Luke 20:27-38
I saw a recent cartoon where Saint Peter was asking a recently deceased person, “Can you tell me what it says in II Chronicles chapter 7 verse 20? You really aren’t doing very well on the entrance exam, you know.” In the meantime, the people standing in line are frantically reading through their bibles. So now you have another reason to read your bible.
If we believe in life after death, in heaven and hell, since we are human we flesh out in our minds what we don’t know about. And the bible isn’t much help. The scriptures offer many pictures -- heaven will be like a banquet, as noted by Jesus in some of his parables. Heaven will be all of us standing around worshiping the lamb who was slain, like in the book of revelation. When we die, we will all cease to exist until Christ comes again and some of us will rise with him -- some of what Saint Paul writes follows this line, and that’s what the Seventh Day Adentist's teach.. And of course our Church talks about the particular judgment, at the time of death, when our souls are condemned to hell or sent off to heaven by way of purgatory, and the general judgment when Christ comes again and our bodies are reunited with our souls and everything that was hidden is made known to all the world.
The problem with any imagining of heaven or hell is that it is not only speculation, but is wrong -- totally wrong. And I think that’s what is happening in today’s gospel. The Sadducees of course, are testing Jesus. The Pharisees had their turn, now it’s the turn of the Sadducees. They don’t believe in life after death because in the first five books of the bible it doesn’t mention this. And that’s true, it doesn’t. In fact, in many of the books of the bible the opposite is the case; there is no life after death, or whatever there is it’s nothing to look forward to -- King Saul had a witch conjure up the ghost of the prophet Samuel, who complained of his slumber being disturbed. In those days some believed that death was a profound sleep. So the Sadducees have a great question -- whose wife is this person who has been married to seven brothers as a consequence of Moses’ law, which states that if a brother dies without leaving a child, the wife is to be passed on to the next brother. The reason for this law, the bible tells us, is to provide a certain kind of immortality to the man who dies without having a son. The bible during the time when Deuteronomy was written had a very different idea about marriage and the relative place in society for men and women. It was as would say today, sexist and patriarchal. But did this practice actually happen in Jesus’ time? Most likely not, but there it is in Deuteronomy, plain as day, the law of Moses. So whose wife will she be?
Jesus knows his Moses as well as the Sadducees. He also knows, I am sure, that he is’t going to convince them to change their views. He knows they are trying to get him to say something that will get him in trouble -- with someone, because if he agrees with them he alienates the Pharisees, and if he disagrees, he alienates the Sadduccess. And logically, they make a good point. That’s the problem with our imagining how heaven will be, or for that matter, hell. My grandfather always thought heaven would be a place where he could fish to his heart’s content. After about a week, though, you and I and even my grandfather would probably want to try something else for a change.
Jesus recalls for the Sadducees that Moses also quoted God as saying, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” who, by Moses’ time, had been dead for a long time. And Jesus makes the logical point that God could not very well be God for someone who no longer exists, if the Sadducees' idea is correct. But what he says before that is his description of heaven: they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. In other words, everything that occupies us in our earthly lives -- the pleasures, the work we do, the illnesses and pains we endure, our eating and our sleeping, our growing old and dying -- none of these things will at all concern us. There won’t be a great banquet; we won’t be standing around for all eternity worshiping the lamb who was slain -- which is a relief to me because I’m easily distracted right here during Mass, if the truth be told. And hell won’t be fire and devils with pitchforks. We can’t imagine hell either. Saint Theresa had a mystical experience in which she described hell as being unable to feel, see, hear, or move; forever.
So why is all this important? I think Jesus doesn’t want us to be distracted by speculation, which we know we can’t get right. He wants us to totally trust him, to concentrate on the here and now, where we can bring Christ’s presence into our lives and the lives of our friends and the people we encounter, trusting completely that God will take care of things after we die. Saint Paul seems to have had an experience of heaven. He said, in reference to this, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him.”
Today let us take comfort in the fact that our God is the God of the living, and in him we will always have life.
