"Living with a Deadline"

 

Romans 13:11-14

November 30, 2025

 

Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

 

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            When I woke up this past Monday morning, I already had a mental list of what I needed to do before leaving the house and knew of one stop I needed to make on the way to church and another that I wanted to make if there was time.  I had a visit planned for the morning and a meeting for late afternoon, and two possible chores for the evening dependent on how long the afternoon meeting ran.

            When I woke up on Tuesday, I knew I had to write and record this sermon that day and that there would be a trustees’ meeting after supper.  By midmorning I was already a little bit concerned about how Wednesday was going to go, because it involved not only working around my own schedule but those of two other people and the traffic on the busiest travel day of the year.

            On Wednesday I realized I had been overly optimistic on Tuesday.  Let’s leave it at that.

            Thursday was Thanksgiving.

            Friday was a day to catch up before an annual get-together with friends who live in Chestnut Hill.

            I had no idea while writing this sermon what Saturday was going to be like, but I had my suspicions.  I suspect that this most of us are looking at the period from Thanksgiving to Christmas as one big blur of looming deadlines and activities, checklists and assignments.  I suspect that a lot of people are thinking, “What can I fit into the week between Christmas and New Year’s?” and maybe even, “Can I get to such-and-such after the holidays?”

            When we are under time constraints we manage them.  At some point, however, we make choices around things that cannot be mutually accommodated.  I’ll mention now that we will have a guest preacher on October 25 because I will be in Richmond for my goddaughter’s wedding.  I’m telling you now that I won’t be back that night for Trunk-or-Treat.

           

            In his letter to the Romans, Paul expressed his own awareness that God will one day wind things up for this entire reality, this world, this universe, and that a sense of urgency about using the time that we have well is a sign of wisdom and maturity, as opposed to being among those who, faced with the recognition of their mortality, go off the deep end, trying to fit in every kind of pleasurable experience with a kind of frantic desperation: “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die,” or, “Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse.” 

            The dividing line is found between those who see this life as having direction and purpose and those who see it as random and undirected.  In the one view, life is what you put into it.  In the other, it’s all about what you can get out of it. One of those approaches builds and establishes.  The other approach depletes, then vanishes.

            You don’t have to go out of your way to make things hard, but always taking the easy way almost guarantees that in the end, you will leave something undone that could have been wonderful.  Think of the way that Michelangelo, as talented as he was, had to work years to develop his talent to the point where he had the opportunity to lie on his back in weird positions there in a cold, dark Sistine Chapel, until his neck was sore – working through the night sometimes, with paint dripping onto his face as he worked and an annoyed pope shouting up at him, “Are you done yet?  How much longer?”  Would his life have been somehow better if he had stayed on the ground and played around with an Etch-a-Sketch? 

            Maybe you could make that argument, but you’d have to admit that if he had done that, a lot of other lives would have had less beauty and inspiration in them, to his loss as much as to theirs.  We each have a purpose, whether we can identify it or not.  Each has a place in God’s work of creation.  One day that work will be complete, and as to that,

“the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” [Romans 13:12-14]

            In fifth grade, we had to memorize a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “A Psalm of Life”.  It sounded corny at the time, and cornier by high school.  It seems less so now.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

   Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

   And things are not what they seem.

 

Life is real! Life is earnest!

   And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

   Was not spoken of the soul.

 

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

   Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

   Find us farther than to-day.

 

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

   And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

   Funeral marches to the grave.

 

In the world’s broad field of battle,

   In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

   Be a hero in the strife!

 

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

   Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,— act in the living Present!

   Heart within, and God o’erhead!

 

Lives of great men all remind us

   We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

   Footprints on the sands of time;

 

Footprints, that perhaps another,

   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

   Seeing, shall take heart again.

 

Let us, then, be up and doing,

   With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

   Learn to labor and to wait.

 

"Galilee, Jamestown, and Plymouth"

 John 6:25-35

November 23, 2025

When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you come here?"  Jesus answered them, "Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves.  Do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal."

Then they said to him, "What must we do to perform the works of God?"

Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent."

