Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 6, 2022 – 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5; Luke 20:27-38

Mackerel snappers. Mackerel snappers. That’s the term of derision, very much like other terms of derision that we all know well, that was used against Catholics starting in the nineteenth century because the hordes of immigrants to America, who were despised partly because they were immigrants and partly because they were Catholic, kept the Friday fast. Not eating meat on Friday and substituting fish, especially cheap fish, available easily in the marketplace. It is 55 years since Pope Paul VI abolished that custom of meatless Fridays among Catholics, and yet, in many households, the custom still holds sway now.

Before I became your pastor here, I served under seven pastors in my lifetime. Four of the seven required their housekeepers and cooks never to serve meat on Friday despite the fact that the Pope, in one sense their boss, had said that they didn’t have to do that anymore. Certain customs cling and they die hard.

We just listened to a very grim and gory first reading from the second Book of Maccabees. You have to understand a little bit about what is going on there. Remember that both the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom of the Jewish nation had been hauled away in exile to Persia over the course of about 75 years and remained in that foreign country for almost a century. Being mingled into the rest of the population, adopting some of their customs and traditions, but in many cases clinging strongly to their Jewish faith and keeping the Law. One very important part of which was the kosher law - not eating pork, not eating blood meats. But the Persians were benign overlords. They were conquered by the ascendant Greek military and, after the Greeks conquered all of the Mediterranean Basin, then, instead of being ruled by the Persians, the Jews were ruled by the Greeks. The Greeks had a very high civilization of which they were very proud. But, like most conquerors, they thought that their way was the best way, and their way was the only way, and slowly but surely, they forced their culture on all the conquered peoples around the Mediterranean Basin. Which meant that, eventually, they would come into conflict with the Jewish nation. And they did, in the most dreadful way.

Antiochus Epiphanes IV, the ruler of the Greek empire, made it a law that Jewish people against their Torah, must, must eat pork. Taking what was a little tiny regulation for a small group of people and making it a huge issue. Which is where our story begins today with a bunch of people who said, “Never will we do that.” They suffered gruesome torture because of it.

There’s another great story in the Book of Maccabees about an old man named Eleazar. And the Magistrate, the Greek Magistrate, in his little town, didn’t want to force them to eat pork or else have to kill him. So, he took him aside and said, “Let’s do this. You cook yourself some meat that you can eat, cover the dish, bring it in front of me, claim it’s pork and then eat it in front of me, and then you’ll be safe.” And Eleazar said, “I can’t do that because then me, an elder among my people to whom the young people look up for guidance, will be scandalized.  They will think that I, in my old age, have abandoned the law of our people. I can’t do that.” And so, he was executed too.

You know, you listen to these stories, and you say to yourself, “Why didn’t they just eat the pork. What’s the big deal?” All of us have Jewish friends. Many of our Jewish friends do eat pork products. They have bacon with their eggs in the morning. They eat sausages. They think nothing of it. They don’t think it’s that important. These people died for what they were doing.

A friend of mine loves the analogy of the boiled frog. I am sure a lot of you know this analogy. They say that, if you take a frog and put him in a pot of cold water - frogs love cold water - and then you turn on the gas, the frog will sit there in the water as it gets hotter and hotter and hotter, until he dies, rather than jump out. And that’s kind of what we have here. We have the insistence that I will stay with what I know and what I believe no matter what.

All of today’s readings are sort of odd in a way. Did you notice something odd about the first reading? One of the sons is told by his executioner, “Put out your tongue and your hands.” Then after he puts out his tongue, he gives a long speech. How can he do that? What you have here is cautionary literature. Looking back on a terrible time in their history when terrible torture and execution did take place, the writer creates a series of stories that are edifying for the present generation. We do that all the time, don’t we?

In today’s Gospel there is something off about the conversation. The Sadducees did not believe in the Resurrection, and they clung to that belief even after the terrible Maccabee wars, where most people said, “I believe that my loved ones, who died in battle to save our people, have gone to heaven.” And the Pharisees, who were the governing body of the Israelite people, believed in the Resurrection. But the Sadducees clung staunchly to their belief, and they threw it in Jesus’ face, came up with a ridiculous story in order to try to prove their point. So, Jesus basically answers them the same way. He says, “If you want to talk nonsense, let's talk nonsense.”

But the unifying factor in both our first reading and our Gospel is that people have a tendency to cling to what they hold dear. That’s not a bad tendency in human life.

There is a story they tell about the last night and the last morning of the Battle of the Alamo. A vastly outnumbered force of Texans is hold up in this former church building. They are surrounded by the superior army of the Mexican General Santa Anna. And Santa Anna has offered them decent terms of surrender. He sent them a letter by courier inside the fort saying, “I will let you go. Put down your weapons. You will have safe passage out of here.” But Bill Travis, the leader of this little group, calls them together and reads them the letter. He says, “Now, any of you who want to leave, I give you permission.” Then he took out his sword and he drew a line in the dirt, and he said, “Anyone who wants to stay with me, cross this line.” And, to a man, they all crossed that line. 

We are given a set of doctrines by which we are expected to live. And a set of principles which we are expected to obey and follow. Most of us try to do that most of the time. Some of us either cannot or will not. But the takeaway from these stories is that to be a decent human being - no matter who you are - to be a decent human being there are three questions you need to answer. Who am I? What do I believe? And how do I live? 

Who am I?  What do I believe? How do I live my life? Answer those questions, once and for all, and draw a line in the sand.