This Sunday’s readings are each marked by grave diggers. In the Old Testament, the Maccabees family is having their grave dug by foreign rulers. The rulers reject their way of life and will kill them for it; “seven brothers with their mother were arrested and tortured with whips and scourges by the king.” In Paul’s letter, those persecuted are praying to be “delivered from such perverse and wicked people” and yet are digging their own grave. Paul’s fans morbidly await their own and all humanity’s torture in what they believe will be a coming end of the world. In the Gospel, local religious rulers, who make life on earth deadly, deny the hope of eternal life. The rulers tell Jesus a tale of seven brothers who are going to their grave and do so with the intent of ridiculing belief in the power of life.
There will always be those willing to bury humanity under deadly beliefs and practices. They would convince us of the eternal nature of the confines they’ve constructed. They would have us believe their limited and deadly context is the only one. They will ridicule those of us who dream of another way, mock us who yearn for and create life. They are as gravediggers, there for the termination of life but not there for its vigor. Our witness is to life’s vitality. When gravediggers seek to rule us it is time for us to work the graveyard shift. The phrase, working the graveyard shift comes to us from those who, in the lonely hours of the night, stand vigil. The graveyard shift is indeed a vigil – a time to keep awake and pray. We are surrounded by darkness and we are immersed in prayer whose power we know brings forth the light. When the world is lulled into sleep we remain awake, when merchants of death hover we are vigilant for life. When others are brought low we are of joy, providing “everlasting encouragement and good hope.” When others devise demise, we reveal Resurrection. The graveyard shift is always liminal time, time that is pregnant with transitions to be welcomed, thresholds to be crossed. It is a time of inner silence and solitude when, against any odds, we are keen to all that is beautiful, all that is alive. Attentive to all that breathes gently and softly we feel the first tingle of the coming dawn. No matter the consequence, we stand before the gravediggers and announce firmly to the world, ‘Our Spirit is not a Spirit of the dead but of the living.’
“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” (The Critic as Artist – Oscar Wilde)
Prayer: Spirit, in you we imagine and create the dawn.
Question: What graveyard shift do the Spirit and I need to work through?
November 6, 2016 Luke 20:27-38 Thirty Second Sunday In Ordinary Time