5.14.23 "Life: Our Spiritual Nature!" Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA

Part three of "Life" series ...

Ezekiel 34.1-7; Acts 17.22-32

The Lord of the Rings …

Star Wars …

Harry Potter …

Big stories … timeless, ageless, always relevant … provocative … inviting … dreamlike and powerful …

Big stories: 

good versus evil …

hope over despair …

life and death … death and life …

We can add to the list of big stories:

The Odyssey, The Iliad …

Beowulf …

Shakespeare’s tragedies … Romeo and Juliette, Hamlet, Macbeth …

Mission Impossible and The Big Lebowski …

And the Bible … this remarkable anthology of faith, hope, and love … 

Stories of creation, the beginning of it all … the fall … the death of Cain … the end of Eden … the flood and the ark … Abraham and Sarah  … Moses and the people - on their way to the Promised Land … the rise to the top … the slow agonizing grind to the bottom … Israel destroyed … Judah destroyed … where do we go from here?

A star - in the midnight sky … wise men - from afar … shepherds - in the field … to Bethlehem we go … 

A new beginning, a fresh start … 

God at work, to craft a future for the earth … 

But Herod rages … the Roman Empire grows nervous … religious leaders are unsettled …

Christ is thrust upon the cross of human sadness and decline  

The powers that be have their way … the Son of Man nailed to the cross … the Son of Man takes one final breath and shouts to the world, It … is … finished!

A chapter ends … a chapter begins … 

Paul the Apostle travels throughout the Mediterranean world, proclaiming the Gospel of Christ … 

Paul visits the great city of Athens … 

The university center of the world … 

Home of the great philosophers - Pericles and Demosthenes, Socrates, Plato … Aristotle, Sophocles, and Euripides.

A city of art, beauty, culture, knowledge … and religion … 

Lots of religion - shrines, temples, monuments, to this god, that god, and even the unknown god, just to be on the safe side of things.

And why?

We are spiritual creatures … we are given to big stories, huge themes, mystery and majesty … gods and goddesses, divinities and demons … 

We’re creatures of the earth, for sure … we’re body, blood, and bone.

we hunger … we eat,

we thirst … we drink,

we’re tired … we sleep,

we’re threatened … we make war,

we’re moved by beauty … so we paint on the wall of a darkened cave, or on a canvas worked by Rembrandt.

We are creatures of the earth.

And creatures of heaven … eternity flows in our veins … the breath of God in our lungs … we are spiritual creatures … 

With a hunger, no bread can satisfy,

A thirst, no drink can quench,

Dreams too big for one lifetime,

Love expansive, hope without a boundary.

We are spiritual creatures:

Paul looked at Athens and saw how deeply religious it was … and of our time, Paul might say the same of us …

From American Idol to America’s Got Talent - we have dreams, passion and power.

Books of fiction and fact … churches everywhere … religion galore … preachers and pundits … megachurches and store-front chapels … America’s got religion … because we are spiritual creatures - we hope, we dream, we love.

But it was Paul who raised serious questions, “not everything passes muster” … it may glitter, but it may not be gold.

Some things bear closer examination … and that’s part of our task here, every Sunday … to give close examination to:

Ourselves … who are we? What do we value, what do we want out of life, and what are willing to give to life.

We give close examination to the news of our troubled world - war and rumors of war … earthquake and pestilence … folks hungry for bread, and folks hungry for the Bread of Life.

We are spiritual creatures … and if properly fed and cared for, our soul leads us down right paths … to green pastures … still waters … to the Table of Grace and Love.

We have a spiritual nature … it’s built into us … from that nature, like an eternal spring, flows the art of Vermeer … Sandburg’s poetry, the novels of Steinbeck … beauty and goodness, music and dance … sculpture and pottery …

Our spiritual nature needs a god … something to claim the soul of life … something beyond and above … something good and utterly gracious … the ultimate concerns of love and hope … 

If the good and gracious is missing, if the ultimate concerns of love and hope are lost, the spiritual nature gravitates to what’s broken and poisonous … 

And our world wants for nothing on this score … there is plenty of broken ideas and poisonous philosophies … 

I’m rereading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich … Hitler was a monster, and his monstrous ideas still capture the empty souls of empty and desperate people … how many of the shootings of late have been done by souls infested with Hitler’s sickness -  Hitler’s fixation on racial purity, hatred of women, the love of power … Hitler’s anti-semitism, his hatred of gays and lesbians … his hatred of trade unions and anything that stood in his way to absolute power and dominion.

Broken and poisonous ideas abound … but so the great ideas of grace, mercy, and peace … the witness of the prophets, the vision of Moses … the love of Christ … and in all the great religions of the world, there is value of the highest kind … to life humanity and restore what is lost … 

We are spiritual creatures … 

We can feed on the poisons of hell and grow downward into  despair and darkness.

We can feed at the Table of our LORD Jesus Christ and grow upward in grace and love …

We can drink the poisonous waters of fear and hate, or bath in the waters of baptism … 

We can feed the hungry and cloth the naked … or take up a gun and destroy.

