New Life - Now, Then, and Always

Psalm 90

Lord, you have been our dwelling place

in all generations.

Before the mountains were brought forth,

or ever you had formed the earth and the world,

from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

You turn us back to dust,

and say, “Turn back, you mortals.”

For a thousand years in your sight

are like yesterday when it is past,

or like a watch in the night.

You sweep them away; they are like a dream,

like grass that is renewed in the morning;

in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;

in the evening it fades and withers.

For we are consumed by your anger;

by your wrath we are overwhelmed.

You have set our iniquities before you,

our secret sins in the light of your countenance.

For all our days pass away under your wrath;

our years come to an end like a sigh.

The days of our life are seventy years,

or perhaps eighty, if we are strong;

even then their span is only toil and trouble;

they are soon gone, and we fly away.

Who considers the power of your anger?

Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.

So teach us to count our days

that we may gain a wise heart.

Luke 20:27-38

Some Sadducees,

those who say there is no resurrection, came to him

and asked him a question,

“Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.

Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her,

and so in the same way all seven died childless.

Finally the woman also died.

In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”

Jesus said to them,

“Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage;

but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age

and in the resurrection from the dead

neither marry nor are given in marriage.

Indeed they cannot die anymore,

because they are like angels

and are children of God,

being children of the resurrection.

And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed,

in the story about the bush,

where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham,

the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. 

Now he is God not of the dead,

but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” 

Philippians 1:20-30

It is my eager expectation and hope

that I will not be put to shame in any way,

but that by my speaking with all boldness,

Christ will be exalted now as always in my body,

whether by life or by death.

For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.

If I am to live in the flesh,

that means fruitful labor for me;

and I do not know which I prefer.

I am hard pressed between the two:

my desire is to depart and be with Christ,

for that is far better;

but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you.

Since I am convinced of this,

I know that I will remain and continue with all of you

for your progress and joy in faith,

so that I may share abundantly

in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to you again.

Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ,

so that, whether I come and see you

or am absent and hear about you,

I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit,

striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel,

and are in no way intimidated by your opponents. For them this is evidence of their destruction, but of your salvation.

And this is God’s doing.

For he has graciously granted you the privilege

not only of believing in Christ,

but of suffering for him as well—

since you are having the same struggle

that you saw I had and now hear that I still have. 

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There are a lot of sayings about life and death, about ways of thinking about our lives, about ways of living our lives.

According to Captain Google, it was Malcolm Forbes who first said, “He who dies with the most toys wins.”

Mae West said this: ““You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”

I saw this quote from Albert Einstein on a coffee mug for sale at the Ann Arbor Art Fair this week: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” 

And this phrase has been attributed to John Lennon, because it is used in one of his songs, but the quote originally came from a comic strip writer named Allen Saunders: ““Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” 

What are some one-liners about life and death that come to your mind?

These are just a few: when I searched for quotes about life, I was given a list of over 38,000. But – when I searched again for quotes about life and death, the list was greatly reduced, to “only” 519.

That makes sense to me, because we do have a lot more to say about life than about death, don’t we? And of course we would, since we have so much personal experience with life, and so little, at least personally speaking, with death.

Our scripture readings today consider the way we experience life and death as followers of Christ.

In the passage from Luke, some Sadducees are conspiring to “trip Jesus up”, so to speak, by setting up for him a “life-after-death” scenario involving a woman who had been married and widowed seven times. “Who will be her husband in the afterlife, Jesus?” (wink, wink, we’ve got him now).

And as Jesus did with so many of his parables, he doesn’t give a straight answer to the question, but instead he changes the central issue, saying to them – resurrection is not about marriage, so children of the resurrection don’t need to concern themselves with that, and furthermore, in God’s eyes, there is no death, but to God all of them are alive.

Hm. Now this should sound familiar……

In the liturgy words we use for baptism, we give thanks to God

for the water of baptism, saying that “in it we are buried with Christ in his death. From it we are raised to share in his resurrection,; through it we are reborn by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

We have died with Christ, and we are reborn to new life through the waters of baptism. Thanks be to God for the new life we have already received! And this is not a temporary thing – we are reborn to everlasting life in Christ.

So, then, what is death? and what comes next? Well, of course, it’s a mystery to those of us on this side of the veil.

I mentioned earlier that I found 38,000 plus quotes about life, but only 500 or so quotes about life and death. And of course we know so much about life, or so we think, but really we know nothing about death. We do wonder about it, don’t we? There are books and movies and countless stories about those who have been on the brink of death and have a story to tell about what it was like.

Theologian Hans Küng wrote a book called “Eternal Life?” in 1983, which, interestingly enough, at least to me, was based on a set of lectures he gave while he was a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan.

