Sermon for Baptism of the Lord Sunday, Year A, "Here Is My Servant," Isaiah 42:1-9, Matthew 3:13-17

 Sermon 1/8/23

Isaiah 42:1-9, Matthew 3:13-17

Here Is My Servant

I’ve been thinking a lot about our Christian concept of call in the last couple of years. One of the most important things my mom taught me about faith was that God calls all of us. Being called by God isn’t something that’s just for pastors, for preachers. No, she reminded me often that everybody is called - it’s just a matter of figuring out what it is that you’re called to do. So, I was always on the lookout for my call from God. Mom never told us being called by God would look like any one thing, and indeed, my siblings and I took very different paths. But, as seems to be somewhat of the family way, I slowly realized I was called to pastoral ministry. And I went to seminary, and I pastored churches for 17 years. And during my years of pastoring, I’ve loved talking to other people about listening for and finding and answering their call from God. I love helping people discern what God is up to in their lives. 

Sometimes, though, I wonder if the way we’ve talked about being called by God in the church has been too confusing, or too narrow, too limiting for people. Not everyone has had the same journey with “call” as I have had. My brother Tim, for example, really struggled to find a career path. These days, he works in international banking doing something I don’t understand at all. But I know he would never describe his work as a “call.” And with my other brothers working in higher education and in vocational rehabilitation, Tim sometimes feels like the odd one out. He’s never felt like God was calling him to a particular kind of work. I worry that we’ve tied “call” and “career” too closely together. “Careers” as we think of them today weren’t really a thing in the scripture, anyway. Nobody was picking college majors in Jesus’s day. 

And then there’s me: I was pastoring in the local church, but I’m not anymore. I loved a lot about being a pastor, and the people I served were wonderful, but eventually some of the stresses and strains of pastoring started to outweigh the joys. I’m reminded of theologian Frederick Buechner’s words about vocation - words I bet my Uncle has shared with you at some point - that the “place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.” (from Wishful Thinking.) I certainly wasn’t miserable in my life as a pastor. But neither was I finding my deep gladness any longer. Do calls from God end? Do they get replaced with a new one? When I decided to go back to school to work on my PhD, I wasn’t necessarily feeling called by God to that particular path. But I did think it might bring me some deep joy to be in school again. Is that “enough” to “count” as a call? Or is it only a call from God if we feel we are being pointed by God to take a very specific path? 

As it would happen, a couple of the thinkers I’ve encountered in my PhD work have helped me think about how we’re called in some new ways. My focus is on Christianity and Animals. Dr. David Clough, a scholar in the field, writes that the although humans are more like nonhuman animals than we like to think, what sets human apart might be our vocation - our call. And for Clough, our call from God, our purpose, is laid out for us right in chapter 1 of Genesis: we’re made in God’s image - and being God’s image in the world is our purpose! (1) Imagine how your life would be shaped if you focused all your attention on trying to be the best reflection of God in the world you could be! It wouldn’t matter so much what career you chose, although there are certainly some careers that might make it easier for us than others to try to reflect God in our work. Instead, all aspects of our lives could be fulfilling our call from God. Dr. Christopher Carter is another scholar whose work I really admire. As he thinks about the relationship between humans and nonhuman animals, he says that our human task is to figure out what it means to be human and that doing that figuring out takes practice. We have to practice being the kinds of humans God means for us to be. (2) There’s something comforting to me about that idea - that we don’t always do a great job of being the humans-created-in-God’s-image we’re meant to be, but that we can practice, work at it, get better at it - better at loving, caring, growing, and reflecting God’s image. So - what if the biggest call from God that we need to hear (again and again) is the call to be God’s image in the world? And what if we spend our lives practicing and practicing this work until we can say that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves, and really mean it. That’s a call that we won’t outgrow, a call that doesn’t fit for just one season of our lives.

