In Heaven there is no Politics

I have good news and bad news to tell you about heaven. First, I would like to get the bad news over. Some of the older people may know this song, some of the younger people will have no clue what I am about to play, but this is the bad news about heaven. MUSIC – “In heaven there is no beer, that’s why we drink it here, and when we’re gone from here, all our friends will be drinking all our beer, la, la, la!” No beer, none, that’s why we drink it here. I have the good news now about heaven, are you ready for the good news? In heaven there is no politics! Yay! That is good news isn’t it?

Now why do I say that, why do I say in heaven there is no politics? There is no beer and there is no politics. The Gospel today is a fascinating gospel because basically they are trying to trip Jesus up. Some of the Sadducees were coming to Jesus and they were trying to use some of the law to try to explain to Him that, “Lord, if You follow this law, from Point A to Point B You are going to see that it is impossible for there to be a Resurrection.” You see, the Sadducees did not believe in The Resurrection. Some of the Jews did believe in The Resurrection. Some of the Jews believed in angels. The Sadducees did not believe in any of it. They believed that when you died, Boom, that was it! That is why life on this Earth is all that mattered for them. It was important to get it done right, here on Earth!

The Sadducees were trying to get Jesus to understand that there could not possibly be a Resurrection of the body, because if there was a Resurrection of the body, then there was a problem with their law. What was their law? Their law was this: Teacher Moses wrote for us that if someone’s brother dies leaving a wife and no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up the sentence for the brother. So what do they do? You hear this in debates today. You take it to the extreme position, don’t you? They said, “What if she married a man, boom,he dies! Then she has to marry his brother, boom, he dies! Then she has to marry his brother, boom, he dies! Before you know it, she marries all seven brothers, and guess what Lord, boom, they are all dead, woman dies, ” mic drop”, He walks away. He thinks he has Jesus totally in a trap. Jesus is perplexed because they do not get it. They do not get what he is trying to do is not about this Earth. What Jesus is trying to do is establish The Kingdom of God. The reign of God in heaven. In heaven there is no?… BEER, or …? POLITICS. Thank you! There is no beer or politics in heaven. Really politics is what I am talking about, because in heaven His order has already been established. God’s will and order has already been established.

We had a Spiritual Director in the seminary who told us the men in the seminary always liked to change the rules. We did not like some of the rules. We liked to change them because they were outdated. The Spiritual Director would always say to us, “Men, do not put your hope in change. Put your hope in God.” I could say the same thing for all of us about this election. Don’t put your hope in change. Put your hope in God, because ultimately whoever wins this election, God is the one that is still in power. God is the one that still reigns. Politics are only about this Earth. You know the vying for power, the vying for control, the vying for esteem, it only happens here in this world. In heaven there is no politics. God’s right order is already being arranged. Jesus goes on to kind of “stick it to him” a little bit. I love it because Jesus says, “The children of this age marry and remarry.” He is already saying you men already are not even able to keep one marriage. You are marrying and remarrying. The children of this age do this, but those who are deemed worthy to the coming age and to The Resurrection of the Dead neither marry or are given into marriage. That is the other sad part about heaven by the way. In heaven, there is no marriage. What does that mean?

That is a crazy notion isn’t it? Jesus is saying for The Resurrection of the Dead they neither marry nor are given in marriage. Why does he say that? Because, ultimately, in The Resurrection, we no longer need anything that we needed in this world to experience God. Marriage was a covenant established by man but reaffirmed by God, is an institution of man reaffirmed by God, is a way to experience God through the Union of man and woman. Guess what? In heaven we will not need to debate about gay marriage, or marriage between a man and a woman. We won’t need to debate about it, because in heaven there is no marriage. In heaven there is no need for that institution or even the Sacrament because we are united with God.

He goes on to say they can no longer die. You can no longer die, for you are like the angels, and they are children of God, because they are the ones who will rise. What does this mean? It means for those of us that believe, we are already part of the Kingdom of God. We are already part of heaven right now in this world, in this body, we are already part of heaven. That is why priests are celibate. Part of the celibate vocation is to show us that in the future, in The Kingdom of God, there will be no marriage. We will be so united to God that we are married to God. For those of you who are not married, I am just going to break it for you now, there is no perfect marriage. Marriage is not like heaven on Earth all the time. Correct, married couples? It is not always easy!

But God has already pre-destined us for heaven. He is already working in us. He is saying to the Sadducees (because they do not believe in everlasting life) they can no longer die. My disciples can no longer die and they are like the angels. They did not believe in angels! He said they are like the angels because they are to rise. They are the ones who will rise. The reality is if we have with Christ in this life, suffered with Him through all the difficulties, if we have died with Him in this life, if we have experienced the Paschal mystery in this life, then we also rise with Him in this life. If we do that over and over and over again, we lay down our life over and over and over and over again, we will rise with Him. I think it is so profound that in the First Reading, too, from Maccabees, “It happened that seven brothers with their mother were arrested and tortured with whips and scourges by the king to force them to eat pork. All they were trying to do was to get them to eat pork, in violation of God’s law. One of the brothers speaking to the others said, “What do you expect us to achieve by questioning us? We are ready to die rather than transgress the law of our ancestors.” Even if it was a matter of eating pork, they would rather die than break one simple law. I think that is such a great thing that we should all keep in mind as we approach the elections, as we approach making choices like this. How important is God’s law to us? How important is not breaking God’s Commandment to us? Would we rather die than violate it? Would we rather die than allow any part of our integrity to be compromised?

Jesus is ultimately saying to those of us that are His children, we have already died, so we have no fear. We have no fear of dying. We have already died with Him. We will rise with Him. The bad news is my brothers and sisters, in heaven there is no beer. The good news is in heaven there is no politics because once and for all God’s Kingdom will be established. I know we are all going through this uncertainty right now. We are all going through this angst. We are all going through this time of political turmoil. Every time you turn on the TV you see some other horrific thing. It is all going to be over on Tuesday. Then we have another four years later of someone else. Ultimately it is all going to be over in eternal life. In heaven there is no politics, and so my brothers and sisters, we do not put our hope in change. We do not put our hope in any personal or political party. Ultimately we put our hope in God. Because it is only God who is going to carry us through. It is only God who is going to allow us to experience through Him, suffering, death, and The Resurrection. Right now, for those of us who believe, we are already living in The Resurrection.

Francis Cardinal George once said, “I expect to die in bed. My successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.” What is often not quoted is the rest of it. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization as the Church has done so often in human history. The reality is there is no politics in heaven. We do everything we can to vote with our conscience. We ultimately put our trust in God. We do not put our hope only in change, we put our hope ultimately, in God.