Life In The Old Bones Yet
Sermon
RESTORING THE FUTURE
First Lesson Sermons For Lent/Easter
Several years ago a psychologist conducted a survey in which he asked 3,000 people the question, "What are you living for?" He was not at all ready for the results. He discovered that ninety percent of his respondents were - as he put it - "simply putting up with the present while they waited for the future." We are all familiar with the feeling. We spend today thinking about what will happen tomorrow: young couples wait for their wedding day; children wait for Christmas; at 64 we wait for retirement; at 34 we wait for success.
I read once that such preoccupation with the future is like looking through binoculars at a dimly visible scene in the distance, while trampling on the exquisite flower garden at our feet. Perhaps it is true that we should not waste today by mortgaging the life we have been given here and now for some imagined future time of happiness.
When does life begin and when does it end? Or, perhaps more to the point, when are we really living, and when are we just marking time?
According to the United States Bureau of Statistics, there are approximately fifty million people in the country who cannot furnish legal proof that they were ever born. That's more than the number that watch late night television each night! But of that number, how many do you suppose are really living anyway, regardless what the Bureau of Statistics says? How many of us are really living? Probably the psychologist's survey would give us a clue. No doubt many of us spend too much time putting up with the present while waiting for the future.
Different people would give different answers to questions about real living and when life begins and ends.
The professional athlete would say that life begins just after college and is over at age 35 or so, when most professional athletes are all washed up. Does it ever strike you as strange that athletes can talk of a whole professional career, and be speaking of a span of ten to fifteen years at the most?
The professional lawyer or physician would likely say that life begins at thirty or 35 (just about the time the athlete's career is ending), when his career really begins to get into full swing.
How do you suppose Arthur Rubenstein, the great pianist, would have answered the question, "When does real life begin?" Just before he died at age 95 he wrote, "I'm passionately involved in life: I love its changes, its colors, its movement. To be alive, to be able to see, to walk, to have houses, music, paintings ... it's all a miracle."
Real living seems to be a matter of individual perception, colored by circumstances and choices made as we go along.
If the television industry were to be taken as a guide for finding out about real life, the process of living would seem to involve a long, drawn--out battle with the inevitable, the inevitable being that it is in the nature of things for living creatures to die one day. Whether it is a washed--up 37--year--old basketball player, or a 95--year--old concert pianist, we are all headed in the same direction, but we all would like to put it off as long as possible. So as we watch television we discover we have creams to make us look younger, cars to make us look younger, razor blades to make us look younger. Practically everything we can buy is sold to us with the implicit promise that it is the youthful thing to do. Not too long ago I read about a California couple that was making huge sums of money with a new technique for healthful living. The main promise and selling point was that it would add years to your life and keep you younger looking longer through proper intake of vitamins and avoidance of fatty foods, coupled with vigorous exercise. As I looked at their advertisements, with examples of their regimen of strenuous exercise and a diet so carefully monitored that it would make a hospital dietitian nervous, I wondered if this is really living! Does real living simply mean making life last longer?
The preoccupation with the young and the hope for a long life masks the fear that all humanity shares, as we look over our shoulders, seeing that death stalks every one of us. If we were trying to understand the world and our part in it by looking at nature, we would have to say that it appears to be a world in which the main rule is: death overcomes life. Life may have its day, but death has the last word. For every living form known to us, death awaits.
Paul wrote to the Romans, "To set the mind on the flesh is death." If the whole purpose of life is wrapped up in putting off the inevitable, then life is a pretty pathetic thing, its possibility of beauty diminished with the passing of every moment, and certainly with the passing of every human being we know. We want to moan, with the writer of Ecclesiastes, "All is vanity."
A friend of mine remembers an eerie scene of hopelessness from a family trip to New Mexico one summer. He took part in a paleontology dig in the rugged desert country around the Presbyterian conference center at Ghost Ranch. At one location they discovered the fossilized remains of a dinosaur known as "Coelophy--sis." After unearthing a good portion of the skeleton, they learned that dozens of other similar animals had been found at the same location through the years. It must have been a watering hole in some long lost time, and on one day, or during one short period, a whole host of these animals perished on that very spot; no one knows by what cause. There they lay - skeletons intact - all these millions of years, until a bunch of amateur paleontologists happened along to dig them up. Life in the animal world seems capable of an end just as futile as life in the human world, only we have the dubious privilege of knowing ahead of time where we are bound.
There are two very human responses to the knowledge that we will all die one day. The first is to do what the psychologists have discovered that hundreds of us do: we avoid thinking about the inevitable by continually creating a future for ourselves. If today I have made plans for Thursday night, I believe that surely I will still be here on Thursday to see them through. So we live life, not today, but for what will happen tomorrow. If that seems to be a faulty way of seeing the world, looking through binoculars toward a future happiness while trampling the daisies at our feet, we might be tempted to favor a second response. That is to live for the moment. One song of the '60s, forgettable in almost every way, which nevertheless has a tendency to stick in the brain, had a refrain which went, "Sha, la, la, la, la, la, live for today,.../And don't worry 'bout tomorrow, hey, hey, hey." It seems to be an appropriate hymn for that time, when so many were caught up in living for the present moment: grasp the moment, go for all the gusto, you only go 'round once.