So they said to him, "What sign are you going to give us, then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written, 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'"

Then Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.  For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."

They said to him, "Sir, give us this bread always."

Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

 

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            Jesus made some problems for himself when, according to John’s gospel [6:1-13], he fed five thousand people with only five loaves of bread and two fish.  That identified him as someone who could provide the basic needs of life for people who were living in desperate conditions. One researcher has estimated that in first-century Galilee

“those who had no problems with sustenance were altogether

at most 10%, whereas in continuous problems of sustenance

were living some 90% of the population, more than two

thirds of them in severe or extreme poverty.”[1]

 

Can you really blame them for seeing in Jesus a means to survive?  Put him in charge, especially when he would be replacing Herod, who taxed even the poor who had nothing to give, and you’ve solved everyone’s biggest problem. 

“When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” [John 6:15]

He knew what was going on and when they found him after he slipped away he was clear with them that he understood what it was about.

"Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” [John 6:26]

He had compassion on them.  At other times he spoke on their behalf, both to his disciples and to the complacent 10% who did not have to worry about their next meal.  In Luke’s version of the beatitudes, Jesus doesn’t just say,

“Blessed are you who are poor,

for yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you who are hungry now,

for you will be filled.

Blessed are you who weep now,

for you will laugh.” [Luke 6:20-21]

 

He goes on to say,

“But woe to you who are rich,

for you have received your consolation.

“Woe to you who are full now,

for you will be hungry.

Woe to you who are laughing now,

for you will mourn and weep.” [Luke 6:24-25]

 

He wasn’t going to be simply a means to an end.  He wasn’t going to let himself be used as a sort of cosmic vending machine multiplying the food supply all day, letting everyone off the hook so that none of us faces the difficult realities of (among other problems) hunger. 

            Hunger is not going to go away simply by giving someone food.  (Don’t misunderstand me here.  That is a good and necessary thing.  Jesus specifically tells us to do that, as he did it himself.)   Hunger has causes.  Some of it has to do with crop failures, climate change, natural disasters, and so forth.  Some of it, though, has to do with human sin and greed and the thoughtless acceptance of other people’s suffering as just part of how things are.  Jesus calls us to look beyond ourselves to see others and to see life as more than what is right in front of us.  He calls us to join with him in doing the work of God, which makes lasting change in human souls.

“Do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal." [John 6:27]

            You know, there is more than one tale of starvation that comes to us from the English settlement of North America.  Two of them are worth comparing.

The Jamestown colony in Virginia faced the winter of 1609-1610, which came to be known as “the starving time”.  The settlers there had been abusive toward the Powhatan as soon as they arrived, and there was no help from them when the food supplies ran low (in part because some of the settlers saw themselves as too good for farming).  Before the end of that winter, 80% of the English had died and some had turned to cannibalism.  The survivors had already abandoned the settlement and boarded ship to return to England when they met a pair of emergency relief ships sent from Bermuda and very reluctantly turned around.  Nine years later, they began to import people from Africa as slave labor.

            The other story is the one we tell because it’s less shameful.  It’s about the Pilgrims who also nearly starved in 1620, during their first winter in Massachusetts.  If they had not cared for one another and – more importantly – if the Wampanoag had not shared their own food and eventually their knowledge of crops and farming methods, they would all have died of hunger and sickness.  Somehow, they faced the situation with the attitude that they were all in it together, and in it together with the Savior who had called them to live together with him.

“I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” [John 6:35]

            Four centuries later, when people among us go hungry it is generally a matter of distribution and access rather than of supply.  For us, food insecurity comes from a lack of access to food that exists and sad to say often goes to waste.  The solution lies in how we see one another.  If we are in this world simply for what we can get out of it, even treating Jesus that way, then we are in big trouble.  If, however, we can deal with one another with the same compassion and honesty that he showed the people around him, then we can and will thrive together.  He himself is the true bread of life.

            And it’s a life worth living.

           

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[1]  Sakari Häkkinen, “Poverty in the First-Century Galilee” found at

www.researchgate.net/publication/309254500_Poverty_in_the_first-century_Galilee

"Last Words"

 

Luke 21:5-19

November 16, 2025

 

When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?”  And he said, “Beware that you are not led astray, for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.”

