Pondering Our Mortality in the Light of Easter

Preached on April 23, 2006

By Pastor Thomas C. Davis

At Hanover Street Presbyterian Church

Texts:

Romans 8: 14-25, 38-39

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ?if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 14: 7-9

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

Sermon Text

On Thursday I met with the women's study circle and we talked about Easter.  I reminded them that on Easter Sunday I had preached that Easter still happens.  Easter happens in your life when something marvelously joyful takes place, or at least gently relieving, just when you thought there was no way out, nothing to hope for.  When Easter happens in your life, your spirit gets a boost, because of this unanticipated turn of events.  Some people might call such a fortunate turn just good luck; but to many believers it feels deeper and more personal than that.  It feels like God working a miracle in your life, just us as on the first Easter. 

I asked the ladies to share personal stories about their experiences of Easter, thus defined.  They were eager to do so, and the stories came pouring out.   Some narrated with teary eyes as they were touched by poignant memories.  One told of finding a serendipity soul mate, although sometime ago she had resigned herself to the single life, not hopeful that anyone else might come along.  Another told of almost losing her husband to illness, but then, getting him back again.  Quite a few told about near death experiences, out-of-body experiences, tranquil, strangely removed from any hurt or fear. 

I think most of you have had at least one such Easter experience, and maybe several.  If you haven't yet, then you likely will by and by, because God cares for you; and there are ample opportunities, when you have exhausted your own resources and don't see any way out, to experience the grace of God.

I was not surprised that so many of the ladies' Easter stories had to do with a close call with death. Death would seem to be the ultimate no-exit,  that from which one cannot escape.  How does the saying go?  There are only two certain things in this world:  death and taxes.  Maybe Paul should have added taxes to the list of the threats from which the love of God saves us.  He does include death. Apparently that's the first thing he thinks of, for he mentions it first. "I am convinced," he writes, "that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ, our Lord:  "not death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation."  Surely that last clause covers taxes.

Somehow--I don't remember exactly how, though it was in connection with aging and death--the ladies' conversation worked its way round to George Burns.  You may remember that George was over a hundred when he died.  Someone recalled him saying:  "Ah, to be ninety again!" I heard him quip once that he was so old that he had stopped buying green bananas.  It helps to make light of death, doesn't it.  Because thinking about dying can be quite a drag.  And it isn't just older folk who think about dying, by the way.  We sometimes say that teen agers think they're immortal; but that isn't so, surely.  Children, maybe, but not teen agers.  Part of the moodiness of teens surely relates to more than their raging hormones:  namely their growing awareness of their own mortality.

The other day I was walking back to church from lunch and found the intersection near the Wilmington Hospital blocked by numerous police cars and a crowd of people wearing frowns and the pallor of shock.  There was a body in the street.  A policeman was just covering it with a sheet.  Hmmmm, I thought.  Must have been hit by a car.  I didn't think about a shooting.  When later I discovered there had been a shooting, I was brought up short, you know:  the way you feel after a near miss in traffic.  "That could have been me!" I thought.  Only a minute or two, and I would have been walking through there.  It was the same feeling I had in Vietnam when I drove through a marketplace one afternoon on a routine trip for supplies, a marketplace that half an hour before had been ripped apart by a terrorist's bomb.  Yikes!  That could have been me lying in a heap on the side of the road. 

Most of the time, we don't think such thoughts.  Death is something almost hypothetical, something that happens to other people, not me, and not my loved ones either.  But then, something like this happens, and you realize:  Wait a minute.  Death isn't hypothetical.  It's real.  And it could happen to me.  It could happen to my wife, my father or mother, my son or daughter. 

That's a realization that brings you up by the short hairs.  But, it can also be a revelation, because it may enable you to taste for the first time the preciousness of life, the miracle of every moment of living.  Once in Vietnam I was driving through the countryside and came upon the aftermath of a fire fight.  There were bodies stacked on either side of the road like cordwood.  You steel yourself to sights like that, because if you don't it can make you crazy with sadness or rage.  You steel yourself, and drive on.  But part of you remembers.  When I got home and was attending a funeral, I remembered those bodies by the road as I beheld the body before me, in the coffin, so lifelike, just as if asleep; and I realized:  When we see the dead, they seem so odd to us.  But we are the oddity, really:  we, the living!  Life is such a strange contrast to all the inertness there is in the universe.  Life is so very odd, so miraculous; but mostly we take it for granted.

The ladies' Easter stories were comforting to me, not only because they told of unexpected joy, but because there were so many of them.  I thought I might have to pry them out, and perhaps make do with one or two; but no, they just came pouring out.  This suggests to me that you really do get it, people:  Easter does happen again and again and again.  It's not a one time event, buried under the dust of two millennia.  Easter happens whenever you realize that death is real, and it does, by golly, happen to people you love, and it will, by golly, happen to you, someday. But that's alright, because that's not the whole story.  Your memories, recounted through bitten lips and teary eyes, tell me that when you have had occasion to get up real close to the ogre and stare him in the face, you weren't frightened to death.  You were sustained.  One lady said:  I've heard that people sometimes see a bright light, but I didn't.  I just felt removed, safe, secure.  "I am convinced," wrote brother Paul, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."  It is so.  It is so.  Your stories tell me this. They too, as well as scripture, are a comfort.  The Spirit keeps telling us precious, precious truth, but much of the time we're not listening.  Would that it would not take a near brush with death to keep us awake.