Jesus continues his conversation with Nicodemus in today’s Gospel from John. In the opening verse, Jesus outlines why he came into the world: “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). God has created us out of love and shepherds us out of love. God loves what he has created, and in his order and timing, he sent his Son to enter humanity to become one with us, to heal us and invite us to come out of the shadows and dark recesses of turning in upon ourselves, from living in fear and sin and sometimes at best survival and to experience peace, forgiveness, healing, and wholeness.
Loving means to risk being rejected. Jesus entered humanity as we all did, in the utter vulnerability of the womb. His very life was at risk from the moment of his conception. Mary, a young woman, betrothed to Joseph, in a time and culture in which a woman found to be with child and not from her husband, could be stoned to death. Mary could have made a different choice, Joseph could have made a different choice, but both chose to follow the will of God. They resisted the temptation to close in upon themselves and make an isolated decision based on their own needs, anxieties, and fears. While all of creation held its collective breath, Mary and Joseph trusted God, they chose the light, they chose to protect life.
“Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God” (Jn 3:18). Jesus did not come to condemn, he came to redeem, to save, to love us into eternity. For love to be real, it must be truly free. Free to the full extent that it can be rejected. To love is to risk rejection. Otherwise, what is experienced by the other is coercion, conditional, manipulation, pressure, but not love.
The Son of God entered the womb of Mary risking rejection by her, Joseph, and/or their extended family. The only difference between Jesus in the womb and Jesus who ministered to those on the margins was that he was smaller and more vulnerable. Those who, like Mary and Joseph, believe will come to have eternal life, and those who do not have already been condemned, not by God but by themselves who reject or turn away from the invitation. For they choose to curve in upon themselves and remain in their sin, choose to remain separated from God, choose the darkness instead of embracing the light.
Those rejecting God have been invited to receive his love also, but for reasons they may or may not be aware of say no. They may not even be aware that by some of their choices that they are choosing something other than God. We who choose Jesus are to receive and be his presence of love among those we encounter, even those who shy away or reject him. We may be the only Bible someone ever reads.
We are to protect the the unborn as well as those who have been born. We are not just pro-birth, but we are also pro-life. That means that each of us has a charism of who we are called to reach out to, speak up for, and touch with the love of Jesus, to be present to those who God brings into our lives. We can think, speak, and act by respecting the dignity of each person we encounter, in-person and online, supporting a consistent ethic of life from the moment of conception until natural death and at every stage in between.
“God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). We, even in our wounds, imperfections, and sin, are loved by Jesus. We can reject or accept his love. As Pope Francis wrote: “We are called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves.” As we receive and experience the love of Jesus, may we seek to love every person we encounter as he has loved us. If there are those that we might not necessarily include in every person, may we be willing to allow Jesus to love them through us until we can.
Photo: Quiet time with Jesus is a good way to breathe, receive, rest, and abide in his love.
The Sadducees present an absurd scenario for Jesus to respond to: a woman’s spouse died leaving her childless. She then successively married her husband’s six brothers who all subsequently, died, also leaving her childless. The Sadducees then asked, “Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.” (Lk 20:33)? The Sadducees sought to have Jesus weigh in on whether or not there was a resurrection of the dead.
The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection from the dead because they only believed in a literal interpretation of the Torah, the law, or the teachings, which we as Christians today recognize as the first five books of the Old Testament. In the Torah, there is no overt reference to the resurrection. The Pharisees recognized the written Torah, but also acknowledged an oral tradition beyond the written text, and thus acknowledged the resurrection of the dead. Jesus deftly answered the question by keying in on the verse from Exodus: “That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive” (Lk 20:37-38).
Jesus pointed out that God was not a God of the dead but of the living. He also granted some insight into the heavenly realm as he continued: “The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise” (Lk 20:34-36).
Heaven is a different reality than we experience here on earth, a different dimension beyond the temporal time as we know it. We will no longer marry because we will be living eternally, there will be no death, so there will be no more need to procreate. We will be “like angels” in that we will be eternal beings. That said, we will not be nor do we become angels. Angels are finite, eternal, spiritual beings. We are finite, eternal, human beings consisting of a soul and a body.
Our bodies are separated at our death from our soul, as Jesus pointed out with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in sharing that God is a God of the living, but will be reunited at the end of time when the new age that Jesus has ushered in with his death and resurrection comes to fulfillment. Until that time in heaven those who have gone before us are experiencing what we hope to experience. God face to face. A deeper and more intimate communion with the living God.
Many would scoff and say, “That’s it?” I am sure there is more, but if that was all, there would be more joy, more acceptance, more totality of being than we could ever imagine or embrace in just a second of that eternal gaze. As the psalmist wrote: “Better one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere” (Psalm 84:11).
Definitively speaking, heaven is a mystery. That stated, the Mystery of God is not a problem to be solved but a relationship to experience and develop. Looking up to the things of heaven, in which we will eventually experience the fulfillment of our deepest longing, helps us to realize that what we experience here on earth is not all there is.
We may be taken aback when Jesus shared that there is no longer marriage in heaven, but he is revealing the promise of deeper and more intimate relationships, even more intimate than the marital, sexual embrace. We will know one another more deeply because we will be free from that which puts up barriers between us, the wounds, insecurities, and attachments we engage in here.
In heaven we will be free from any stain of sin, healed from emotional, psychological, and physical wounds. We can simply be. We can experience the freedom of resting in God’s loving gaze and embracing who we are and who God has created us to be for all eternity. We will also experience one another in the same way, with the same unconditional love. The greatest joy we have experienced in this life will be far surpassed by an eternal present and ever growing consolation from the infinite outpouring of God’s eternal love for us and our eternal and unconditional love for one another.
Spiritual Stepping Stones 