REFLECTION 9 NOVEMBER 2025 “GOD OF THE LIVING” 

By Rev Dr Fei Taule’ale’ausumai 

The Gospel reading would have been an easy text to bypass this morning, but I’m giving it a go.  Out of Cam and I, I drew the short straw.   

When my father died back in 1999, my mum’s Mormon cousins from Whangarei up north came down to visit us. Among them was the husband of one of my cousins—a kind and sincere man, a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As we sat together in quiet conversation, he turned to me with a heavy heart and said, “I’m really sorry we didn’t get here in time to take your dad to the temple while he was alive, so that his life could have been sealed in the Mormon temple and so your mum and you could all have eternity together.” Had my dad still been alive he would have sworn at him and told him to go to hell.  Anyway, I looked at him with a calm but steady gaze and said gently, “Well, we are not Mormons—we are Presbyterians. We too have our own faith and belief system. But thank you for your concern.” 

The truth is, his words came from a naive judgemental love or arrogance. According to him the Mormon faith was the true faith and in some ignorant way he felt sorry for us non-believers.  Obviously me being a Presbyterian minister meant nothing, we were wrong and he was right.  In his tradition, marriage and family are not only for this life, but forever—sealed in sacred temple ceremonies that promise eternal unity. For Mormons, heaven is a family home. The highest glory of the afterlife is to live eternally with one’s spouse and children, joined together by divine authority. That is why temple sealing is so important.  For them, it’s not just about love

; it’s about exaltation, about reaching the very presence of God together. 

But for those of us who align with Presbyterianism—and for many progressive Christians.  Our hope in life after death if we believe in it rests not on rituals, but on grace. We trust that eternal life is not something we can secure with certificates or ceremonies, but something freely given by the grace and mercy of God.  

When Jesus was questioned about marriage in heaven, he said, “Those who are considered worthy of the resurrection neither marry nor are given in marriage… for they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God” (Luke 20:35–36).  In other words, eternity is not an extension of our earthly arrangements—it is transformation. Our human loves, as precious as they are, will be caught up and completed in the love of God. 

And truth be told, for some people, the thought of spending eternity with their earthly spouse might not sound like heaven at all! For many, living together on earth was trial enough. But the good news is that in God’s eternity, even the most difficult relationships will be healed and renewed. No pain, no resentment, no unfinished business—only love that is made whole. 

So when I think of my father, I do not worry about whether he was “sealed” in a temple. I trust the God who sealed him in love long before he was born—the God who knows him, loves him for all eternity.   

In this Gospel narrative, Jesus is confronted by the Sadducees, a sect of religious leaders who did not believe in the resurrection or any life after death. They were the conservative elite within first-century Judaism—temple-focused, wealthy, and aligned with Roman authority. They accepted only the Torah (the first five books of Moses) as authoritative scripture. 

To trap Jesus, they posed a deliberately absurd question about levirate marriage—a custom from Deuteronomy 25:5-10 that required a man to marry his deceased brother’s widow to carry on the family name. Their hypothetical of one woman sequentially marrying seven brothers was meant to ridicule the idea of resurrection. 

Jesus’ response reframed their entire assumption about both marriage and resurrection: 

• In the age to come, human relationships will not be defined by the same social or patriarchal structures as earthly life. 

• Life after death is not a continuation of this life’s hierarchies or systems, but a transformation into divine kinship. 

• Finally, Jesus roots resurrection hope in the very Torah the Sadducees revere: “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”—a living God who sustains relationship even beyond death. 

 

For Jesus, God is not the God of the dead but of the living—meaning that all who are held in God’s love remain alive in God. 

 

From a progressive theological lens, this text challenges several assumptions—about gender, power, and even heaven itself. 

Resurrection as Transformation, Not Continuation 

Jesus does not describe resurrection as a “return to life as we know it.” Instead, he describes a transformed existence—an age where the oppressive systems that defined people’s worth (marriage, property, patriarchy) are dismantled. The woman in the Sadducees’ question is treated as property passed from man to man, but Jesus refuses to dignify that question. In God’s realm, she is not someone’s wife; she is a child of God—fully alive, autonomous, beloved. 

Jesus’ phrase, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living”, is a profound declaration that life in God is ongoing, relational, and present. It affirms a living continuity—that the communion of saints, ancestors, and those we love are not gone, but live in the eternal now of God’s being. 

For a modern, inclusive community like us here at St Andrew’s on the Terrace, this re-imagines resurrection as a theology of life-affirmation rather than escape. God’s resurrection life manifests itself through acts of love, justice, and compassion—whenever we resist dehumanizing systems and affirm the sacred worth of every person. 

The Sadducees, protectors of institutional power, are shown up by Jesus’ wisdom. His teaching turns the conversation from ownership to relationship, from religious control to divine liberation. The resurrection becomes a vision of equality and freedom, where all live in God’s justice and love. 

The Sadducees’ question begins with mockery and ends with revelation. 

They come to trap Jesus, but he ends up freeing us. 

He shows us that eternal life is not about escaping this world; 

it’s about transforming it — 

seeing every face as radiant with God’s light, 

every breath as sacred, 

every act of courage as a small resurrection. 

 

I wonder if Jesus smiled at that nameless woman in their story. 

She had been silenced, passed around, used as a theological prop. 

But in his answer, he restored her dignity. 

He lifted her out of their argument and placed her in the heart of God’s eternal love — 

not as someone’s possession, 

but as a beloved child of God, alive forever. 

And perhaps that’s what resurrection hope looks like. 

It’s not a blueprint of heaven. 

It’s a glimpse of divine reality where the poor are lifted up, 

the hungry are fed, 

the forgotten are remembered, 

and love — always love — has the final word. 

The resurrection is not only about what happens someday. 

It is about how the love and justice of God are breaking in today. 

We live resurrection whenever we refuse to let death — in all its forms — have the last word. 

When we refuse to let despair define us. 

When we speak out against injustice. 

When we welcome the stranger. 

When we affirm the dignity of those the world deems disposable. 

When we choose love over fear, generosity over greed, compassion over comfort — 

we are already living as children of the resurrection. 

I live in an international multicultural street in Wainuiomata.  On both sides of my home I have Punjabi neighbours, behind me I have a Filipino family and around the corner and up the road are two Samoan families.  We all have our own perspectives of life after death.  For my Punjabi neighbours who are Sikh they believe: Sikhs believe in reincarnation (birth and rebirth). 

• A person’s soul goes through many lifetimes depending on their karma (the results of good or bad actions). 

• The goal of life is to achieve mukti (liberation) — freedom from the cycle of birth and death — by remembering and living in harmony with God (Waheguru) and practicing truth, compassion, and service. 

• Heaven and hell are understood more as states of mind or spiritual experience, not physical places. 

My Filipino neighbours are devout Catholics, and my Samoan Christian neighbours believe in the eternal life in God’s heavenly realm.   

We probably all grapple with the same question of life after death and I would not like them to impose on me their belief as being right like my Mormon cousins husband.  I’m happy to listen but I believe that we learn to live to respect each other’s traditions and beliefs and that we should not lose sleep over the others future destination after death, that’s theirs faiths concern.   

For me, God is not the God of the dead, 

not the God of fear, 

not the God of rigid systems that crush the human spirit. 

God is the God of the living — 

the God whose breath still moves through our world, 

whose Spirit still raises hearts from despair, 

whose love still calls us by name.  Amen  

---

Audio of selected readings and reflections

---

Audio of the complete service