Remembering the Past...
        Planning the Future

    Park Christian Church
                                                                    (Disciples of Christ)

August 9, 2009

Scripture:         John 6:35, 41-51

Sermon:           “No End in Sight”

            This will be our last in a three week adventure through the sixth chapter of John’s gospel.  And I invite you to turn to that in your Bible, or turn to page   of the New Testament in the pew Bible.  We’ll read verse 35, and then 41 through 51.

            Today we will focus on what has become one of the central claims of the Christian faith—eternal life.  Jesus certainly talks a great deal about it here in this passage, although he does not describe it.  We’re really left to wonder what exactly it is, eternal life.

            It seems to me that the Bible, and the New Testament is surprisingly unhelpful if you want to get a clear picture of just what we mean by this.  What is eternal life?  What does that mean?  What you’ll find, over and over again, is that the Bible makes mention of this, call it heaven, call it eternal life, but rarely do we get a great deal more than just a glimpse of what that means for you or for me or for anyone we know.

            Why is that?

            I don’t know.  Couple of possibilities, though.

            How do you use human language to describe the infinite dwelling place of God Almighty?  Huh?  See what I mean?  What words are going to describe the indescribable?  It may be that these things must remain something of a mystery to us.

            It could also be that the folks who wrote the books of the New Testament were more concerned with the here and now than they were with the hereafter.  What Paul and Peter and other folks absolutely did not want is a bunch of believers just sitting around taking it on the chin, waiting to die so that they could get to heaven.  They didn’t want folks who were so heavenly minded that they weren’t any earthly good.  Have you ever heard that?  You’re so heavenly minded that you aren’t any earthly good.  Great saying.  It could be that the folks writing the New Testament were worried about that.  Read the book of Thessalonians sometime and you’ll see what I mean.

            Still, this is a central part of our faith, however we understand it.  And I’d like to explore it with you this morning a little bit.  This is the word of the Lord…

            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.”

            Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”  They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?  How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”  Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves.  No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day.  It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’  Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.  Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father.  Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life.  I am the bread of life.  Your ancestors at the manna the wilderness, and they died.  This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

            You should stand up here with me sometime on Sunday morning.  If you haven’t done this, you should do it sometime.  I get to watch the entire congregation as our worship of God begins.  And there is something that just about chokes me up every single time.  I don’t really know why.  But, we go through this ritual and routine together, according to an ancient pattern of worship.  Just like so many before us and many more to come after us, we join our hearts and minds together and speak in unison the prayer as old as the Christian faith itself.  They are the words that Jesus taught his disciples to pray, saying, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”

            From here I see children who are not even old enough to read speaking these words from memory because they have been sitting in these pew for as long as they can remember.  And they say it as well as any one of us do.  And then we sing together the Gloria Patri, which is a pretty old piece, too.  3^rd or 4^th century.  Pretty old stuff.  And I stand here and see that they get it just as much as any of us, our children.  That’s the part of the service where they are here every week, you know.

            I went to visit a woman at a nursing home.  I’ll never forget this, either.  She was, gosh, almost a hundred years old at the time.  But, Alzheimer’s had really done something to her.  In just a matter of months I saw her go from bad to worse.  And on this day she’d really come to a point where the disease was more than she could overcome.  Didn’t recognize me anymore.  Didn’t often recognize her husband.  And I was just a couple years out of seminary.  I didn’t really know what to do or say.

            I was there to serve her that stuff we call the bread of life, you know.  Communion.  And something happened when I put that little piece of bread in her hand.  She looked me square in the eye then.  And as I spoke the words of institution, you know “on the night he was betrayed, he took a loaf of bread, blessed it, and broke it…” she was just mouthing them along with me.  Words she had heard almost every Sunday of her life.  Couldn’t remember much else.  But, she knew those words.

            After we had the bread and cup, I said these words:  “Our Father, who art in heaven…”  And you know, she took off running with it.  Just like I see Philip and Lily in the fourth row most weeks.  Young as they are, they know those words.  Old as this woman was, she knew them, too.

            She squeezed my hand.  It was one of the holiest moments of my life and ministry.  And she said, “I have seen God young man.  I have seen God already.”  She died just a few days later.  She said, though, “I have seen God already.”