And it is, in fact, the call of our baptism. Martin Luther, the 16th century excommunicated Catholic priest who was a leader in what we call the Protestant Reformation, taught an understanding of the scripture and the meaning of baptism that we still hold called “the priesthood of all believers.” Luther argued that Christians didn’t need to rely on a mediator, a priest, to go between them and God. Christians had direct access to God through their own faith life. And for Luther, it is baptism that provides the marker of our relationship with God - the entry point, in a sense. In baptism, we are all made “priests” of sorts, not because we will all be leaders of congregations and preside over the sacraments, but because, as 1 Peter 2:9 says, “we can show others the goodness of God.” God calls us to service and discipleship in the baptismal waters. In baptism, we’re reminded that we are created in God’s image. Baptism is a way of answering God’s call to a life of faith, and answering “yes” to God’s invitation of grace. 

Today, we remember that Jesus was baptized too. Jesus’s baptism has always been kind of puzzling. If Jesus is God’s child, is God, is without sin, why does he need to be baptized? And Jesus never really explains to John why Jesus has to be baptized - we see that in our reading from Matthew today. His “it’s proper, it makes things right” doesn’t really answer all my questions anyway. In fact, even the gospel writers seem to me a little puzzled by the scene (hence their including John asking the question they and we are all asking: why does Jesus need to get baptized?), but they know it is really important. It marks the beginning of his ministry. It serves as the dividing line between his life before, which we know so little about, and his life after - his preaching, teaching, death, and resurrection. Can remembering Jesus’s baptism help us understand our own baptism? How can it help us as we ponder our purpose, our call? 

I think of our reading today from the prophet Isaiah. In our passage, God is describing a servant, full of wisdom and justice, who will help Israel, God’s people, in a time of great need. This servant is upheld by God, chosen by God, one in whom God delights. The servant is full of God’s spirit. The servant works to bring forth justice, persists in the midst of struggles, and pursues justice even when things are challenging. God leads the servant, and sets them as a light to the people. The servant works to open the eyes that are blind, to bring prisoners out of dungeons and darkness. Through the servant, God does new things. 

We tend to see passages like this as descriptions of Jesus - whether because Isaiah was predicting the future (even while he certainly believed he was just writing about his own context, and a hoped for earthly leader amidst the war and chaos of his time), or because we at least read back into these texts and see in Isaiah’s hope for a kind of ideal leader a description that only Jesus could fulfill so completely. But either way, I think when we read this description of God’s servant, by seeing this is clearly “about Jesus,” we miss how it is about us too. Because if this text is only describing Jesus, it can’t possibly be describing something we might need to fulfill through lives of discipleship. If only Jesus can be the kind of leader the prophets envisioned, then our discipleship isn’t so important - no one is depending on us.  

Instead though, again and again in the gospels, Jesus asks us to follow him not from a distance, awed by his mighty deeds that we could never do; no, Jesus asks us to follow closely and learn how to do everything he does. Jesus shares power. Jesus says we can do what he does and more. Jesus wants us, calls us, to be like him. And I think that we can be like Jesus because Jesus is like us. I think Jesus is baptized because we are baptized. Jesus is God-with-us - that’s what we’ve just celebrated in Christmas. And being baptized with us is another way of being with us, joining us together in one purpose, one call. If Jesus is God incarnate, then we are God imaged. Jesus shows us God in the flesh and then asks us to do the same for one another. Jesus show us the goodness of God, and then we spend our lives showing the goodness of God to others.   

I’m about halfway through my PhD program, and I’m still not sure what particular path I’m taking - if I’ll teach, or work for an organization, or even a  church again, or somehow figure out a way to go back to school for an 89th time. But I still trust my mom’s advice. We’re all called. We’re called to follow Jesus and be as much like him as we can. We’re called to reflect God’s image to the world. We’re called to show God’s goodness to others. It will take practice. But that’s what being human is all about, and Jesus promises to join us in our work, being like us, so we can be like him. Thanks be to God. Amen. 

