ETERNAL LIFE

Daniel 12: 1-9; Romans 6: 1-10; 23

These last few weeks, perhaps more than any other in recent months, I have felt like a priest, called on to offer blessing for both life transitions and celebrations, to administer sacraments that say “a new life is being blessed today,” or to offer “a lover of Christ bread for life’s journey.” I have given a graduation gift to a boy I baptized as a baby, and performed a wedding ceremony for another boy I baptized as a baby. It’s that time of the year. Last week I gave out Bibles to children and had a flashback to the day I got my 3^rd grade Bible from my church in Virginia. The week before I watched 8 young people begin their “born again” lives with Jesus as they were Confirmed in Christ. Last week an elder and I took home communion to several people, and this week Cara and I took home communion to one longtime member who can no longer get here for services. This week I have anointed some of our flock with oil, some of whom have since died and others still live bravely on.  Today we will recognize children, youth and adults who have committed to learning about Jesus, either on successive Sundays or with daily homework and weekly Bible Studies. I counseled wedding couples yesterday, one of whom was a 1993 Confirmation Class member) and today I will baptize a little girl and give her the new name “child of God.”  I have offered my hand to a woman in hospice who clung to it and would not let me go. I have looked into the eyes of a man who has known me for years and yet a neurological problem kept him from recognizing me at all; he looks around the room instead.  I have listened to my daughter say to a room full of elders last Tuesday that she believes God is calling her to a life of full time ministry. And I have been on my knees in God’s gardens last weekend, mulching flower beds around this facility entrusted to us through our Savior.  Some weeks what I do … and perhaps what you do, seems more holy than other weeks. To paraphrase the old song: “Those were the days, my friends, I hoped they’d never end."  These have been days of blessing, and joy, and love, and connection. You’ve had those weeks, haven’t you? Perhaps you’re having one now around special events or sorrowful ones, both of which bring loved ones together. How glad we are for times such as those, when we do not feel alone, and we sing to Jesus: “O Joy, that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to Thee; I trace the rainbow through the rain, and feel the promise is not vain- that morn shall tearless be.”  “My Lord, what a mornin’, what a tearless mornin’; when we “gather at the river” and then “cross over to the other side,” and see “Bright Canaan,” as I borrow words from a handful of spirituals. What do the writers of spirituals know about eternal life that we need to hear today?

Let’s think about that. We know that there are weeks when circumstances make life miserable, even unbearable. Death, anguish, fights, losses, high costs: some of my weeks are more troubling than others; aren’t yours? Are those weeks when I have closed myself off to God’s opportunities and gracious touch, letting the tide of other people’s dysfunction take hold of me? Last week’s health presentation by Dr. Peter Rabins here in town reminded me that some live with clinical depression and have a general darkness and hopelessness about them. Others live in conflicted personal or work relationships that bring a general anguish and heartache to life. Eternal life may not hold much attraction to those for whom life is most difficult.

So when we talk about the subject of “Eternal Life,” I wonder if there aren’t at least two audiences?  At least one audience finds life to be generally a joy, looking forward to the day when family, friends, and faith can be reconnected again in the next life. But at the other end of life experiences must surely be the audience that finds life to be “stinkin’ miserable,” either wishing for life to be short and sweet, or for eternal life to be drastically different. Who of them would want to live eternally in the mess they’re in now?  So eternal life holds varying degrees of attraction.

When the book of Daniel was written, like the last audience I mentioned, the situation in life was not a great one. They were oppressed for believing in God, sometimes to the point of torture and death. To them, the resurrection of the dead, as described in Daniel, sounded more like a rescue; something decidedly different and wonderful! Some pictured a chariot, coming down out of the clouds, and rolling up to their feet, inviting them to “come on, forget all their troubles, get happy, to come and dance all their cares away” with the Lord of the Dance, the one who is the King in the ballroom called “Eternal Life” and the Host of the Great Banquet in joyous place called Heaven “where the last shall be first” and all are known by the Savior. To Daniel’s audience and many others who came after them: eternal life- new life - sounded enticing because their life on earth was so hard.  Perhaps life feels like that to you. Music like “Bright Canaan” that we heard this morning was written to paint Heaven in hopeful, Technicolor terms that contrasted sharply with the dark grayness of life that they, and possibly you, experienced.  So eternal life for that audience means a changed life without fear that the orderly rise of justice and love will fall back into decay. That’s what some hope eternal life will be like!

But the first audience is reached by the possibility preaching of St. Paul, and more recently by preachers like the late Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, and current preachers like Robert Schuller and Joel Osteen. Blessed lives continue to be gladdened by such blessing words. Paul, for example, worked to convince Roman Christians of his strong belief in how we should live.  “Should we sin more so that we can be forgiven more? NO! How can you how know what sin is and yet keep on deliberately sinning?  Those who know they are sinning, but keep on sinning, do not know Christ, and they risk having the invitation to eternal life withdrawn! They deceive themselves and are living a fraudulent life.” Paul then says, “If you were baptized in his name, then when you die, having lived in such a way that people said “There’s a Christian,” when they saw you, then you “will not perish, but have everlasting life!” But to those who say they are Christian but live like a heathen, they have a worst sentence than those who do not know the name that is above every other name. Those who say they are Christians but don’t live like one, they are counterfeit Christians.” This paraphrase of Paul’s words continue with the reminder: “If Christ has died for us, and we have acknowledged that and proclaim him as Lord, then we will also be raised with him!” 

Now we find, at long last, the two audiences come together in eternal life through the only thing they have in common: loving Jesus and showing his love to others. If  life has handed you lemons and it has soured you, with your change of heart you can have a new life now and an eternal life later that will  be changed and wonderful! If, however, life has handed you lemons and you have made lemonade from them, eternal life for you can even be better than it is here! And for those who think that life is a bowl of cherries and that everything comes up roses, well, you have the blessed preview of a little heaven on earth! But for those whose lives, examples, and words have caused untold hurt because of selfish actions, their eternal life may seem dreadfully different from what was just described; different because it will be lived, eternally, away from Jesus because of life choices that say to him: “I am the monarch of my own life; there is no throne for you here.” 

Eternal life; it can be either wonderful … or very, very long.  Our choices today seal our choices for tomorrow. Jesus showed us how to live on earth so we could follow him to the place prepared for us in Heaven. Live like him here, and you are assured that you will live with him in the hereafter.

Let us pray:

Dear God: some here have lives that bless and thank you every day; feel their radiating joy.

Some here are jaded by the world and by the circumstances of their lives: comfort and transform them.

Some cause pain by their choices and their actions: take away their power by showing their victims how to listen to holy voices instead of hurtful ones.

And some are ready to change and improve even today: Hear their prayers and let their stained souls be washed clean; remind them of the cleansing waters of baptism and the power of your Spirit to make things new.

Through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.

Jeffrey A. Sumner                                                         May 25, 2008