If you could ask Jesus a question, any question, and be prom­ised a plain answer, what would you ask? There are a lot of big ones that have never been answered. Wouldn't it be great if you could just go up to Jesus and ask him one of life's big, profound eternal mysteries? "Why is there evil?" "What happens when we die?" "Why are we here?"

Jesus was asked a lot of questions during the time he was walk­ing around the near east some 2,000 years ago. Some of them were pretty good questions: "What must I do to be saved?" or "Whose fault is it that this man was born blind?" Others were not nearly so profound. "Can my two sons get the goods seats in heaven?" "Can you make my brother split the family inheritance evenly?" Selfish­ness got in the way there. Selfishness and ambition. But however mis­guided those questions were, at least they actually were questions.

Members of a scholarly sect called the Sadducees had the op­portunity of a lifetime with Jesus. They studied scripture most rig­orously. They thought about and pondered God day and night. They dealt with life's big questions. It's pretty much all they did. So here is the opportunity of a lifetime. Here is God in the flesh walking around among them. Here is Jesus, perfectly willing to talk about the meaning of scripture. Here is Jesus, eager to shed light on the will of God. The opportunity of a lifetime and they blew it. Some Sadducees came up to Jesus and told him this big, long hypotheti­cal story: an elaborate and drawn-out set-up. And then for the punch line, they asked a question. Only it really wasn't a question. You ask a question if you want to learn something; a fact perhaps, or someone's opinion, maybe some bit of wisdom. The Sadducees don't want to learn from Jesus. Their question wasn't really a ques­tion at all. It was a quiz, a logical trap.

"There's this woman, see, and her husband dies, which is very sad, and they have no children, which is even sadder, so the guy's younger brother marries her, which is what the Bible says to do. Then he dies. And there's still no children. So the next youngest brother marries her and it goes on that way, with no children ever being born, through seven brothers. Then finally the woman herself dies." Jesus, at this point, is no doubt nodding along with this wildly improbable story, waiting for the punch line. You can just picture the Sadducees rubbing their hands together, ready to spring the trap; and then they pounce. "So when they all rise from the dead, who is she married to?" They ran rings around him logically.

It's a logical trap because it involves time. You start messing with that and suddenly nothing makes sense. Those clever Sadducees thought they could show that resurrection is impossible because the time thing doesn't work.

You do things one at a time. You go through your life in order, usually not knowing what comes next. You have to deal with things as they happen. But you remember your life all at once. You can remember things in any order you want. You can connect, in your mind, something that happened this morning with something that happened fifteen years ago. The woman in the story was married to the seven brothers one at a time. One after the other. But when she's in heaven, it's a different matter. Heaven is all at once. It's about your whole life. So, who is this lady supposed to be married to?

They could have posed the same problem with a much simpler question; one that sometimes gets asked today. How old are you in heaven? If you die as an infant, are you an infant in eternity? If you die at 104, frail and confused, are you frail and confused forever?

Heaven isn't a puzzle for us to solve, and the resurrection of the dead is not a logic problem. It's a reality. It's a gift. And it's life. That's what Jesus is talking about: life. He brushes off the question about the woman and the seven husbands, by simply say­ing that it doesn't work that way, and then goes on to say that God is God of the living. Abraham and Isaac and all the people of God from the past are still the people of God. They might be history to us, but to God, they're real. To God, they're present. To God, it's all right now. To God, all his people are right now. Resurrection happens because our God is the God of life. The one true God is the God of always.

What does this mean for us? It means that it's all right now. As far as God is concerned, you are being baptized right now. You are being confirmed right now. Jesus is dying for you right now. Jesus is rising for you right now. You are forgiven right now. God loves you right now. You are a child of God right now.

What does this mean for us? It's all God's time. All at once, or one thing after the other, all our time is God's time. We talk about family time, about down time, about company time, over time, work time, and me time. But it's all a gift to us.

All our time is God's time. Sunday morning is God's and next Tuesday is God's. Every minute since the moment of our birth belongs to God, and so does all of the future. For us, things happen one after the other, day after day. But let's not forget, as we live our day-to-day lives, that Jesus is dying for the sin we are committing now. Jesus is rising to forgive us now. Jesus is calling us into the kingdom of heaven right now. God loves us now, so we must show love now. God is merciful to us now, so show it's time for us to show mercy right now. God is putting you first right this very second. It's time to put God first and our neighbors ahead of ourselves.

God is the God of the living, so we need to take the time God has blessed us with and truly see it as a time for life. Live for Jesus. Learn from Jesus. Live by scripture. Learn from scripture. Live in prayer. Learn from prayer. Live to share the good news. Learn from talking with and listening to other Christians.

We have the same opportunity the Sadducees had. Let's not waste it setting traps like they did, saying things like, "If God is there, then this will happen" or "Since this is going on, God must not care." We must keep asking questions, keep seeking knowl­edge and wisdom, but we have to understand, first off, that we're not going to understand everything. God doesn't owe us an expla­nation, and we wouldn't comprehend it if we had one. Life's big questions have answers that are too big to fit into our heads. Rather than demanding that God put everything into terms we can under­stand, let us look and see how God is working in the world and in our lives. Jesus is here among us. Jesus is among us and willing to show us the meaning of scripture and the meaning of our lives. Jesus is here among us eager to reveal to us the will of God. For­giveness is ours. Love is ours. The future is ours. It's the opportu­nity of a lifetime. Amen.