There came to [Jesus] some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife." And Jesus said to them, "The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him." (Luke 20:27-38)

Above is the Gospel from this past Sunday, the Third Sunday before Advent, Year C. As promised, I am offering St. Andrew's a blog post in lieu of the homily that I was about to deliver when we had a medical emergency that took priority. The medical emergency was simply a parishioner with low blood sugar. He is doing fine, and was able to stay for the rest of the Mass.

In this passage, we have the Sadducees questioning Jesus about the hereafter.  There are two primary problems with this exchange. First, as Luke notes, the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. Second, this is an attempt to define Heaven in terms understandable by our limited intellect.

On the surface, the Sadducees are asking Jesus a question that they consider to be unanswerable, as they were of the mind that when we die we are just dead.  Their faith was completely worldly. For them, faith was simply a system of rules that would help them lead a better life. They subscribed to a system of law that would provide the faithful with the satisfaction of being "good" and maybe even helping others, but it gave no  thought to the eternal. In light of this, their question is a mocking of Jesus' preaching about Heaven and Hell, and they were using Moses as a weapon against him.

Jesus turns this argument back against them, as he reminds them of the fact that God refers to himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in his conversation with Moses out of the burning bush. Let's face it, if God is the god of these men, and there is nothing beyond this life, he would be the god of the dead, would he not? And, that is the question that Jesus asks, knowing that these religious authorities were unwilling to pronounce God as the god of the dead, rather than the living.

This leads us to the other problem presented in this exchange -- is it possible for us to understand what Heaven is like? I would argue that it is not. We must understand that Heaven is infinite and infinitely beautiful. In Heaven, we will have understanding beyond our wildest imagination as we grow into the perfection for which we were created. Any attempt to describe Heaven falls tragically short, and often boarders on the preposterous -- the images used by John in his Revelation are a bit hard to understand, are they not?

We are to dream of and strive for Heaven, but we should not expect to be able to describe what it will be like. We can surmise from Scripture that Heaven is a place of absolute beauty beyond our imagination. I also believe that Heaven is a place where we will participate in perfect worship of our God, and even understand His triune nature.

It is not our place to attempt to define Heaven, that we must leave to God. It is our job to prepare ourselves to be there forever. We do that, first by accepting that Jesus is the Son of God and Savior of the world. Second, we prepare for Heaven by practicing the primary activity of Heaven -- worshiping God. I mean, really, why would anyone want to go to Heaven unless they love to worship the Lord? That is what we will be doing for all eternity! The third way that we prepare for Heaven is by inviting others to spend eternity there with us by introducing them to the one who has made Himself the way into Heaven, Jesus
Christ.

To God be the glory now and forever.