Wednesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

A twentieth-century Jesus would certainly reply to the Sadducees question, “Whose wife will she be?” with: “Whichever man she chooses!”

That would fry their socks -- but good!

Alas, he lived in the early days of the first century – when the fullness of time had come for his birth – and he could not foresee the social and justice issues of the 21^st century. We have to work out those matters in our time with the Holy Spirit he gives us which is just, merciful, persistent and patient.

But the question of this gospel is one of those wonderfully puzzling mysteries of the Christian imagination: What will heaven be like?

The possibilities stagger the imagination. Will all those people born since the creation of the world be crowded into this place? Is it big enough to feed them all? What will we do? Will we recognize one another? Will those prehistoric “hobbits” discovered in Indonesia be there? Archaeologists are still wondering if they were enough like us to be called human. They appear to have lived between one million and 800,000 years ago in an isolated place with no outside contacts, with little food and no large predators. (Thus their small size.) But they made and used tools. Were they human enough to rate salvation?

And what about our dogs? And cats? And pet pigs? (I’m told that dogs look up to us; cats look down on us; and pigs regard us as equals.) And our fish? 

Non-believers like to heckle us with such questions. And we have no answer for them since no one but Jesus has come back from the dead to tell us about heaven, and he said nothing about it! (Doggone it!)

Heaven is a Christian’s kind of science fiction, a projected future that reflects things as we think they should be.

But our only real proof that heaven exists is the hope that persists in our hearts. We simply don’t believe that death can be the end of all our sacrificial lives. We’re not romantic nihilists who think that the only meaning of our lives is etched into the granite face of Nothing. Or that life is:

…but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

We expect something far more than that, and we’re sure that Jesus – to name one of our better citizens – deserves far better than that! If there is justice at all our martyrs will be raised up and we'll be there to sing their praises.