The Veneration of the Precious Chains of the Holy and Illustrious Apostle Peter.
1 Peter 3:10-22. Mark 12:18-27.
Read Mark 12:18-27
Christ is born! Glorify Him!
“He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” This comment sums up Jesus’ debate with the Sadducees: they are convinced that the resurrection is a fantasy, but Jesus assures us that the resurrection is essential to belief in the God of Israel. And this is something that we need to take seriously in our own spiritual life.
This is why the church prioritises worship on Sundays. That priority is obvious to us from the fact that we are obliged to attend Divine Liturgy on Sundays. But it’s also expressed more subtly in the liturgical practice of the church, which isn’t motivated so much by obligation as by a desire to safeguard the centrality of the resurrection. For example, no feast of a saint – not even of the Mother of God – can displace the celebration of the resurrection on Sundays. We sometimes sing the troparion of the patron of our parish church or a particularly important saint during the Sunday Divine Liturgy (and maybe we should do this more often), but we should never let the hymns for saints displace the hymns for Sunday.
Jesus goes toe-to-toe with the Sadducees on this issue, and the Church makes sure we don’t forget it, because the resurrection is the basis for our hope of eternal life. Moreover, the scriptures are clear about the kind of life we look forward to: one in which our bodies are restored and renewed (Paul says we’ll be raised a “spiritual body,” which might mean something like “a body animated by the Spirit”). The resurrection is our hope, and our safeguard against a false theology that wants to forget the body – so let’s keep looking forward to it, as the Creed says we should.