1. Clough, On Animals Vol 1: Systematic Theology 

2. Cite Carter, The Spirit of Soul Food

Sermon, "CreatureKind," Isaiah 11:1-9

Sermon 7/31/22

Isaiah 11:1-9

CreatureKind

I’m thankful for Pastor Joyce’s invitation not just to be with you in worship today, but also, more specifically, to talk to you about what led me to become a vegan and to commit to a focus on animals in my studies. I first became a vegetarian in college, years before I became a pastor, but in all of my years of ministry, I’ve never actually focused on why I’ve chosen the path of veganism in a sermon, and so Pastor Joyce’s invitation was a welcome request to think about sharing a passion in this particular way. Because indeed, for me, veganism is a spiritual commitment, and a part of expression of faith. 

Before I dive into this topic, though, I want to try to set you at ease. Food - what we choose to eat and why - that’s a really intimate topic. Even though we all eat, every day, for a variety of reasons, what we choose to eat is a topic that has been burdened with a lot of expectation and pressure from society and culture, from our well-meaning friends and family, and from ourselves. We wrap together what we eat with what we’re worth. We judge the food choices of others and we certainly judge ourselves. We struggle with disordered eating. And we blanket food with shame. I want to be clear that although I’m sharing about my journey, and how my relationship with food and animals is part of my faith commitments, I do not seek to shame or judge anyone who makes different choices than me. Food is a necessary part of life. But food, nourishment, is also a gift from God, and a source of joy, a blessing of community. My hope is that we all might experience food as just those things.

I first became interested in animal ethics when I was in high school. My older brother Jim had recently become a vegetarian. I was curious about his decision, and he told me he knew he wasn’t willing to kill his own food, and if he wasn’t willing to do the work of bringing meat to his plate, he didn’t want to eat it. He felt like we, particularly in the US, were disconnected from where our food comes from. I kept thinking about that, and watched him shift what he was eating, and then when I was a freshman in college, I followed in his footsteps and made the switch. My initial motivations, then, weren’t particularly spiritual in nature, but I quickly started to think about my decision in terms of my faith, because that’s what I tried to do with all of my life decisions: consider what God was calling me to do. 

The Bible has lots of different messages about animals. In the creation accounts in Genesis, God directs people to eat plants, but not animals. After the flood though, God says people can eat animals too. There are many laws described in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, that give specific instructions for animal sacrifice as an offering to God, or for animals that are off limits to eat, considered unclean for one reason or another. Animals are included in Sabbath rest. In the text from Isaiah we shared today, the prophet imagines a future of peace, symbolized by loving relationships between animals and humans and predators and prey. When the prophet Jonah is sent to Nineveh to warn them of God’s judgment, humans and animals alike engage in acts of repentance. In the gospels, Jesus multiplies fish and loaves for the crowds, and directs his followers on fishing practices. He talks about the value of birds and flowers to God. Paul writes about the whole creation waiting with eager longing for redemption. Peter has a vision where God tells him he can eat animals that Peter thought unclean, for the sake of building relationships with new Gentile followers of Jesus. There’s no single message about animals in the Bible. But, they’re obviously important, since they’re mentioned so frequently. And God created them and called them good. So what can the role of animals in the BIble tell us? What can we conclude about our relationship with animals? 

Several years ago, I was presenting a sermon series on women in the Bible and I was preaching about Deborah and Jael in the book of Judges. Jael, if you aren’t familiar, is the woman who helps Deborah and the Israelites to victory by driving a tent peg through the skull of the sleeping military commander who was taking refuge in her tent. A very pleasant story. And I was struggling to figure out what to say about this memorable passage: what “lesson” did I want people to take away. And one of my colleagues reminded me that my task is to make sure I’m sharing the “good news” in the text, wherever it is to be found. That simple reminder helped me a lot that Sunday, and has helped me a lot in my preaching life since then. When we read a text, where’s the good news - the gospel - the message of Jesus? Where’s the message of God’s unconditional love? Where’s the transformational power of God’s reign on earth, right here and now? Where’s the good news? 