But both responses, human and understandable, are still part of what Paul saw as a prevalent attitude of his day: "To set the mind on the flesh is death."
Both the "present mortgaged to the future" and the "spendthrift present" produce the same result: One day there will be - as there was on that dry desert floor in New Mexico - death and a valley of dry bones. We may even provide the skeletons for some future amateur paleontologist to ponder over thousands of years hence. Whether we are free spirits or cautious conservatives, "to set the mind on the flesh is death." Seeing life in this dimension alone sends us all in the direction of the valley of the shadow without a clue as to why it must be so.
But there is a third approach to life, to discovering meaning in life. The witness of Ezekiel to his people in exile and of Paul to the Christians of Rome, is that - despite all appearances to the contrary - God's desire for the people is not that death overcome life as may appear to be the case, but that life overcome death.
Ezekiel must have seen it in a vision from God. No one who had been part of a culture that had been utterly annihilated, who had seen the entire people carried off from their land, their crops burned, their children murdered, their king blinded before the people's eyes, then sent to live among the slums of Babylon, no one, having seen all that, could say a word like:
I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live,
And I will place you in your own land; then you shall
know that I, the Lord, have spoken ...
... not unless he had been party to a vision from God. It was a vision that convinced him that the God of Israel, despite utterly hopeless circumstances - unlike anything you or I could ever have seen - this God will give to the people a life that only God can give. Ezekiel, amid circumstances of almost unimaginable hopelessness, was moved to utter a word of hope. And hope in the strongest terms. A valley of dead skeletons returned to life through the agency of the prophet and by the power of God. God wills life for God's people, and as Ezekiel gave us a view of what that means for the People of Israel, for Christians Paul said:
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
He who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will give life to your
mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you.
"He will give life to you in your mortal bodies also." Not just "pie in the sky by and by," not just a spirit time some time after death; but God will give life, the empowering spirit of life, not just in a future time, but now. Isn't it ironic? To set our minds on the flesh, living for this life, leads to death. But somehow, to live in Christ promises not only life in the hereafter, but the first experience of truly living in the present that we can have.
Once a major magazine interviewed people over 100 with the question, "When did you cease being young?" The average answer given was eighty, and the youngest answer given was sixty! The fact of the matter is that every day is a gift of God, whether it comes after 100 or after twenty. It is whether that gift of life is lived in the presence of Christ that determines whether we are truly alive, or just biding our time until our time ends.
I read once that such preoccupation with the future is like looking through binoculars at a dimly visible scene in the distance, while trampling on the exquisite flower garden at our feet. Perhaps it is true that we should not waste today by mortgaging the life we have been given here and now for some imagined future time of happiness.
When does life begin and when does it end? Or, perhaps more to the point, when are we really living, and when are we just marking time?
According to the United States Bureau of Statistics, there are approximately fifty million people in the country who cannot furnish legal proof that they were ever born. That's more than the number that watch late night television each night! But of that number, how many do you suppose are really living anyway, regardless what the Bureau of Statistics says? How many of us are really living? Probably the psychologist's survey would give us a clue. No doubt many of us spend too much time putting up with the present while waiting for the future.
Different people would give different answers to questions about real living and when life begins and ends.
The professional athlete would say that life begins just after college and is over at age 35 or so, when most professional athletes are all washed up. Does it ever strike you as strange that athletes can talk of a whole professional career, and be speaking of a span of ten to fifteen years at the most?
The professional lawyer or physician would likely say that life begins at thirty or 35 (just about the time the athlete's career is ending), when his career really begins to get into full swing.
How do you suppose Arthur Rubenstein, the great pianist, would have answered the question, "When does real life begin?" Just before he died at age 95 he wrote, "I'm passionately involved in life: I love its changes, its colors, its movement. To be alive, to be able to see, to walk, to have houses, music, paintings ... it's all a miracle."
Real living seems to be a matter of individual perception, colored by circumstances and choices made as we go along.
If the television industry were to be taken as a guide for finding out about real life, the process of living would seem to involve a long, drawn--out battle with the inevitable, the inevitable being that it is in the nature of things for living creatures to die one day. Whether it is a washed--up 37--year--old basketball player, or a 95--year--old concert pianist, we are all headed in the same direction, but we all would like to put it off as long as possible. So as we watch television we discover we have creams to make us look younger, cars to make us look younger, razor blades to make us look younger. Practically everything we can buy is sold to us with the implicit promise that it is the youthful thing to do. Not too long ago I read about a California couple that was making huge sums of money with a new technique for healthful living. The main promise and selling point was that it would add years to your life and keep you younger looking longer through proper intake of vitamins and avoidance of fatty foods, coupled with vigorous exercise. As I looked at their advertisements, with examples of their regimen of strenuous exercise and a diet so carefully monitored that it would make a hospital dietitian nervous, I wondered if this is really living! Does real living simply mean making life last longer?
