It has always seemed ironic to me that as Christians we are taught about the glory of the Resurrection and afterlife that awaits us, and yet we are obsessed with extending and protecting our lives in this world as long as possible.

Not that I'm any different. I believe in heaven, but am determined to stick around earth as long as possible, for some reason. And I want the same long, healthy life for all the people I care about.

As I grow older and get closer to mid-life, more and more of my friends and family members seem to be struggling with mild to serious health related issues. Whether it's the fear of death or the fear of suffering, health problems seem to always displace just about every other concern we have. Issues like finances and career fade quickly to the background when our health is at risk. It just strikes me as ironic that while we might in theory long for the next world as Christians, as humans we hang on to this world with all our might.

In today's first reading, we're told how the Jewish prisoners in the Book of Maccabees leveraged their confidence in God to laugh in the face of torture and death. The foreign king tries to force the prisoners to eat pork and violate their religious beliefs. "What do you expect to achieve?" they ask. "We are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors."

Clearly, suffering and death were not the worst things that could happen to these men. Separation from God was a far graver threat.

In today's Gospel reading, some Sadducees, who don't believe in the afterlife, try to trick Jesus into exposing the impossibility of the concept. If a man with seven brothers dies, and his brother marries the woman and dies, and the next brother marries the woman and dies, and all the brothers in turn marry the woman and die, who would be married to her in the afterlife?

Not only does this hypothetical situation involve extraordinary bad luck (seven brothers dying in succession), it also supposes that there is a well-defined social system at work in the next world, with marriage and other earthly contracts extending beyond the grave.

Jesus doesn't even bother to address the absurd scenario. Jesus says, "Lord, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive."

The Lord is the God of the living, for to him all are alive. Perhaps that statement should form our attitude about life, death, and the afterlife. The question is not whether we cherish this life or the next, but whether we are alive to God now. If we are alive to God, we will have a freedom from the fear of death like the Maccabees, because we will know that losing God is a far worse fate than losing our lives.

This is a fitting set of readings for the Sunday after All Saints, where we celebrate the faith of our departed loved ones. We celebrate that God is the God of the living, and we thank God that our loved ones are alive in God's love. We celebrate that death is not the end but a new beginning. We may not be able to document who will be married to whom, but we do know that we will be alive in God.

Bill Peatman writes from Napa.