When you sit down and read the bible, there are certain passages which gladden your heart. They are familiar and they stay with you. There are others which are hard work and which you find yourself glossing over, telling yourself you will come back to them and have another look – and knowing you probably won`t. Our Gospel reading is one of the latter – hard work and maybe best to leave and return to. But perhaps we`ll have a look at it anyway . . . because actually it covers a very important subject, one in which we are all interested. This Gospel passage looks at the question `what happens when we die?`

It`s in a section where Jesus is being challenged about what he believes.

A group of religious people confronting him – the Sadducees – didn`t believe in life after death. It`s not that they were denying it but that the whole question was so complex that it was easier not to believe in the Resurrection. They used practical examples about heaven to encourage people to think about what might happen after we die. So they ask Jesus about a hypothetical widow who married seven brothers, one after the other. In heaven, whose wife will she be? What might you say? The first? The last?

It`s hard, sometimes, to understand all matters of faith. Jesus acknowledges that in his answer. He encourages his listeners to look at what the bible says about life after death. He speaks of Moses and the story of the burning bush where God describes himself as the living God, the God of his ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who are all dead. And here are words about resurrection again in Job, our Old Testament reading: `Even after my skin is eaten by disease, while still in this body I will see God. I will see him with my own eyes, and he will not be a stranger.`

So what about our theoretical widow and her seven husbands? Jesus is clear. Life beyond death is different from life on earth. Those who are raised from death will be equal to the angels, living in an immortal state beyond death. Their bodies will be unlike the present ones but right for a new world, for heaven. They will be alive in God`s presence, before the return of Jesus when the final Resurrection is proclaimed.

What about you and me when we die? As we trust Christ on earth, we know we shall be with him in heaven. What about the people we have loved on earth? Will we know them in heaven?

Jesus encourages his questioners to think of the afterlife in a new way. We are not to think of the hereafter in terms of the only life we know on earth.

Human relationships depend upon time and place; they are bound to be different in a life in heaven which is outside time and space. We are all involved in different relationships dependent on our stage in life: child to parent, husband to wife, father to children, and so on.

Our earthly relationships are straightforward – but what of life in heaven? Life in heaven is not the same as that on earth. Those in heaven have a very different kind of life where there is not only no death but also no marriage and no birth. Jesus tells us that we will inherit the title `sons of God`, `sons of the resurrection`: we will exist in a very different kind of life.

In heaven, at its heart, is love, which is eternal and indestructible. Where there has been love on earth here will be love in heaven. `God is no man`s debtor`. The reality of heaven will be certain as we trust God on earth.

We cannot make heaven according to what we want it to be: it is God`s world, in which his will only prevails. And because he is Love, all that is good in human love will be preserved by him, in the best way possible. We need not be afraid. Everyone who is committed to God will be very near to him, and because they will be near to him, they will be near to one another.

Through our faith in Christ, we inherit the beauty of heaven. Those whom we love who have trusted Christ on earth will be there too to worship with us the living God. 2 Thessalonians 2:14: `God called you to this through the Good News we preached to you; he called you to possess your share of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.`

This is certain. This we celebrate today.

The Revd Pat Hopkins