When I come to the scriptures thinking about animals, I have, at heart, the same question. Where’s the good news for animals? Is there good news for animals? If animals aren’t included in good news, why are they left out? And if they are, what does that look like? The founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley, actually had something to say about my questions. Surprising to even to this staunch United Methodist, I learned just in the last couple of years that John Wesley spent significant time exploring the place of animals in the New Creation, the reign of God, in a sermon dedicated to the topic titled, “The General Deliverance.” Wesley insists that creatures have a place in heaven, where they, like human creatures, experience renewal and restoration. He writes, 

The whole brute creation will then, undoubtedly, be restored, not only to the vigour, strength, and swiftness which they had at their creation, but to a far higher degree of each than they ever enjoyed. They will be restored, not only to that measure of understanding which they had in paradise, but to a degree of it as much higher than that ...  The liberty they then had will be completely restored, and they will be free in all their motions … No rage will be found in any creature, no fierceness, no cruelty, or thirst for blood. (1) 

So, Wesley argues that: all animals are restored completely to their full selves in the new earth - not even just to the form and life they had in paradise, but something even better than that. They’ll be freed from both being recipients and perpetrators of cruelty. The suffering animals experience on earth will cease to exist in the new earth and heavens, and animals will experience “happiness suited to their state” “without end.” Further, he says that animals receive recompense for all they once suffered, and they’ll enjoy perpetual happiness.Thus, Wesley says, since God includes animals in God’s plan of redemption, we too ought to show mercy to animals. We should “soften our hearts towards the meaner creatures, knowing that the Lord careth for them.” 

In light of Welsey’s understanding of the place of animals in eternity, part of God’s redeemed creation, for me, part of the way I embrace God’s reign and redemption now is by seeking a life for animals now that mirrors what Wesley hopes for their eternal future. Any way we can embody God’s eternal reign in the here and now is what I think the good news of the gospel is all about. If God plans on redeeming all creation, including animals, and if God shows mercy even to animals, we can try to enact now as much as possible (on earth as in heaven, we might say) the vision we believe God has for the future. For me, veganism - eliminating all animal products from my diet, is a way that I try to embrace God’s reign, so that all creation might thrive now. 

In my school work and in my work with a Christian animal advocacy agency called CreatureKind, I’ve also been coming to understand more and more how concern for animals deeply ties in with my concern for people, particularly people on the margins. Rev. Dr. Chris Carter, a United Methodist pastor and professor in California, talks about how the systems of domination that try to show a sharp divide between humans and nonhuman animals are the same systems that also make a sharp divide between the ideal human: white heterosexual men in our culture - and humans who don’t “measure up”: women, people of color, and anyone else who isn’t the white male ideal. In fact, often, one of the ways people have belittled humans who “don’t measure up” is by comparing them to animals, animalizing them, trying to take away their humanity. I hope it is clear that this whole system - a system that creates an ideal human image that includes only certain races and genders and classes and types of people, and then makes everyone else less-than - is far outside of God’s vision for us, and for the earth. Instead, in love, God creates us in God’s own image, a part of the whole creation, all of which God calls good, and all of which God longs to see flourish and thrive. And so, for me, when I commit to compassion for animals, I’m also recommitting to pursue justice and right relationship with my human neighbors too. The deeper I dig, the more I see my commitment to animals as part of my practice of faith. 

I return to our text from Isaiah 11: 

The wolf shall live with the lamb,

the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together,

   and a little child shall lead them.

7 The cow and the bear shall graze,

   their young shall lie down together;

   and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,

   and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

9 They will not hurt or destroy

   on all my holy mountain; (NRSV)

This beautiful vision  is a text we normally hear at Advent. Perhaps we can only embrace such a vision of the future like Isaiah’s near Christmas, when our hearts are full and we’re anticipating welcoming the Christ Child. But I wonder: what is your vision of how things will be in eternity? And, if we pray that God’s will was done on earth as in heaven, what can you start doing now to bring God’s reign ever closer to earth? However each of us answers those questions, let’s do our best to be about the work of making our dreams with God a reality in the here and now. Amen. 

