58th Diocesan Convention and Weekend Sermon
The Rt. Rev. Jos Tharakan | 14th Bishop of Idaho
Dear sisters and brothers in Christ
The text today, where the Sadducees try to corner Jesus, is a fantastic bit of high drama. It’s
almost comical. They approach Jesus with a dusty, complicated legal scenario—a poor woman,
seven brothers, a tragic succession of marriages—all leading to one technical question: “In the
resurrection, whose wife will she be?”
Let’s be honest. This was not a moment of sincere theological seeking. This was a trap, a quiz for
the preacher from Nazareth. The prejudice is palpable: they are the established elite, and what
good, they sneer, can come from that dusty corner of Galilee? They weren’t interested in the
logistics of heaven; they were interested in making Jesus fail the test. Their entire focus was on
what happens next, on postulating an impossible future, rather than dealing with the disruptive,
immediate presence of God standing right in front of them.
And this, dear friends, is the deep, enduring human folly that haunts us all: We become utterly
obsessed with what happens next—the retirement plan, the diagnosis, the eternal fate—and we
utterly fail to fully live into the grace, the responsibility, and the opportunity of what happens
now.
We spend our energy imagining the celestial mechanics of heaven—the street names, the seating
arrangements—while neglecting the immediate, tangible concerns of the struggling soul right
next door. We champion a distant, abstract hope because it requires no present sacrifice. But
listen to Farshad Asl: “Experience is the benefit of the past. Opportunity is the benefit of the
present. Hope is the benefit of the future. Live your best life right now, at this exact moment. You
can’t fix the future harboring on yesterday’s mistakes.”
Jesus cuts through this future-obsession with a single, devastating theological statement. He
dismisses their silly scenario about marriage in the age to come and reveals the true, immediate
nature of God, proclaiming: “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all live.”
This is the Theology of Living Now.
When Jesus says God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—He is proclaiming that these
ancestors, long since buried, live for Him now. God is not some future hope to be filed away
1858 W. Judith Lane | Boise, ID 83709 | www.episcopalidaho.org | bishop@episcopalidaho.org
until we die; God is the eternally immediate reality. He is the God of those who are alive now,
among us, with us, and all around us. He is Present.
To truly grasp this truth is to feel the power of God’s immediacy. As St. Thomas Aquinas
articulated: “God is in all things, by essence, presence, and power.” God does not merely visit the
world; God is the very ground of its being, the presence that fills every moment and every space.
If God is present everywhere, if God is the God of the Living, then the divine face we seek is not
hidden behind a veil of clouds, but revealed in the struggling, suffering faces of those in our
community.
The great early Church Father, St. John Chrysostom, articulated the inescapable consequence of
this theology for our daily lives with frightening clarity: “Not to share our own wealth with the
poor is theft from the poor and deprivation of their means of life; we do not possess our own
wealth, but theirs.”
This is the practical power of the Theology of Living Now: recognizing that the resources we
hoard are meant to alleviate present suffering, because God is currently dwelling among the poor
and the marginalized.
The human impulse to ignore the present for an imagined future gives rise to grave sin. When we
fail to see God as the God of the living—of every living soul, regardless of border, color, or
creed—then Christian Nationalism, white supremacy, closed borders, and the “otherness” of
human beings flourish. These toxic ideologies are built on the rejection of God’s omnipresence in
all people. They are built on the lie that God’s chosen are only those who look like us, rather than
God being the one who “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of
the earth” (Acts 17:26).
We must heed the wisdom of Michael Bassey Johnson: “Life doesn’t begin when you start
breathing; it begins when you start living, giving and loving.” To drive home what I am saying
here, I like to quote D. H. Lawrence, “If we don’t live our lives now, we risk living to repent for
not having lived them.”
This Sadducee mindset—the obsession with preservation and future postulation—is, sadly, alive
and well in the church today. Thom S. Rainer, in his book “Autopsy of a Deceased Church: 12
Ways to Keep Yours Alive,” shows us how this inward focus kills the vibrancy of Christian
community. A lot of it is like the Sadducees, whose prejudicial remarks about Jesus were about
the future and nothing about the present. Let us ask these questions to ourselves!
1858 W. Judith Lane | Boise, ID 83709 | www.episcopalidaho.org | bishop@episcopalidaho.org
Here are some sample signs of decline of a church, and our challenges for revival:
- The Past Is the Hero: We worship what was instead of what God is doing now.
- The Church Refused to Look Like the Community: We are disconnected from the immediate
people around us. - The Great Commission Became the Great Omission: We stopped prioritizing going out.
- The Preference-Driven Church: We cater to the comfort of the few rather than the calling of
Christ. - The Church That Had No Clear Purpose: We forgot why we exist.
- The Church Obsessed Over Facilities: The building becomes a deity draining resources from
the actual ministry.
So, here are some suggestions for us to look deep within and ask these questions: - Diagnostic Questions to ask ourselves. Are we living in the past? Are we disconnected from
the community? Are our budgets focused only internally? - Encouraging Outward Focus: Who are the people not yet connected? How can we adapt our
ministry to meet them where they are? - Revisiting Vision & Purpose: Be honest: “If our church closed in ten years, would anything
new have happened in the community as a result of us being here?” - Facility Strategy: Is the building serving the mission? Or is it draining resources from
outreach? - Cultural Adaptation: Our posture must be one of hospitality, social engagement, and
relevance. This may challenge tradition, but the gospel demands engagement with real, living
people. - Embrace Change, Don’t Fear It: Change is not a threat but an opportunity—a way to be
faithful to Christ’s mission in new contexts.
The call of Luke 20 is not to puzzle over the logistics of heaven, but to open our eyes to the
palpable, immediate presence of God in the world today. It is to know that to serve the living
Christ, we must serve the living human. Let us stop imagining and start seeing. Let us stop
1858 W. Judith Lane | Boise, ID 83709 | www.episcopalidaho.org | bishop@episcopalidaho.org
postponing and start acting. Live your faith, give your resources, and love your neighbor, right
here, right now.
Amen.
With Paternal Blessings
Your brother and bishop
+Jos
The Rt. Rev. Jos Tharakan
14th Bishop of Idaho
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Book Study Suggestion: Autopsy of a Deceased Church: 12 Ways to Keep Yours Alive, Thom
S. Rainer