This week more of the same? Amos denouncing the rich (Am 6:1a, 4-7); Paul encouraging Timothy (1 Tm 6:11-16); Jesus pointing out how the poor will end up in heaven, and the rich maybe not (Lk 16:19-31). But there is something more – in the last comment Jesus makes: “even if someone were to rise from the dead…”
This is obviously a reference to how people will respond to his own death. Plenty of people will still not be convinced. Jesus is pointing out that our beliefs are not based on evidence and logic, whatever we might claim or like to believe about ourselves. We chose what to believe, although our reasons for doing so may be obscure, even to ourselves. Different people make very different choices, whether it be about politics, or religion, or even their marriage partner – choices that we may find incomprehensible.
Faith also is not a matter of evidence and logic, it is a choice. Even if someone were to return from the dead we still get to choose, and many people choose not to believe. Particularly if we think we already have it made, why would we choose to believe, to accept the harder way? To give up the comforts that we have. Some people will have their comforts stripped away but many will carry on comfortably until the end. Jesus points out that we get a different perspective at that point, but by then it is too late.
Those comforts are not necessarily the comforts of wealth and success, they are the comforts of being sure we are right. The Jews that Jesus was warning were absolutely convinced they were right. We may be equally convinced we are right. Jesus is pointing out that the strength of our convictions is not a good gauge of whether we are right.
Jesus gives us a better standard by which we can judge our convictions. The test of our convictions lies in our attitude to the poorest of the poor. Not if we go to church, can quote Scripture, or pray every day. If we can accept that the beggar, the homeless person, the immigrant with nothing, that they are all better than us, that they have the first call on a place in the Kingdom, then we may scrape in after them.
And that is enough.