1. Wesley, John. “The General Deliverance.” Sermons on Several Occasions Vol. V. New York: Ezekiel Cooper and John Wilson, 1806.

2. Excerpts drawn from a blog post of mine, https://www.facebook.com/unitedmethodistanimaladvocates/posts/176050987624111. 

Sermon for the First Sunday after Christmas, Year C, "Beautiful Feet," Isaiah 52:7-10

Sermon 12/26/21

Isaiah 52:7-10

Beautiful Feet

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’” I love these words, this imagery, from the prophet Isaiah. Although Isaiah had his own context and other situations and visions in mind, we in the church have not been able to help hearing his words as a Christmas text. Messengers who announce good news, peace, salvation? Visions of the heavenly host of angels singing to shepherds in a field fill our minds. 

But for me, the first response I have to this text is to think of my week at Creative Arts Camp at Aldersgate, one of our conference’s church camps, the summer between elementary school and junior high. At Creative Arts Camp, we put on a musical, and our musical that year was The Friendship Company, based on Christian singer Sandi Patty’s album for children. One of the songs on that album? “Beautiful Feet.” Here are some of the lyrics: 

There are feet that skip and play

There are feet that run away

There are feet that love a race and win or lose

There are chubby feet and small

And strong feet to kick a ball

But beautiful are the feet that bring good news.

There are feet that sleekly swim

Through the water wearing fins

There are feet that shimmy up the tallest trees

There are happy feet and sad

There are aching feet and mad

But beautiful are the feet that publish peace.

Those are beautiful feet

Beee-uuu-ti-ful feet!

Dutiful, cute-i-ful lett!

Tried and true-ti-ful feet

Me-ti-ful

You-ti-ful

Do you have beautiful feet!

I was old enough to outwardly find this song kind of cheesy, and young enough to enjoy singing such a goofy piece, and all these decades later, “But beautiful are the feet that bring good news” still rings in my head - this song won’t let go. 

What does it mean to have beautiful feet? Do you have beautiful feet? I’m sure some of us don’t like the way our feet look, and some people don’t like feet altogether. Some people have feet that don’t cooperate with what they want them to do. Some people have injured feet, or don’t have feet at all. But I don’t think this verse is trying to focus on beautiful feet by any typical measures. This verse isn’t about pedicured, polished feet. This passage is praising whatever it is that gets you where you are going to accomplish a most important task: carrying peace, bringing good news, and announcing salvation. This passage is praising the messengers who carry God’s news to people who so need to hear it. 

In the Bible, we have a word for people who carry messages for God: angels. When we see the word “angel” in the Bible, it literally means messenger of God. What usually pops into our minds when we think of angels are the haloed figures that we see in Christmas pageants. And indeed, angels, God’s messengers, are key figures in the Christmas story. An angel tells Mary that she will give birth to Jesus. An angel tells Joseph not to divorce Mary and dissolve their relationship. Angels tell the shepherds where to find Jesus, and what Jesus’s birth means. Angels protect Jesus after his birth from Herod’s deadly maneuvers by again speaking to Joseph. They’re pretty central to the story. 

But, God’s messengers aren’t just these divine, ethereal beings. The word for regular old human messenger is the same word we use for angels - and that’s because the task is the same. Messengers carry news. And God wants us to be messengers of God’s good news, God’s Christmas message, God’s peace and salvation and joy and justice too. “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation.” No halo required. 

Who has been a Christmas messenger for you? Who has delivered the Christmas message to you? I’m not just asking about who has told you the nativity story of Luke 2. I’m wondering who has told you the message of the heart of Christmas - that God is with us, the God has been made flesh in Jesus, like we read about in our text from John 1? Who has brought you a message of peace - not just the abstract, fluffy message of peace, but who has shared a message with you that has helped you experience the peace of Christ deep in your heart? Who has helped you receive a message of salvation - a message that God seeks wholeness for your life, and your right relationship with God and neighbor? Who has helped you hear and receive and trust God’s good news of unconditional, unrelenting, unshakable love? How beautiful are those who have brought you these life-changing messages! And how beautiful are you - down to your core - when you are messengers of Christmas, angels in your own right, sharing peace, joy, and salvation! 

