Monday Meditation
The other day I was asked “what you would tell your 20 year old self today?” That question is a great way to gain perspective on what matters most. I find it helpful in not getting overwhelmed by present pains. Even when there is no current evidence that “this too will pass”, it’s a not a bad bet. Faith can be like that. Faith, true faith, can carry you through difficult stretches especially when you have a community of fellow travelers who have passed this way before. There are many things I could tell my 20 year old self - I’m just not certain my 20 year old self would be capable of hearing them. I think I would say above all else - Steady on. Keep the faith. Or some version of Ultreia! The word tattooed on my forearm. Those familiar with CS Lewis might remember in the novel The Last Battle, there is the cry, “further up, come further in!” This is an echo of the “Ultreia!” greeting. I’m inclined to believe Lewis is referring to life as pilgrimage.
In his second pastoral letter to the fledging community of Christians in Corinth, you get the sense that Saint Paul is reflecting on his life. How did arrive at this particular place, under constant threat for proclaiming a message that years earlier - perhaps in his 20 year old self - he utterly rejected and sought to annihilate? Something happened to Paul - then called Saul - that radically changed the course of his life. What happened? It’s summed up by a bumper sticker I once had on my car: “Grace happens!”
A bumper sticker can’t sum up a person’s life, of course, but for the record, I would be happy to have that one be on my tombstone. Grace happened to Paul. He was given the spirit of Faith. His life was consumed with the knowledge of this astonishing grace. Nothing was more urgent than telling others, that they would be filled with this overflowing gratitude to God. Say what you will about Paul. A life governed by the desire that others will know God’s love for them in Jesus Christ, is a life worth living.
Like most pastors, I have been asked many times “how did you become a minister?” I’m sure others are asked a similar question. How did you become a teacher, or a scientist or a engineer or a plumber and so on. It’s a great question. In my case, what I love about it is the opportunity to remember and share the astonishing - utterly unlikely event - of God’s grace in Jesus Christ becoming really real for me. That became real for me because a friend dared to speak with me about the meaning of my life. He spoke to me about the forgiveness of sin and the counter-cultural way of Jesus. And he spoke about God’s expansive love.
The knowledge that I was loved beyond all my success and failures, sins and self doubts, buckled my knees and opened my heart to a new life of undeserved and unmerited favor. It led me into social work. Ultimately, it led me into the pastoral ministry. Grace happens! It’s the message that changes lives and puts everything in a new, wider perspective. These kind of conversations don’t happen often, I wish they did, because I believe many of us yearn to be really real with each other about matters of the heart.
For Saint Paul, this certain knowledge of God’s transforming grace enables him to say “we don’t lose heart.” Of course, the pains of this present moment are real. Sleepless nights, battered bodies, constant threat - Paul was tortured for his proclamation. This is not a call for denial. There are times, when it’s impossible to have a perspective larger than the present. When you are hurting the most and your friend says “this too shall pass”, something other than faith may rise up inside of you! This present moment is all that feels real.
Yet, the present can be also be a narrow prison.
This is what Saint Paul is telling the Christians at Corinth. Our lives are lived day by day in the present - whatever joy or suffering comes our way. Yet for the Christian the present is always part of something larger. Your life is lived in the light of God’s eternal promise of life beyond life. “We look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”
One more thing: so much attention is given in our time to body appearance as the clearest sign of beauty. We know this has led to disastrous consequences. When reliance on the beauty of the body ignores the beauty of the human spirit, it leads to misery. As we get older, if we are wise, we know that as the body fades or suffers, the human spirit may flourish. It is even renewed day by day. Ironically while gyms are filled with people looking desperately in the mirror to be certain their bodies are fit, there is among us widespread ignorance of the fitness of the Spirit. It’s wholeness we seek: mind, body, spirit.
This perspective - from the long run - is the one I would give to my 20 year old self. Ultreia! Onward, upward, Steady on.
“For we know that if this earthly tent is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.’
Alleluia!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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Sermon
June 9. 2024 Community Church of San Miguel de Allende
I walk daily in my San Miguel neighborhood. This the art on the wall of the local school. It’s a famous line from The Little Prince: It is only with the heart that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.