In a section called “What is the meaning of ‘living eternally’?” he writes this:

“In death man is taken out of the conditions surrounding and determining him.

Seen from the world, from outside as it were,

         death means total unrelatedness,

         the breaking off of all relationships to persons and things.

But seen from God’s standpoint, from inside as it were,

         death means a wholly new relationship:

         to him as the ultimate reality…

Death is a passing into God,

         is a homecoming into God’s mystery,

         is assumption into his glory…

Death is a passage into a new mystery,

         a departure inward, a retreat, as Küng describes it.

Not back into this space and time,

         not into an “out there” space and time,

         but out of death into life,

         out of mortal darkness into God’s eternal light.

This is why Jesus says that, to God, all are alive.

In Christ, in the power of the resurrection, all are made alive.

Küng describes death as a passage

         from one stage of life’s journey into another.

This is not unlike the passage into life

         that each of us experienced at the time of our birth.

Through the painful process of labor,

         through suffering that is sometimes short and sometimes long,

         we come into this world.

We had no idea at the time what it was going to be like –

         it was and is a mystery for every newborn –

         and so it is at the time of our passing over

         into the next stage of life’s journey –

a homecoming back into the loving arms of God,

         from where we came.

This mirrors the words often said on Ash Wednesday – you are dust, and to dust you will return – back into the loving arms of God.

And how incredible that homecoming will surely be!

When I served my chaplain internship, we spent a day with a hospice chaplain at a nursing home.  She was with a woman who was in the process of actively dying. I heard her say to this woman,

         “this is the hardest part, but once this is over,

         what comes next is going to be more wonderful

         than you can possibly imagine.”

I don’t think I will ever forget those words.

God always sees us as alive; so the passage from life to death, in God’s eyes, is like crossing a threshold from one room to the next, from one country to the next, from one horizon to the next incredible home that awaits us.

So what about our life now?

Are we just waiting for the next big thing?

As the apostle Paul so often said, “certainly not!”

In the passage we heard from Paul’s letter to the Philippians,

         he says “to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

Now he is in prison when he writes this;

         he is awaiting trial,

         and he really does not know whether he will live or die

         as a result of that trial.

And so he is considering whether he prefers to live or die,

         and he concludes a sort of “both/and”:

          “to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

We have talked about the gain that is awaiting us in our death.

But what does he mean by “to live is Christ”?

He gives us a hint of it when he says that

         “If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me”.

We have work to do in the name of Christ,

         bearing good fruit for the kingdom.

Brian McLaren says

“on the one hand, we feel a pull to stay here in this life,

         enjoying the light and love and goodness of God

         with so many people who are dear to us,

         with so much good work left to be done.

On the other hand, we feel an equal and opposite pull

         toward the light and love and goodness of God

         experienced more directly beyond this life.”

Both in this life and beyond this life,

         we experience the light and love and goodness of God.

Hans Kung describes the basis for our work in this life in this way:

“there is death for human beings not only at the end of life

         but in the midst of life.

This is death [experienced] as –

·      the absence of relationships of person to person,

·      as powerlessness and speechlessness,

·      as anonymity and apathy,

·      as atrophy and mental paralysis,

·      as insensibility and exhaustion.”

And so, whenever we experience death, even in the midst of life,

         God offers New Life in Christ.

Whenever we encounter others experiencing death,

         we can be assured that,

through the New Life we have received,

         God’s plan to bring life in the midst of death includes us.

We come bearing Christ,

         bearing witness to Christ,

         into the everyday deaths that others

         are experiencing throughout their lives.

Whether friend, relative, neighbor, stranger, or enemy,

         our New Life in Christ is what we are called

         to share with others – in word and in deed.

Our mission statement here at New Life Presbyterian Church

         calls us into the work of

         breathing new life into each of those types of deaths

         described above – those deaths-in-the-midst-of life.

“As we:

·       reach out in acceptance to a diverse community;

·       embrace the marginalized and show love to all;

·       feed the hungry and care for the sick;

·       search for peace and work for justice;”

(as the mission statement says),

we breathe new life into those

         who are lonely,

         who are powerless,

         who are not heard

         or not seen

         or not cared about;

into those spaces where nothing makes sense,

         where there is exhaustion or persecution or hopelessness.

These are the ways in which we will live our days in Christ,

         as Paul says, not fearing death when it comes,

         but trusting that what comes next, being with Christ,

         is infinitely better than anything we can ask or imagine

         of the present time.

We can bring New Life into every one of our days,

         and we can look forward to the day

         when we are fully embraced, forgiven, and welcomed home

         by the Way, the Truth, and the Life –

                  Jesus Christ, the Light of the World.