What happens next? When this world is done, when WE are done, what happens next?
It is, perhaps, THE QUESTION that matters the most to every human being who walks this planet. What happens to us when we die? When we breathe our last, when we say goodbye to a loved one, when we are the only one left from ‘our generation of family members, the question rises from the depth of who we are: “What happens next?”
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. While it is 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, he tells them, 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. “God is…the God of the…living, for to him, all are alive.
So, what does that tell us about “What happens next?” That it is all about the connections that God has chosen with us and we with God. And what happens next 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, each choice we make.
Which makes today important. And tomorrow important. And all the today’s and tomorrow’s of our lives so vital. I don’t know about you, but in so many ways, I can’t wait to find out what happens next. To see how God and I will write the next chapters of this life together. To see where life will call me to, and how I will continue to change and grow, hopefully, to be ever more alive in God. And if that means I am around for 25 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.