Eternal Life, Beginning Now
John Wilkinson Third
Presbyterian Church
June 26, 2005
6:12-23
We are grateful this morning to welcome James Douthit, Professor
of Music at Nazareth College and Director of music at First
Presbyterian Church in Pittsford. James, we are grateful for
your presence and we welcome you this morning.
We are also mindful that beginning later this week, the American
Baptist Churches will gather for their biennial conference in
Denver. Each American protestant denomination does things slightly
differently, of course, but on some larger landscape, the issues
that the Baptists face are very similar to the ones facing the
Presbyterians – politically and otherwise. Deborah Hughes
will be serving as a delegate to the biennial. We pray for a
positive experience, for Deborah and for our partner church.
***
Several churches where I have served have housed meetings of
Alcoholics Anonymous, and other groups that address issues of
addiction. One time, as I was departing from a church building,
I encountered what can only be described as a world-famous entertainment
celebrity. None too brilliantly, I pondered for the briefest
of moments why he would be haunting the hallowed halls of a
Presbyterian congregation. He was there for A.A.; in fact, his
bouts with substance abuse had been well documented over the
years. We looked at each other for the most awkward of moments.
I finally said something like, “I know this is supposed
to be anonymous, but I simply wanted to shake your hand, thank
you for your work and wish you the best.” He thanked me,
and I scurried away.
In his book entitled Addiction and Grace, psychiatrist Gerald
May writes that addiction is the absolute enemy of human freedom.
He likens addiction to imprisonment and slavery and also relates
addiction to sin (Page 115).
It is a complex issue, very complex, but an important one,
I believe. The myth of self-control, and the use of things,
substances, choices, to perpetuate that myth. Alcohol, drugs,
food, work, other substances and behaviors, different forms,
to be sure, with different consequences, but an overall pattern
nonetheless, with consistent markings and consistent implications.
As varied as addictions may be, each throws up the façade
of freedom to mask the reality of enslavement. We are tempted
by things and we attach ourselves to things we shouldn’t.
It would not take the serpent story in Genesis to convince us
of that, but that archetypal story places the issue at the very
center of our humanity.
We should pay attention to that. The Apostle Paul certainly
does. Last week we made a case for Paul and the book of Romans.
That case continues today, in fact, in the words that follow
the ones we lifted up a week ago.
Last week Paul crescendoed with this affirmation, that we must
consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Now the crescendo crescendos, if that’s musically possible,
or to say it another way, the affirmation of grace takes on
ethical dimensions.
Paul exhorts us not to let sin have any rule in our bodies,
in our choices, in what we do with who we are.
That is to say that Paul argues against what we so often do
with religion. We hear people say “I am not very religious,”
as if being religious is some condition that could be cured
with the right over-the-counter remedy.
We know what that person means, I believe. “I am not
very religious” means that I do not take this stuff very
seriously. I am no religious nut. I know better. Or, that religion
does not deal somehow with the real world, and therefore I have
no time for such trivial pursuits.
Again, Paul will have none of it. You are no longer slaves
to sin, Paul insists. To be religious, or even to be very religious,
is to live differently, in the here-and-now. To be religious
is not to act holier-than-thou. To be religious is not to be
pious or sanctimonious. To be religious is not to live as if
the challenges of this world matter no more.
These are the “not’s.” What about the “to
be’s.” That is easier and more complex at the same
time, and not always a straight path. To be religious is to
be humble, and hopeful. To be religious is to realize the full
extent of shortcomings, yours and mine. To be religious is to
understand that those shortcomings don’t matter all that
much in God’s eyes. To be religious is never to accept
the status quo, the way things are, but rather to hope in and
to work for the way that things might be. To be religious is
to live life differently, not because you’ve got the answer
and everybody else doesn’t, but because you’ve received
the answer as a gift and cannot wait, cannot wait, to share
it with everyone else.
To be religious is not to be religious, in that stereotypical
sense, but rather to live your life as if you are fully forgiven
and fully free, because you are.
Grace can be an unsettling thing. We grow comfortable with
who we are, even if we do not always like that person. We grow
comfortable, as comfortable as an old chair or driving in rutted-out
channels in an old dirt road. Grace will not allow that to happen,
and it is very unsettling.
