It was art class in 3rd grade. We were asked to draw a picture of heaven. Various classmates drew pictures of clouds and angels wings and the like. I drew a picture of the high dive at McKenzie swimming pool. All the theology classes I have taken since then have convinced me that I was 1/2 right and 1/2 wrong. What I wanted to capture in the picture of the high dive was the moment at the top of the single flip I was doing. I would hit the board with all my weight and fling myself as high as I could in the air. And then there was that moment, when you were at the highest point, the flip was done, and all that was left was the straightening of the legs and the floating down to the water. It was the closest I would ever come to flying. And the closest I've ever come to the experience of complete freedom.

I was half-wrong for two reasons. That image of heaven is way too small a thing to hope for, and had nothing to do with my relationship with God. It was all about my life and me and had nothing to do with the people and relationships that have become so important to me. I believe I was half-right for two reasons also. First, there is continuity between this world and next, between what we do here and the life that flourishes later on. I loved to dive off that high board. Somehow, the things that I love, the experiences of passion and joy shape and form the person who will enter into heaven. Secondly, the life that is to come involves our experience of freedom - those moments when we are most ourselves, when we define ourselves by the choices that we make. Heaven flows from those experiences of freedom and choice.

Today's readings - though not a literal description of what heaven looks like - make it clear that what is to come flows from our experience of today. Heaven is to be in continuity to our experience of living and in continuity with the faithfulness of God. The Maccabee children expressed confidence that God would restore what they were freely giving up. Though it is a gruesome image - tongues and hands and their very lives, all that which is sacrificed in faith will be returned to them. The living God will raise up to eternal life (or eternal punishment) what we have freely chosen in this world. In great love and sacrifice, the Maccabees gave all they are and hoped to be into the hands of God, trusting that that freedom, that sacrifice, that giving would be caught up in the very life of God.

Jesus silences the Sadducees when he invites them to think outside the box about God and heaven. Think of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. Do you really believe that they are dead? Did God make them disappear into clouds of nothingness, into the dark oblivion? Do you really think that God who loved them so much, who influenced their lives so intensely, would have forgotten those even you remember? Can you imagine that God will disavow them, overlook them, or forget them? "Those judged worthy" will find their freedom caught up into the freedom of the living God. Their greatest joys, their struggles, the choices made in the lonely dark and celebrated in the bright day - all that their freedom defines them to be - will be caught up into the light of God.

What does heaven look like? Certainly more than the dive tank at McKenzie swimming pool. It begins here in our freedoms. It begins now with the choices which we make and the relationships which we form - the consequences of our life here on earth. And it finds its fullness in the life of God to which we are united and grafted into. The life that awaits us hereafter is our own life, the consequences of what we do on earth.

Perhaps that is good news this morning. Perhaps that means there is still much to be done. For if we can make our lives a yes to all our brothers and sisters, then we will be on to something amazing and something good.