Live Like You Were Dying

1 Samuel 2:1-10     Hebrews 10:19-25     Mark 13:1-8

Let’s start with a little seasonal humor for a state that has two seasons: Miserably Hot and Tolerably Cold. “Hey, Fall, where you at?” Fall answers, “Rolin’ up with Winter by my side!” [This is followed by my uproarious and genuine laughter. No, really, I love to laugh! I keep laughing until others begin to join in.]

Now, you may have just thought that I’ve lost my mind. You may have been laughing at me instead of with me, and that’s OK. Laughter is good and there is medical evidence to show that laughing offers healing to the body, and many believe it heals the soul as well. Laughter is good for the soul. In fact, you can google “Laughing Yogi” and find Hindu spiritual teachings based on the exercise of laughing.

While we are obviously not Hindu, the idea of being intentionally joyful is a good thing for anyone, and I believe it is an indicator of the quality of our relationships and the level of trust in our community. Real, deep laughter is an act of release and submission to joy.

It’s funny that we don’t often realize what a gift laughter is until we have a good laugh. By that, I mean a good, deep belly laugh that almost makes you cry. Laughing like that was one of the many benefits of my recent CREDO retreat. I haven’t had the chance to tell you much about that retreat, but it was a time of deep spiritual searching that helped me develop what they call a “rule of life.” That’s basically a core value statement that helps you orient your life and ministry.

For me, Sabbath keeping is a core value and need, and yet somehow, I haven’t really had a day off since I’ve been back! Obviously, there is some more work to do in terms of following my rule. Anyway, I share all of this laughter and the common call for Sabbath keeping with you, because even though we live in South Louisiana, Winter is coming.

For those of you that read or watch the Game of Thrones series, you know that is the motto of the house of Stark, the border clan that watches the North for the winter that can last for years and brings bitter cold and famine. Not only that, but it can bring the White Walkers – terrible creatures that can kill and mame and even turn you into zombie-like creatures.

As odd as that may sound, there’s a reason that this show and this particular family are so popular. It’s because the show lets us experience our fears of the unknown without getting hurt. It’s because the show allows the innocent to be harmed and the righteous and the unrighteous to rise and fall together.

That’s how it actually works in real life. The same rain falls on the wicked and the just, and it’s always been that way. So, when the good comes our way, we must rejoice. That’s why Hannah sang even though she had promised to give her child to be raised in the temple! By the way, this story is not about bargaining with God. The story of Samuel is about a God that will take a child as an offering, but not as a sacrifice. This is the God of Gods, the one who orders and sustains life and commands us to value it as a gift.

This is the God who spoke through Paul and the Apostles to confirm what was done through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus! Now, we have to remember that Paul believed that his task was to build and maintain communities of believers who were waiting for Christ’s return.  So, we have to hear what he said about provoking one another toward love and good deeds and not neglecting to meet together in that light. He wasn’t expecting it to take this long, but he was expecting that our coming together was the key to experiencing all that God had to offer us while we wait.

Mark’s gospel was much the same, and it came out of the experience of a temple system that was so corrupt that it would expect a poor widow to support it. People were already beginning to opt for synagogues over the temple, and everyone knew that the King on the throne was just a puppet for the Caesar.

So, Jesus told his disciples that the temple was coming down. Of course, we have interpreted that, and even the scriptures say it, as being about his body on the cross and his resurrection. Even so, we can’t just sidestep his claim of wars and false prophets. I mean, there have only been at least 30 public proclamations of the end times since the year 2,000!

So, what do we do? Do we dismiss it altogether? Do we huddle in fear and tell everyone else to watch out for the Day that is coming? This is obviously not a new question. Jürgen Moltmann wrestled with it in post-World War II Germany. He was drafted into the German Army but surrendered to the British, where he met other Christians as POW and became truly invested in a life of faith.

Moltmann believed that, if we are to have any sense of hope in our present trials, we have to have a future to hang it on. We have to know that restoration is coming. We have to believe and expect that the sin that holds the world has a really loose grip that has already been shaken by the resurrection of Christ.

Here’s why that matters to us. We are in a pivotal moment in our nation’s history because we can’t seem to get past the feeling that we are being put upon. Our politics divide us along ideological fault lines that are getting deeper by the day.

Meanwhile, there are people in our community that has never recovered from the flood of 2016. There over 1,000 people unaccounted for from raging fires in California. There are children in a caravan whose parents said, “Grab what you can carry. It’s going to be a long walk. If we stay here, we will die.” For these and so many others, the words of Jesus are so very raw and so very real today.

Let me add one more. November 20 is transgender day of remembrance. Now, why do we need that? We need it because only 18 states recognize violence against LGBTQ+ as a hate crime, even though they (especially transgendered people) are the most likely targets of violence motivated by a person’s expression of self. The Human Rights Campaign states that 1 in 10 of those crimes that result in death happen in Louisiana, and I would add that the condemnation of LGBTQ+ individuals coming from our pulpits cannot help and can only harm.

Now, I’m guessing that right about now you are missing the laughter that we started with, and that’s OK. I told you that you would need that laugh to deal with all that is going on in the world, and it kind of makes me wonder if Jesus didn’t laugh a little when the disciples put their faith in the largess of the temple.

Here’s what I think all of this is driving toward. With all that is going on in the world, we have to hang our hope on a better day. More than that, we have to live like this is a better day. We have to live into the hope that we expect, and that hope has to be framed in the expectation that sin does not have the last word – not just your sin or mine, but the sin that clings to us all.

I’m talking about the sin that leaves the poor more vulnerable in a disaster, the sin that allows me to think of outsiders as monsters, and the sin that takes the borderless world of the internet and turns it into a recruitment tool for death and destruction. That stuff is the stuff that has been defeated and can be overcome if we can just live like the end has come and we are already dying, and we are actually happy about it!

Now, as much as I hate giving the last word to a country song at such a time as this, I can’t help but think of the poetry of Tim McGraw. He wrote a song about two friends discussing a fatal diagnosis, and when one asks the other how he’s handling it he said:

"I was finally the husband that most of the time I wasn't

And I became a friend a friend would like to have

And all of a sudden going fishin' wasn't such an imposition

And I went three times that year I lost my dad

I finally read the Good Book, and I took a good, long, hard look

at what I'd do if I could do it all again.”

Then he goes on to say,

“Someday I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying; like tomorrow was a gift, and you've got an eternity to think about what you'd do with it.”

What could we do with it, if we saw each day as a gift? Skydiving? Rocky mountain climbing? 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fumanchu? Would we love deeper and speak sweeter?

Friends, the gospel message is this, we have that gift. We have the gift of salvation from the sin that binds us. The question is, as it always is, what are we going to do with it? Are we going to live like we are dying? I sure hope so. I sure hope that we can continue to live with the urgency of a people who are so close to the end of the race that we can see it.

Sure, the building may fall down tomorrow, but our hope is in a future where we are not just shaking our heads and wringing our hands about tragedy and vulnerability and disagreement. Our hope is based in a future where we live as though all that matters is to truly love in the way that we have been loved.

Friends, if we can do that, then the joy of our laughter can carry us through to the end. In fact, we can even face our deepest fears and long for the end of days, because we know that the end is just the beginning and that each new day brings hope for restoration and peace. I pray that it may be so with you and that it may be so with me as we continue our journey of faith together. Amen.