2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14, 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5, Luke 20:27-38
On the Gospel, Belief in the Resurrection
A certain foreign missionary in an Africa village was charged with translating the New Testament into the local language. In his good will, this missionary saw this as an opportunity to modernise the New Testament so as not to pass over to the Africans what he saw as the “antiquated and superstitious” world-view of the Bible. So he decided to remove from the translation every reference to spiritual beings other than God and the Holy Spirit. Evil spirits and angels, he argued, made no sense in the civilised world of today. An African priest working with him tried to convince him that the spiritual is part and parcel of both the biblical and African world-views and should therefore not be thrown out, but he would not listen to him. One day this missionary went to his favourite Christian community for Sunday service and right there before his very eyes, one of his “best” converts in the community began to act funny. She began swaying uncontrollably to the rhythm of the drums and stopped only when the music stopped. The young woman was visibly embarrassed with this development as she struggled in vain to keep herself from swaying. Everybody in the congregation understood this behaviour to be the first signs of spirit possession.