Aside from the “Beautiful Feet” song that has stuck forever in my mind, there’s another song that our Isaiah text calls to mind - a Christmas carol - and one we’ll sing to close our worship today. “Go, Tell It on the Mountain” also draws on themes from this Isaiah text. It was never a favorite carol of mine growing up, but once I learned more about its history, I started appreciating it more deeply, and it has certainly been on my mind this week. 

A few decades after the end of the Civil War, an African American choir director in Tennessee named John Wesley Work, Jr. set out with a goal of  preserving the spirituals of black Americans from the years of slavery which had mostly been passed on by oral tradition. Work's project influenced nearby Fisk College, a historically black college, and their choir - the Fisk Jubilee Singers - took the spirituals Work collected on tour with them around the country, and even to England to perform for Queen Victoria. The Fisk Jubilee Singers  saved the debt-ridden College from closure with their touring, and they have been credited with keeping the Negro spiritual alive. “[Jubilee] singer Ella Sheppard recalled, ‘The slave songs were never used by us then in public. They were associated with slavery and the dark past and represented the things to be forgotten. Then, too, they were sacred to our parents, who used them in their religious worship.”” (1) 

“Go, Tell It on the Mountain” was one of these songs. Theologian James Cone says that the hymn conveys the message: “the conquering King, and the crucified Lord . . . has come to bring peace and justice to the dispossessed of the land.  That is why the slave wanted to ‘go tell it on de mountain.” With its peace and justice themed Christmas message, “Go, Tell It” has been adapted many times. It was used as a freedom song during the Civil Rights movement. Peter, Paul and Mary recorded a version. And one version included a verse about segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace. “I wouldn’t be Governor Wallace, I’ll tell you the reason why, I’d be afraid He might call me And I wouldn’t be ready to die.” 

The original author of the spiritual is unknown, but thankfully Work included it in his project, and his brother Frederick helps draw attention to it. They paired the text of the spiritual with a joyful tune that seemed to express the hope and liberation of Christmas message. The earliest published version of the hymn included the refrain that’s familiar to us, with some different verses, like “When I was a seeker I sought both night and day. I ask de Lord to help me, An’ He show me de way.” Eventually, John Work Jr.’s son, John Work III, decided to expand on the song - it is unclear if he uncovered existing additional verses that had been lost, or if he wrote his own new verses to the hymn, but in 1940 his version was published, the version we know today. By the mid 1950s, the hymn was being included in some mainline Protestant hymnals. Go, tell it on the mountain! Jesus is born! Let peace and justice be proclaimed. 

That’s our task friends. Christmas Day was yesterday. But now in the season of Christmas and beyond, our task is to be messengers of all that we’ve heard and seen at Christmas, all that we’ve experienced of God and God’s peace and justice, all that we’ve known of God’s love. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those who announce peace, good news, and salvation! So let’s go and tell it - Jesus is born, God become flesh, God with us, always. Amen. 

1. This section of the sermon uses this resource (St. Peter’s) and the one Hawn resource listed below. All quotations come from the Hawn resource. “Advent Devotional Day 7,” St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, https://www.stpeterslutheranyork.com/blog/advent-devotional-day-7

2. C. Michael Hawn, “History of Hymns: “Go, Tell it On the Mountain,”” Discipleship Ministries. https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-go-tell-it-on-the-mountain-1

Sermon, "Unafraid: Fear and Death," 2 Corinthians 4:7-15, Isaiah 40:27-31, Psalm 46

Sermon 8/11/19

2 Corinthians 4:7-15, Isaiah 40:27-31, Psalm 46

Unafraid: Fear and Death*

We’ve been talking about fears for the last several weeks. We started about thinking about fear and security, our need to feel safe and the ways we can let that need close us off from anyone and anything too different from us, if we forget that God’s perfect love casts out fear. We talked about fear and failure, and the pressure we put on ourselves when we mistakenly believe that our value as a person is derived from our supposed successes. We thought about fear and loneliness, and how we can perhaps best fight off our sense of isolation by focusing instead on making sure others are not lonely. We talked about fear and change, and how change sometimes feels like grief, but though weeping lasts for the night, the joy of God comes in the morning.