Biblical scholar N.T. Wright calls it subversive. “Being
a Christian,” Wright writes, “means living within
a particular story…a subversive story …a story of
coming out of slavery into freedom.” Wright insists that
there are echoes of the Exodus story in the Jesus story. Every
time we experience baptism, when we emerge from the water, we
echo. We echo the Israelites passing through the waters of the
Red Sea. We echo Jesus exploding from the waters of the Jordan.
“The story of coming out of slavery into freedom –
with all the new puzzles and responsibilities that freedom brings!
– is the story of the gospel.” (New Interpreter’s
Bible, Volume XIX, page 547)
Those who face addiction and who seek to begin the journey
of sobriety and recovery know that. They know the new puzzles
and responsibilities. They know that by acknowledging the need
for a higher power, God, we would say, they give up all claims
to any other powers. They, we, know how difficult that is.
Every TV show, every commercial, would seek to convince us
otherwise, would seek to convince us that we are in charge,
masters of our own universes, to use Tom Wolfe’s phrase
from the 1980’s.
We know better, we who have been invited into this story of
slavery and freedom. We know better, and yet our socks are knocked
off when we consider the implications. The implications for
our work. For our families. For the ways we interact with those
we love and the ways we interact with those we don’t even
like.
One of the criticisms of being religious is that to be religious
means that you do not think very well, very much, very clearly,
about the here and now. You are focused, somehow, only in heavenly
things, content to wait out your days until the Lord calls you
home, with a soundtrack of string music played by an ethereal
quartet.
That may be for some. It does not seem to be that way for Paul,
nor for us. Paul speaks of mortal bodies. Flesh and blood. Here.
Now. This is not pie in the sky, but rather a spirituality that
compels us toward social responsibility, a freedom that leads
not toward detachment, but toward serious, complicated, hopeful,
joyous engagement with all the world in the very present.
Eternal life is not then. It is now. Grace does not free us
for something later. Grace frees us for now.
Helmut Gollwitzer writes that “The Gospel does not say
to us, let go [of] the hope of social justice and peace, of
liberation from oppression, of overcoming the world of the war
danger, the madness of armaments and world-hunger, and hope,
only for yourselves…” (See A. Katherine Grieb, The
Story of Romans, page 56)
That is not what the gospel does, I would submit. Paul gets
bad press for many reasons, some valid, others perhaps less
so. Paul rarely gets credit for crafting an ethic for us. He
is often credited with setting forth rules, a checklist of yes
and no responses to things, of constructing tidy theologies
bent on boundaries. That may be. But not always and not quite.
In Romans, Paul seems very concerned with the here-and-now,
with the ethics of how we will live our lives, how we, who have
received this most extraordinary news about freedom and grace,
will now make choices, will not interact with one another, will
now consider our own bodies and minds and spirits.
Gerald May writes that “we all come ‘from freedom’
originally, and we are meant for freedom. But addiction holds
us back from our rightful destiny; it makes us prisoners of
our own impulses and slaves to our own selfish idols.”
(Page 91)
And Paul insists that grace insists that we may be free from
all those things, every thing, that enslaves us. And because
we have been freed from sin, we are freed for service, for joyful
living, for praise and rejoicing, for doing good, for being
religious, truly religious.
Anne Lamott’s new book, called Plan B: Further Thoughts
on Faith, should be read by many of us. It is funny and touching
and profound. In one chapter of Plan B she tells the poignant
and powerful story of David Roche, a man born with a severe
facial deformity that was made worse by several surgical procedures.
David Roche is now a public speaker – he speaks to church
groups and civic groups and groups of children and adolescents
and grown-ups. He tells his story, and he tells his audiences
that whatever the impact of his facial deformity, the impact
for all of us is much greater. He speaks of our “soul
disfigurement,” the spiritual deformities of our lives,
the fear deep within us that we are unacceptable. (Page 108)
And Paul will insist that by grace we are free. By grace our
souls are no longer disfigured, no longer deformed, but have
been reformed and redeemed. By grace we become lovable, with
our baggage, with our flaws, with our addictions and sins and
every other imprisonment, and loved, so that we may love.
So that we are no longer dead to sin but alive to Christ Jesus.
We are sprung from whatever prison imprisons and enslaves us.
We are free. And ready to live. And eternity begins right now.
Let us pray. God of grace and God of glory, from the fears
that long have bound us, free our hearts to faith and praise,
grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days.
For Jesus’ sake. Amen.