“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified, for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.”  Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes and in various places famines and plagues, and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.”

“But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify.  So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance, for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.  You will be betrayed even by parents and siblings, by relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death.  You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.”

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            There’s something contradictory in Jesus’ words to his disciples about being ready for the troubles that they would face in the days ahead of them, days that would involve war and persecution and arrest and even martyrdom.  He told them to be ready, but not to be overly prepared.  When the time came, it would be his Spirit speaking through them that would carry the day.

“So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance, for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” [Luke 21:14-15]

            That got me thinking about how important last words can be to us.  Some people of achievement are best known for their dying words than for anything else.  General John Sedgwick was a Union commander who fought his way through the Civil War.  He was wounded three times at Antietam, fought at Fredericksburg, and led a minor skirmish that was part of Gettysburg.  Yet what he is best known for happened at Spotsylvania Courthouse on May 9, 1864 when he was lining up his troops before a Confederate attack and said, “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance,” then took a bullet to the eye and fell down dead.  We have a sense that what someone declares at the end of their life, especially if it comes from them spontaneously, will be a genuine reflection of what has been most important to them.  On the scaffold with a noose around his neck, Nathan Hale declared, “I regret I have but one life to give for my country.” 

            Jesus knew that his followers would also pass through times when they would be found in dangerous situations and face all kinds of trials for his sake, but he wanted them to know that even in such terrible moments there would be a chance to let God bring good out of their suffering.  It would not be for nothing or meaningless.

“But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name.  This will give you an opportunity to testify.” [Luke 21:12-13] 

Jesus himself would face that moment of emptiness on the cross, crying out to God, asking why he had forsaken him, but also using his very last breath to say,

“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” [Luke 23:46]

So, too, his disciples have followed in his footsteps, when called upon, in ways that have testified to the faithfulness of the God who raised Jesus from the dead and in whose hands their spirits, too, can safely rest.

Many of them have done that in ways that others have remembered, ways that have matched the individual patterns of their lives.  Some of them may be more or less legendary.  I like the story about Lawrence, a deacon who was treasurer of the church in Rome.  The emperor demanded he turn over the church’s riches and Lawrence was given a day to gather them together.  The next morning he showed up with a crowd of some of the poorest people in the city around him and said, “Here is what is most precious.”  The emperor didn’t appreciate this, and ordered him to be burned to death over a slow fire so that the pain would drag out.  In the middle of that torture, Lawrence spoke his last words, which were, “Turn me over; this side is done.”

Or what about the story from not all that long ago, maybe only a story, but maybe true – there are conflicting reports – about the band on the Titanic as it was going down playing “Nearer, My God to Thee”?  Can you imagine being one of the survivors in a lifeboat, unsure of rescue, or one of the victims about to go under for the last time and hearing the tune to these words:

“Nearer my God, to thee, nearer to thee!

E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me,

Still all my song shall be,

‘Nearer, my God, to thee; nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee!’”

 

Dying, they did what they could to share word of eternal life.

 

            Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian and pastor imprisoned for his opposition to Hitler, was hanged in the last days of the war as Allied troops closed in on Berlin.  He had been allowed to lead a short service for a small group of prisoners on Easter.  One of them who survived wrote:

“He had hardly finished his last prayer when the door opened and two evil-looking men in civilian clothes came in and said:

‘Prisoner Bonhoeffer.  Get ready to come with us.’  Those words ‘Come with us’ – for all prisoners they had come to mean one thing only – the scaffold.

We bade him good-bye – he drew me aside – ‘This is the end,’ he said. ‘For me the beginning of life.’”[1]

            But do not forget the many millions of others who over time have gone to the Lord in peace who nevertheless have spoken and lived their faith at that moment.  I sort of have to include John Wesley, whose last words to the many people gathered around him as he died, were “Best of all, God is with us.”  I also have to mention the last words I heard from my mother’s cousin Peg the day after her 100^th birthday – not her last words in this world, but the last chance we had to visit before she moved to Kansas the day after that – “I probably won’t see you here again, but I’ll see you in heaven.”