We are spiritual creatures … it our nature to have a God … a God of love … or something less … a God of grace, or something perverse.

Here in this place, we pay careful attention to such things … to be sure that our soul is moving in the right direction … toward the God of love and hope …

The Eternal God, in whom we live and move and have our being.

Hallelujah and Amen!

5.7.23 "Life: The End!" Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA

Life Series: Part 2

Proverbs 4.10-18; Acts 7.55-60

It’s a terrible end for a good and decent man.

Stephen … chosen to be a Deacon … to care for the needy … the daily distribution of bread.

Then or now, people are hungry … 

Stephen is gifted for the work …

But it didn’t take long for some to challenge him … 

lies are told …

rumors are spread …

reputation questioned

anger stirred up … 

Stephen defends himself well … 

He speaks the gospel with intelligence … 

He doesn’t pull his punches … 

maybe he should have pulled his punches … 

maybe he should have eased up a bit … 

maybe he should have held his tongue …

The crowd heard enough, and they didn’t like any of it.

When a mob is ready, there is no convincing them otherwise.

They dragged Stephen outside of the city … they stoned him … 

So the end comes to Stephen … 

his mortal life undone …

his last breath taken … 

final words spoken:

forgiveness, 

mercy, 

LORD, do not hold this sin against them!

May such grace be ours at the end of the road.

Because the end of the road comes to all of us.

One way or the other.

Slowly it comes upon us, or in the blink of an eye.

Painful, or not.

My father died suddenly … at a Gideon’s meeting … after dinner, he and my mother were chatting with others, when suddenly, he fell backward … a friend said, “he puffed a few times,” and then was gone.

My mother died more slowly, and finally, in the hospital.

Death comes a-calling for all of us …

We’re mortal creatures.

Dust to dust, earth to earth, ashes to ashes.

The thought of mortality is disturbing … maybe for all of us, when we think about it … keen observers of the human story all agree - we spend a lot of time, and a lot of money, trying not to think about our death.

Early in my ministry, I spoke of death and dying, with a detached confidence, as only the young can do.

When I was young, death was more abstract than real; it was far removed … but time has pushed me along the road … my future is a lot shorter than my past - death is no longer quite so abstract … 

We begin to hear the clock ticking somewhere in our mid-30s, or a bit later, … 

When we’re children, time is timeless … 

the future stretches endlessly to some distant horizon - 

there’s alway time, and plenty of it … 

We’re in a hurry when we’re young - to hit our teen years … get that driver’s license, graduate, and so on … and then one day, we’d like time to move a bit more slowly … the days hurry on by, taking us to our singular destiny - the way of all flesh … as the Bible says, to sleep with our ancestors.

Death becomes the companion sitting silently in the living room of our mind.

We’ve been able to extend our lifespan well into our 70s and more … for that, we can be grateful … 

We outlive most of our ancestors for whom death was much more the constant companion … 

Our ancestors learned from the nearness of death …  

The poet John Donne:

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee 

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; 

And soonest our best men with thee do go, 

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery. 

One short sleep past, we wake eternally 

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. 

Death wasn’t easy for any of our ancestors - they felt deeply the loss of loved ones … they wept, they walked through the valley of darkness with bowed heads and broken hearts … they grieved as we do … death is what it always is - hard and sad and unrelenting.

Donna and I both have family genealogies.

Donna’s great grandfather in Sweden kept a marvelous diary, a diary of faith and sorrow; life in all of its ups and downs … 

My great great uncle wrote beautiful letters to his “dear wife, Elizabeth,” from the Civil War battlefield … 

Donna’s grandfather, my great great uncle, lived with death nearby … both spoke of Christ - who was just as near, always kind, and ever-loving … it wasn’t dogma … it was devotion … devotion to the things of God, with a sense of God’s devotion to them … their God was very large, and God’s promises were central to who they were, and what the future held.

My great great uncle assured his dear wife, that if he didn’t return home, he would see her in heaven. 

In the meantime, she wasn’t to worry about harvesting the potatoes - just do the best she could.

Our ancestors might well encourage us:

Remember the things of faith …  

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

God of the Ages, Whose Almighty Hand

Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise

The ancient creeds:

I believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

The Heidelberg Catechism … the first question:

What is your only comfort
in life and in death?

And the answer:

That I am not my own,
but belong—

body and soul,
in life and in death—

to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

As it was for Stephen … perhaps it will be mine, as well, and yours, too - to see Jesus at the right hand of God, and the heavens opened up …

However it ends … it ends ... suddenly or slowly, painfully or easily … it ends …

I pray that I have lived well ... not always easily ... life has had some hard corners for me ... probably for you, too.

I've walked with a limp, as Calvin once put it ... 

In the end, little Tommy Eggebeen will be whisked off to the everlasting arms ... some will weep, but the world won't much notice ... time hurries on!

Perhaps I will hear the words of Jesus, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

Jesus will likely add, "Well, Tommy, m’boy, you didn't always do it right, but come on in anyway, and we'll see what's next! 

Welcome home Tommy. Welcome home!”

Hallelujah and Amen!