            It occurs to me that Jesus said that whoever believes has eternal life.  I’m not entirely sure what that means.  But, what he did not say is that whoever believe will have eternal life.  He said that whoever already has it.  And this woman seemed to know that.

            I baptized a man who was just a few years older than me.  He had a couple of kids, wonderful wife.  It was one of the great joys in my ministry to discover faith with him and lead him through the waters of baptism.  And do you know that within two months of the day he was received into the church, his doctor informed him that there was a cancer in his abdomen.  Couldn’t be cured at that point.  Much too young for news like this, he would be dead within a year.

            The news came as such a shock to everyone in the church.  We couldn’t believe it.  And I spent a lot of time wondering what the last year of life would be like if I knew it was coming like he did.

            So, when I looked out my window one morning and saw him jogging by on the sidewalk, I was even more shocked.  He’d never run a foot in his life as far as I could tell.  In fact, he said to me once, “Why are you out there running?  Only reason I can figure is if somebody’s chasing you…with a gun, maybe.”  And there he was, jogging by.

            When I caught up with him later that day I said, “I thought you were dying, man.  And you’re out here running.  What’s that all about?”

            “I’d like to get in shape.  Never been in shape.  It’d be nice to lose a few pounds.”

            Strange, isn’t it?  Dying man out there running to get in shape.  And he had one of those cantaloupe sized tumors growing in there.  I said, “Doesn’t it hurt?  I mean, the tumor?”

            “Yeah, it hurts.  Hurts like hell.”  And he paused.  Looked square at me.  “You think I’ve lost my mind, don’t you?  But, the way I see it, I’ve already died once.  I’ve already died before.  You were there.  You remember.  In fact, it was you that said I was dying and being brought alive again.  I just don’t think you can see it the way I do.  I’ve already died once.  Can’t take that away from me anymore.  Nope.  I can’t see no end in sight.”

            He was talking about baptism, you know.

            But, he said that I couldn’t see it the way he did now.  It’s like he was already living life eternally.  Died already as far as he was concerned.  How do you like that?

            Reminds me of the Apostle Paul.  Right there in 1 Corinthians 13, what we call the “love chapter”.  “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face.  Now I know only part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

            I couldn’t see eternal life like he did.  He was closer somehow.  He saw in that mirror a little less dimly, I think.  But, he understood what I could not.  He was already there.

            I still don’t understand it very well.  Do you?

            But, I’ll tell you there’s something about knowing we’re already there.  John Lewis, who you might know more recently as a Congressman, he was also one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s closest friends.  And when they marched down there in Selma, Alabama, some folks who didn’t take too well to the notion of Civil Rights opened up fire hoses on them and unleashed dogs.

            John Lewis said in an interview, when asked if he was afraid, “Goodness no.  Don’t you see that I’ve already died once.  What else can they take away from me?”  Sounds just like my friend that I baptized.  John Lewis said, “I died when I was a twelve year-old boy.  Right there in my pastor’s hands as he baptized me in a river.  So, no, I wasn’t afraid of no fire hose.  No hatred.  No dogs.  None of that.”

            What would my life look like if I really understood that eternal life was already my gift?  What would your life look like?  Because I think that’s the point!  What are we so afraid of most of the time?  We’ve already died once!  What else can possibly happen?

            Paul also put it this way.  Writing to the Philippians, he said, “Our citizenship is in heaven.”  (Philippians 3:20)  Our citizenship is in heaven.  It’s already true.

            Karl Marx, who you likely remember as the father of communism, produced this stinging criticism of religion, and Christianity in particular.  Seeing how folks lived in poverty without much hope, he came to the conclusion that “religion is the opiate of the masses.”  Like a drug, he said.  An opiate.  Religion is like a drug so that people will keep on accepting the world as it is because they believe they will escape to heaven one day.

            You know what that sounds like?  You’re so heavenly minded that you’re no earthly good.  That’s what it sounds like.  And Karl Marx had a point if that is the way we go about things.

            But, then there are those of us that get it.  And I don’t get it so clearly.  But, some of us do.  They see that if they are already living this eternal life, then there’s no reason to be afraid of dying.  And they go and do these remarkable things to the glory of God.

            I pray for that kind of faith.  I pray for that kind of faith.  I do.  And I pray that we all know it.

Rev. David James Brown

Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)