            Jesus always comes through, and when we speak from hearts filled with his Spirit, he says,

“I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” [Luke 21:15]

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[1] Payne Best quoted in Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010), 528.

"Children of the Resurrection"

 

Luke 20:27-38

November 9, 2025

 

²⁷ Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him ²⁸ 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. ²⁹ Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman and died childless; ³⁰ then the second^] 31 and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. ³² Finally the woman also died. ³³ In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”

³⁴ Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, ³⁵ 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. ³⁶ Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. ³⁷ 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. ³⁸ Now he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.”

 

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            In the days when the Romans controlled Judaea there were a lot of different groups among the locals.  Two of the most prominent were the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  The Pharisees were, in a way, the liberals.  They believed in observing the Law laid down in the Torah, but wanted to do it in a broad way.  If you weren’t supposed to travel more than a mile from home on the Sabbath, say, then they would ask whether you might not consider your whole village your home so that you could visit family who lived a mile from your house.  The Sadducees were more strict.  They would insist your home meant your home, your house, the place you eat and sleep.  But the big difference between the two groups was that the Pharisees believed in life after death, and the Sadducees believed that dead is dead.

            Now, by “life after death” the Pharisees did not mean that each of us have a soul that continues after the body gives out.  They meant that on a future universal day of judgement all the dead would be raised bodily from the grave to stand on the earth and answer to God for their deeds, good or bad.  In Jesus’ description of the Last Judgement [Matthew 25:31-46] that’s what he talks about, though he speaks of something more when he says how

“these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” [Matthew 25:46]

Jesus and the Pharisees had a lot more in common that Jesus and the Sadducees, which explains the episode where they thought they could trip him up with a question about the life of the resurrection if they pushed it to its absurd extremes.

            It’s kind of fun to see Jesus push back repeatedly, each time in a more pointed way.

            First, it’s something along the lines of: “You dummy!  Do you really think that the life of people raised back into existence would be just more of the same?”

“…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.” [Luke 20:35-36]

Then he addresses the real argument, the one about whether or not there is a life to come.

“And the fact that the dead are raised”

(which is the question on the table,)

“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.” [Luke 20:37-38]

That, in turn, is a way of raising a yet deeper question for them: “What kind of God is this, who is

“God not of the dead but of the living”?

            Do God’s actions make no difference in those who experience his power and his love?  No.  The Sadducees, no less than the rest of God’s people, should know that to encounter him is to be changed, sometimes in dramatic ways.  It is right there in the scriptures. 

Moses, whom he cites, met God at the burning bush and was changed from a fugitive hiding out in the desert into a prophet who would confront the Pharaoh of Egypt, and lead the whole people out of slavery into freedom, then was used by God to provide them with guidance on how to live in ways that would keep them free in spirit as well. 

Jesus mentions Abraham who, long before Moses was born, became the father of nations because of his trust in God’s power to give life.  Paul would later write of him,

“He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), and the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.  No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.” [Romans 4:19-21] 

            And even though it had not yet happened when Jesus was confronting the Sadducees’ questioning, the greatest example was yet to come when three women who had stood by watching as Jesus’ breathed his last on a cross went to the tomb where his lifeless body had been quickly placed and found it empty; and when two of his confused and disappointed disciples had met a stranger whom they suddenly recognized and who then just disappeared; and when other disciples who had gone fishing recognized him standing on the beach, waiting to share breakfast with them; and when the Pharisee Saul who had been persecuting Jesus’ followers looked up and saw a blinding light and heard Jesus’ own voice speak his name.

The God of Jesus – “he is God not of the dead but of the living.”  To live with him is to be changed, here and now, in ways that work to bring God’s own hopes and plans for us to life.  To live with him, here and now, is to live with pardon for all that is past and hope for all that is new, day by day.  To live with him, here and now, is to be

“children of God, being children of the resurrection.” [Luke 20:36]

The First Letter of John lingers on that thought.

“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.   And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.” [I John 3:1-3]

We are on our way, here and now, to something good.