The preoccupation with the young and the hope for a long life masks the fear that all humanity shares, as we look over our shoulders, seeing that death stalks every one of us. If we were trying to understand the world and our part in it by looking at nature, we would have to say that it appears to be a world in which the main rule is: death overcomes life. Life may have its day, but death has the last word. For every living form known to us, death awaits.
Paul wrote to the Romans, "To set the mind on the flesh is death." If the whole purpose of life is wrapped up in putting off the inevitable, then life is a pretty pathetic thing, its possibility of beauty diminished with the passing of every moment, and certainly with the passing of every human being we know. We want to moan, with the writer of Ecclesiastes, "All is vanity."
A friend of mine remembers an eerie scene of hopelessness from a family trip to New Mexico one summer. He took part in a paleontology dig in the rugged desert country around the Presbyterian conference center at Ghost Ranch. At one location they discovered the fossilized remains of a dinosaur known as "Coelophy--sis." After unearthing a good portion of the skeleton, they learned that dozens of other similar animals had been found at the same location through the years. It must have been a watering hole in some long lost time, and on one day, or during one short period, a whole host of these animals perished on that very spot; no one knows by what cause. There they lay - skeletons intact - all these millions of years, until a bunch of amateur paleontologists happened along to dig them up. Life in the animal world seems capable of an end just as futile as life in the human world, only we have the dubious privilege of knowing ahead of time where we are bound.
There are two very human responses to the knowledge that we will all die one day. The first is to do what the psychologists have discovered that hundreds of us do: we avoid thinking about the inevitable by continually creating a future for ourselves. If today I have made plans for Thursday night, I believe that surely I will still be here on Thursday to see them through. So we live life, not today, but for what will happen tomorrow. If that seems to be a faulty way of seeing the world, looking through binoculars toward a future happiness while trampling the daisies at our feet, we might be tempted to favor a second response. That is to live for the moment. One song of the '60s, forgettable in almost every way, which nevertheless has a tendency to stick in the brain, had a refrain which went, "Sha, la, la, la, la, la, live for today,.../And don't worry 'bout tomorrow, hey, hey, hey." It seems to be an appropriate hymn for that time, when so many were caught up in living for the present moment: grasp the moment, go for all the gusto, you only go 'round once.
But both responses, human and understandable, are still part of what Paul saw as a prevalent attitude of his day: "To set the mind on the flesh is death."
Both the "present mortgaged to the future" and the "spendthrift present" produce the same result: One day there will be - as there was on that dry desert floor in New Mexico - death and a valley of dry bones. We may even provide the skeletons for some future amateur paleontologist to ponder over thousands of years hence. Whether we are free spirits or cautious conservatives, "to set the mind on the flesh is death." Seeing life in this dimension alone sends us all in the direction of the valley of the shadow without a clue as to why it must be so.
But there is a third approach to life, to discovering meaning in life. The witness of Ezekiel to his people in exile and of Paul to the Christians of Rome, is that - despite all appearances to the contrary - God's desire for the people is not that death overcome life as may appear to be the case, but that life overcome death.
Ezekiel must have seen it in a vision from God. No one who had been part of a culture that had been utterly annihilated, who had seen the entire people carried off from their land, their crops burned, their children murdered, their king blinded before the people's eyes, then sent to live among the slums of Babylon, no one, having seen all that, could say a word like:
I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live,
And I will place you in your own land; then you shall
know that I, the Lord, have spoken ...
... not unless he had been party to a vision from God. It was a vision that convinced him that the God of Israel, despite utterly hopeless circumstances - unlike anything you or I could ever have seen - this God will give to the people a life that only God can give. Ezekiel, amid circumstances of almost unimaginable hopelessness, was moved to utter a word of hope. And hope in the strongest terms. A valley of dead skeletons returned to life through the agency of the prophet and by the power of God. God wills life for God's people, and as Ezekiel gave us a view of what that means for the People of Israel, for Christians Paul said:
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
He who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will give life to your
mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you.
"He will give life to you in your mortal bodies also." Not just "pie in the sky by and by," not just a spirit time some time after death; but God will give life, the empowering spirit of life, not just in a future time, but now. Isn't it ironic? To set our minds on the flesh, living for this life, leads to death. But somehow, to live in Christ promises not only life in the hereafter, but the first experience of truly living in the present that we can have.
Once a major magazine interviewed people over 100 with the question, "When did you cease being young?" The average answer given was eighty, and the youngest answer given was sixty! The fact of the matter is that every day is a gift of God, whether it comes after 100 or after twenty. It is whether that gift of life is lived in the presence of Christ that determines whether we are truly alive, or just biding our time until our time ends.
