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Foundry United Rev. |
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The Courage to Live Eternally Sunday, November 5,
2006 |
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Job 14: 1-6 Rev. |
As
human beings, we are time-bound creatures. We have a beginning and an end. Paul
Tillich says: “we come from the darkness of the ‘not yet’ and rush ahead
toward the darkness of the ‘no more.’”[1] The
book of Job is brutally clear about this: “A mortal, born of woman, few of
days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a
shadow and does not last.” (Job 14:1) We,
women and men, are time-bound creatures. Yet, we
sense, if we let ourselves, that this is not the whole story. At the same time
that we know that we are creatures who live in time, we also sense that we
are not merely time-bound
creatures. This is not all we are. We
live within time but we sense, if we pay attention, that we also belong to
eternity. We live
in time but we can also touch and taste and sense a realm beyond time, above
time, the realm of the divine and transcendent. Fred
Buechner says we inhabit time but we stand on occasion with one foot in
eternity. God, on the other hand, he says, inhabits eternity but on occasion stands
with one foot in time.[2] It is
sometimes suggested – explicitly and subtly – that believing in something
like eternity is a sign of weakness. Some of us here in church may even feel
this way…that it is a form of denial rooted in our fear of death…that it is
an illusion we have invented to avoid facing the almost intolerable pain that
we must someday die. But on
All Saints Sunday, when we mourn the loss of our loved ones and remember that
we too are mortal, I want to suggest that living in the possibility of
eternity may not be a sign of weakness but an act of courage. It
takes great courage, I think, to live as though our lives matter eternally…even
if they seem very ordinary, even frustrating, to us. It takes courage to live
believing that what I do with my life matters beyond this life-time, even
when so much of what I do seems trivial and even pointless. It takes courage
to risk the possibility that we are loved eternally. There
is a quote I have come across that I suspect you will hear from me from time
to time over the next months because it pierced my soul when I read it. It is
a quote from a speech Nelson Mandela gave to survivors of apartheid. He said: “Our
greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond
measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most
frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant,
talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child
of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.”[3] This has something of the flavor to it of what
the Apostle Paul was saying to the Thessalonians, if we read him
theologically and not literally. This is what he is saying: Be courageous
enough to play your life on the stage of eternity. Our playing small doesn’t
serve the world. He also says: have the courage to love eternally.
Do not grieve as those who have no hope. (I Thessalonians 4: 13) Our loving
small doesn’t serve the world. Love eternally, he says. In one of his books Fred Buechner writes about
conjuring up his grandmother Naya while he is in his study writing. Even
though she had died years and years earlier, she seemed so real to him, he
says, that it was hard for him to tell whether she was merely in his mind or
actually in the room. They are having a conversation about death. At
one point when he refers to dying as “setting sail,” she gets upset about
using euphemisms to talk about death. She talks about the euphemism we sometimes use
for dying – passing away. Lighting one of her She talks about the foolishness of using
euphemisms like passing away. She suggests there is something dishonest about
it. Furthermore, she says, it is very misleading. Then she says this, “It is
the world that passes away.”[4] Did you hear it? “It is the
world that passes away.” Our loved ones, you and I – we belong to eternity.
We may die but we do not pass away. The world passes away. Our playing small
doesn’t serve the world. www.foundryumc.org |
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