Today, we’re concluding our series by talking about fear and death. I know, a light-hearted wrap-up to this series! But that’s the thing - we human beings have a lot of different experiences, different hopes, different fears - but death is a common experience that every single one of us will face. Everybody dies. And yet, despite the universality of our experience, despite the fact that everyone dies - no matter how healthy you are, no matter how rich you are, no matter what country you live in, no matter what, your journey on this earth, this plane of existence, will one day end in death - despite that common bond we have - humans, plants, animals, all of us - in our culture we tend to shy away from talking about death. Sometimes, when I’m meeting with a family to plan a funeral for a loved one, the family can’t answer any questions for me about what their loved one wanted in a service. And they can’t easily answer questions about what they want in a funeral service - because they’ve avoided thinking about it, avoided talking about it. I get it - I do. I’m in the process of making my will right now, and making sure I’ve communicated in writing the kind of decisions I’d want someone to make for me if I was in the hospital, on life support. I told my Mom that I was doing this, and that I’ll make sure to communicate with her and my siblings about where important documents are. It’s not a light and easy conversation to have. And I’ve always teased with my Mom that we don’t need to talk about these things for her because she is not allowed to die - ever. Of course we don’t want to talk about death when it comes to our loved ones because despite whatever hopes we have for eternal life, we know the loss and grief we’ll experience right now when we lose someone we love is the worst kind of pain we’ll experience in this life. 

But I think it is more than that - our fear of death. I think we especially fear the unknown, and what happens in death is the great unknown. No matter what we learn about the process of death, no matter what we read about visions of eternity, we can never really know what death is like until we experience it. Death is an unknown, and that is what is most frightening about it. I think about a poster I had on my wall in junior high. It was an image of our galaxy, with an arrow pointing to a tiny spot on the image that said, “You are Here.” I can’t remember where I got it - something from school probably. I thought it was pretty clever. But the more I looked at it over time, the more uncomfortable it made me. I could get pretty lost in my head thinking about the size of the universe - how either it having an edge or not having an edge - both possibilities seemed impossible and baffling. And then to think that I was a tiny speck on a tiny planet in one solar system in one galaxy out of that whole perhaps infinite mess - it was just too much to consider. I had to take the poster down. Sometimes I think ours fears about death are kind of the same. There’s too much that’s unknowable about death, too much that is beyond what our minds can really take in, and so it’s hard to look death in the eye too often. 

So we do it in snippets. On Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent, we start by remembering that we’re mortal, literally marking ourselves with ashes. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” And at funerals, at the graveside, the prayer of committal says, “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” When someone else has died, for a little bit, we have to face our own eventual death. 

Adam Hamilton spends time in his book Unafraid reflecting on the fear of death as he studies the words of the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians. By the time Paul writes this letter to the young church at Corinth, things aren’t going so well. There’s been tension between the young faith community and Paul. He’s had to correct some of their beliefs and behaviors, and in turn, some of the Corinthians call Paul’s leadership into question. Paul’s a bit on the defensive. He and his co-workers have been through a lot. He so wants the church at Corinth to thrive, because he wants the gospel message to thrive. And he’s given heart and soul to make it happen. You can hear the weariness in his tone: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” Adam Hamilton picks up on Paul’s metaphor of the clay pots. “We have this treasure in clay jars,” Paul writes. Hamilton says that our bodies are the clay jars, and clay jars of Paul’s day weren’t meant to last forever. They get crushed and broken and destroyed. But they hold a treasure - the real, essential us. (211) 

