Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
November 7, 2004


What does a well-written suspense novel and today’s readings have in common?

On my days off, I have been doing some reading. It is light fiction, a kind of sword and intrigue and bit of sorcery trilogy. The first 2/3 of both book reads a little slow, but the last 1/3 of both books left me wondering: “What happens next?” What plot twist and betrayals and outcomes will happen as the story continues to unfold? Where will it all end? It is the sign of a well-written suspense novel. I think it is also what today’s reading have in common with any suspense novel.

The book of Maccabees was written about 127 years before the time of Jesus. This, and some of the wisdom literature of the same time period reflect a growing understanding that there is some form of “life after death.” In answer to the question: “What happens next?” the men who are tortured in that grizzly story show remarkable trust and faith. The Maccabee children expressed confidence that God would restore what they were freely giving up. Though not sure what form it will take, they know that somehow their ‘cause’ – all that they are about, will be caught up in the life of the God whom had created them. Not exactly the heaven we might picture, it at least professed a faith that there is a “Next” that follows this life.

In the gospel, we see that the tension to understand ‘What happens next” after death is still under debate. The Sadducees did not accept the notion of an afterlife. So the ‘story’ they bring to Jesus is in their minds without answer and will make Jesus look foolish, no matter how he responds. But Jesus beats them at their own game. There is a heaven, a “what happens next” and though the children of this age will neither marry, nor be taken in marriage, their lives will be caught up in relationship to the living God. Heaven, the afterlife, the ‘what happens next’ is all about that covenant relationship with the living God. “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him, all are alive.” Though it is not the full resurrection faith that would emerge after Jesus death and resurrection, Jesus reveals the foundation of our hope.

“What happens next” is all about the connections that God has chosen with us and we with God. And what happens next, like any well-written book, flows out of what has gone before. How could God forget Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? How could he ‘not remember them, not be present to them, for they were so present to God in their life. Just as the Maccabee children trusted that God would restore what they had sacrificed, what they had given in love, then what we sacrifice, what we give away in love becomes the fabric of our eternity.

So, what does it all mean? Is it not this? For better or worse, what we give away in love, what we do for love, what we suffer for love, becomes what will be caught up in our relationship with the living God in the hereafter. How we live now is not just crucial to our eternity – it is our eternity. What we do today at home, the justice we act out of in our workplace, the compassion we show to the stranger and orphan, becomes the ‘stuff’ which is caught up with the living God. We are already becoming the children of God and what will rise and what will need to be purified in us is being formed with each breath we take.

I haven’t had time to pick up the last book in the “Song of Fire and Ice” trilogy. Soon, I hope. But I can’t wait to find out what happens next. And this Sunday, with my own life, I can’t wait to find out what happens next. And if that means I am around for 50 more years - that will be wonderful. And if that means that today I meet my God - that will be wonderful as well. You see, the eternity that I taste already is such a gift, that I can’t wait to find out what happens next.