June 5, 2024
by Suzanne Braddock
Creighton University retired
click here for photo and information about the writer

Praying Ordinary Time

Weekly Guide for Daily Prayer

Ordinary Time Symbols in Our Home

Praying in Times of Crisis

Blinking Light and the  Power and Word of God  Mark 12:18-27

My father’s life dream  was to hike the entire Appalachian Trail, a 2190 mile hike from Maine to Georgia in the eastern United States.  Summer time year after year he devoted two weeks to hiking the trail in sections. At age 62 he had only one section left to hike when he developed heart disease, making a strenuous hike risky. He and I were walking together near his home before his hike when I told him he would meet his Maker if he chose to hike that summer. His response: “what a way to go.” He did not fear death nor did he believe in life after death nor did he believe in God although he said he hoped there was more. I needled him many times, saying he would find out! I proposed a wager: whichever of us died first we would try to signal the other there indeed was more. We decided on flicking a light on and off to indicate yes, there was more. There was God.

When he did not appear at the end of his hike, a search found his backpack at the beginning of the trail he took, and his body a few feet away. His memorial service was moving and I was certain he had found the  loving God he wasn’t sure of. Back at the house, I sat in the chair - his chair - and the light next to it blinked on and off, on and off.

In Mark’s gospel, the Sadducees test Jesus with the story of the seven brothers who marry a woman, each brother dying in turn and the next marrying the widow as was the custom.  They ask Jesus which of the brothers will be married to the  widow at the resurrection. Now the Sadducees did not believe in resurrection of the dead nor in angels or demons. They believed the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, which does not mention the resurrection. You can imagine Jesus’ response. Instead of falling for their trap, he answers their question with another question. “Are you not misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven. As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the Book of Moses ( the Torah) about the bush, how God told him, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not God of the dead but of the living.” Of course Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were all “dead” before God spoke to Moses at the burning bush - I take this to mean even if one is “dead’, one is alive to God. God is the God of all, because all are alive in him.

I have heard that there are many today who do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus or of anyone for that matter. Even some people affiliated in an official capacity with the Church express their doubts. The blinking light by my father’s chair may have been a  signal, a reminder of a promise kept, but for sure the power of God is greater. I recall Jesus’ words: “I am the Resurrection and the  Life.” Jesus didn’t say “IF they rise from the dead” but “WHEN they rise from the dead”. What a wonderful future awaits. The exact parameters  of that mystery are unknown, but we trust in the Love that created us, the Love that sustains us, the Love that welcomes us home.