I’m struck particularly by Paul’s words starting at verse 10. Paul says he and his co-workers carry in their bodies the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus might be visible in their bodies too. “For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh.” Paul seems to say that we can only fully reflect the life of Christ when we embrace the sacrificial death of Christ as part of us too. After all, something can’t be resurrected unless it has first died. So how can we embrace new life without first embracing death. Since Paul was pretty hopeful and intent on continuing to preach the gospel, we know Paul didn’t mean he was signing up to die - although he did eventually give his life for his faith. No - Paul means that we die to self - we die to “me first” so that we can embrace “Christ first” if we want to embody Jesus in the world. The unknown of death, the grief and sorrow of death - they can be scary things to contemplate. But when Paul talks about his life making Jesus visible to others - I want that! I want others to be able to experience the life of Christ through me and my work. I think we’re called to that. If that means we have to also carry the death of Christ with us, in us, are we ready to do that too? I recently saw a post on facebook talking about people speculating on what they might do if they knew they had one day left on earth. Maybe we’d eat our favorite foods. Visit our favorite places. See our dearest loved ones of course. And the post said, “Jesus knew he had one day left on earth. Jesus washed feet.”    

Hamilton notes that the Bible has many different images of heaven - from the beautiful images in the writings of the prophet Isaiah, to the streets of gold in Revelation. Hamilton thinks of these different descriptions as ways of saying, “‘Think of the most beautiful and treasured things you can in this life - the next life is even more beautiful than these!” And then he shares this story, an illustration that is more than 100 years old. There’s a man, dying alone at home. “His doctor, traveling by horse and buggy, came to make a house call. He went everywhere with his faithful dog, whom he left on the front porch as he entered the home of his patient. The patient, lying in bed, said to the doctor, ‘Doc, I’m scared. What’s it going to be like on the other side?’ At that moment the doctor’s dog began scratching at the door and whining, hoping to be let in. The doctor said, ‘Do you hear my dog scratching at your door? He’s never been in your house. He doesn’t know anything about the inside of your home. Here’s the only thing he knows: His master is on the other side of that door. And if his master is inside, it must be okay, and it is where he wants to be. That’s what heaven is like.’ Believing this about death changes how we face our mortality.” Hamilton says. “It doesn’t mean we have no fear, only that we’re not controlled by fear. It means that, despite our fear, we can live with real hope.” (219) 

I find hope in this: In facing death, we don’t experience anything that God did not experience in God’s own self. Jesus died. His death was at the hands of enemies. It was painful, violent death. It was not something Jesus did easily, not something he faced without fear and anxiety and wishing there was a different way. He was crucified. He was put to death. So I find comfort that we follow a savior who faced death head on - washing feet the night before with his servant’s heart, trusting in his Parent, ready to embrace death to demonstrate the abundant life God promises us. That gives me hope.  

I find hope in the fact that whatever aspects of the unknown await us in our experience of death, whatever different pictures of heaven, of eternity we might conjure, whatever metaphors the scriptures use, there’s a consistent theme: we’re united with God forever, God who created and loves us. Being with God who is goodness itself can only be good!

And I find hope in this - hope, and challenge: We can only experience resurrection if we experience death first. Eventually, death of this body, this life. But we’re always being called to face the death of some part of ourselves, our old selves. To have room for my resurrected life, I have to put to death everything in me that isn’t of Christ. That’s maybe as hard and as scary as facing physical death. But isn’t resurrection worth facing death? 

As we come to the end of our series, of this go-around with wrestling with our fears, I return to 1 John, where we started out weeks ago: “Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as God is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” We aren’t perfect. Sometimes, we’ll be afraid! But God is perfect. And as we let God in, as we put aside everything but God, God’s perfect love casts aside our fears. Fear not! God is with you. Thanks be to God. Amen. 

* All quotations are from Adam Hamilton’s book Unafraid: Living with Courage and Hope in Uncertain Times. New York: Convergent Books, 2018.