Embracing God's realm on earth

Dear St. Augustine's 'ohana,
This week’s gospel takes us into a conversation between Jesus and the Sadducees, who didn’t believe in life after death. They come with a trick question meant to trap him, built on human logic and legal formulas: “If a woman marries seven brothers, whose wife will she be in the resurrection?” They want to prove resurrection is absurd, but Jesus doesn’t play their game. He lifts the conversation out of their argument and into divine mystery.

Jesus gives us a tiny snapshot of these mysteries, saying those in God’s realm is not a continuation of earthly systems — marriage, hierarchy, identity. It is a transformation into something beyond our comprehension. The Sadducees ask about ownership; Jesus answers with freedom.

In God’s realm, ownership and oppression of people do not exist. Women are not bonded in servitude. People are not enslaved or controlled. In divine reality, each soul stands in the full dignity of being a child of God, a creation of God's divine cosmos.

Jesus declares that God is “not the God of the dead, but of the living,” revealing a bit more about the nature of divine reality. The Creator holds all life in one great continuum of aliveness. In God, there is no “before” or “after,” no “then” or “now.” There is only the eternal pulse of being that moves through all creation.

Yet fear of the unknown gets in the way of embracing our place in God's creation. We don’t like to talk about death. We push away our unease; we replace questions with false certainties. Last week, we talked about how our blessings and our woes are all part of the human experience. So it is with life and death: two parts of the circle of life. Creation teaches us this. Cycles go on year after year, season after season, showing us that in death there is life. 

So perhaps the question for us this week is not “what happens when we die?” but “how might we live now in the awareness that life never ends?” What if resurrection isn’t something to wait for, but something already unfolding in and around us?

To be children of the resurrection is to participate in the ever-living presence of God and to live in love so expansive that death cannot contain it. In this, we find hope. In this, we find comfort. And in this, we remember that we, too, are part of God’s great circle of the living.
Blessings,
Vicar Jennifer

P.S., Mahalo for reading this message! I send my thoughts on the coming Sunday's scripture lessons in our weekly e-newsletter. If you'd like, you can sign up here to receive it. My e-message is usually a sneak peak of the coming Sunday's sermon, so if you're curious to hear more, head to our Facebook page for our livestream or go to our YouTube page to view past services. As always, I would love to see you in person on a Sunday! And please let me know if you'd like to talk about anything I've written here.

Please feel free to pass along this message or use what I've written. Please ensure proper attribution to the author, whether that's me or another writer. I often quote folks whose wisdom I admire! Blessings on your explorations in Spirit, and I look forward to walking with you on your journey!