bear the marks of that Life. With this in mind I will focus my reflection on Jesus’ emerging theology of resurrection in chapter 20 of Luke’s gospel.
Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.