The readings for Sunday, 20 November, are as follows (to read them, click on each lesson):
Canticle: the Benedictus (Song of Zechariah)
It has been said that when a preacher first starts out in the job, there is the tendency to toss everything imaginable into a sermon. The preacher wants to get this or that point across, and of course we cannot forget this other point. The result is that the sermons tend to be a bit long and all over the road.
I wonder if there may well also be such a tendency in preachers who are about to retire. Even though the preacher has had weeks upon weeks to deliver one message after another to an assembled people (in my case here, more than eight years), the preacher might just think there is this one last chance to get across the message of the Christian gospel. (This time it will work.) And for me, it’s not just eight years. I preached my first sermon in 1985, the summer before I started seminary, delivered to my sponsoring parish. The sermon was on the dangers of perfectionism. I confess I am still preaching some variation of this sermon to myself.
Ah, well.
It is also said about preachers that we all have one sermon. Scratch the surface of what we deliver week after week, and you will find essentially one message. I will tell you what my one sermon is: The path to spiritual growth in the Christian path is not an easy one, but it’s worth the trouble and it will transform your life.
There, I’ve said it, and now I’m going to go on to something else. (But of course, this message will still be there.)
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had put a little box in St. Nicholas School, labelled, “Ask Rev. Liz.” I invited the students at the school to give me questions to answer each week during Thursday morning assembly.
I was amazed by the questions I received! These young children are wrestling with some weighty issues. There is one question that has stuck in my head. It is this: “What is the meaning of life if we are just going to die?”
What is the meaning of life if we are just going to die? How many of us have ever wondered this?
I will tell you what I told the school assembly.
The meaning of life is found in how we live it. And there are three key features to how to live our life.
First, be good to others. It is tempting to go through life thinking our aim is to get what we can for ourselves, to look out for our own interests, and so on and so forth. But that really does not make for a very pleasant life. We end up disgruntled, always watching whether someone has one up on us, whether someone has done us wrong. So instead, it’s better simply to be good to others. Do something for someone else. Look out for the interests of other people. Especially be good to those we love, those closest to home. Sometimes we can neglect them in the attempt to look out for people far afield.
Part of my job as a pastor and a priest has been to look out for other people — and also to try not to neglect those closest to home, namely, my husband. The Old Testament reading from the prophet Jeremiah is one of those that has been a warning to me as a priest. It speaks of the shepherd who has not been true to the calling of being a shepherd, who has not looked out for the sheep. I don’t regard you as sheep — you all are far too independent for that! — but I do consider that my job has been to be a shepherd. As I retire from active ministry, I thank God for the privilege of serving as a shepherd, and I pray that God forgive me for the times I have not looked after you as well as I might have.
So, be good to others.
The second feature in how to live is to love God. It is hard, actually, to keep in the forefront of our minds and hearts the need to look out for other people, to be good to them. It is hard to weather the various trials and tribulations that life might throw at us. It is especially hard, when some part of our life is reduced to ashes, to rise up to new life and find hope again.
It is easier if we love God. It may seem strange that this would be so, but loving God keeps our focus in the right place: on things that are eternal rather than on things that simply pass away. Loving God turns our hearts and minds in the right direction.
But loving God is not always the easiest thing to do in this life. So God came among us as Christ Jesus to make it a bit easier. Jesus was among us in the flesh, living a human life, showing us God’s love, teaching about God’s kingdom, going to the cross for us, sending the Holy Spirit to guide us and inspire us throughout our life. And his resurrection from the dead shows how anything can rise out of the ashes. There is always hope; there is always new life.
Now let’s be honest: some people love God most easily by focusing on Jesus and what he did. Some people love God most easily by focusing on the power of the Spirit. Some people love God most easily by focusing on the majesty and power and mysteriousness of God. Whatever is true of you, simply love God. It is the right thing to do. It gives us meaning in life. And we receive blessing by loving God, which the Apostle Paul describes in his Letter to the Colossians:
“May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
The third feature of how to live you might not expect: Enjoy your life. Take joy in the little pleasures. Enjoy the work you have been given to do. Enjoy the people you have been given to be among. Everything will not be perfect, so have the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Being good to others and loving God actually go a long way to helping you enjoy life.
What is the meaning of life? You might discover the answer by being good to others, loving God, and enjoying your life.
But the question the schoolchild asked me had another part. The question was: What is the meaning of life if we are just going to die?
The question assumes something that I believe is untrue, and that the Christian faith proclaims is untrue: that we “just die.” We do not just die. There is a part of us that somehow is no longer present in a dead body, a part that lives forever, eternally. It is the part that asks questions like “What is the meaning of life?” It is the part that craves union, that craves belonging to something. It is the part that longs for home, our eternal home, with God. Do we understand all this? No, it is a mystery. But that does not mean it is not true.
And because we do not just die, it matters how we live. What happens to us after we die depends on how we live in this life, because how we live in this life changes the state of our souls, that eternal part of us that keeps on living after the death of our physical bodies.
Our Gospel reading this morning is from the crucifixion of Jesus. Two criminals are crucified with him. One mocks him, but the other recognizes that Jesus has done nothing wrong and indeed seems to recognize there is something special, something of God, in Jesus, because he says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
And Jesus replies, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
It is a suitable statement from each of us: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus, remember me when I am dead. Welcome me into the kingdom of God, where I will find my true and eternal home. But in the meantime, help me to live, each and every day, help me to be good to others, to love God, and to enjoy my life, so that at the end of my life, I may hear from you, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”