a sermon delivered on April 3rd, 2011
We are all familiar with the stories of Jesus’ earthly ministry, with his teaching and feeding and healing. I’d like to start by looking at one particular story. Jesus came upon a man near the entrance of the synagogue. The man was on a mat and was crippled. The man said to Jesus, “Master, I know that if you wish to, you can make me whole again.†And Jesus said to the man, “You just sit there on your mat. But I forgive your sins, and if you believe in me, and give a portion of the alms given to you by passersby, then, after your miserable life has ended, you’ll go to heaven, and there will be angels carrying trays of manna, and the dog you had as a child will be there, and everyone you have ever known will be waiting for you. But in the meantime, just sit there on your mat and suffer. It’ll build character. It’s good for you.†And Jesus walked away, and the crippled man lived for the day he would die and go to heaven.
No? Okay, maybe the story doesn’t go like that, but that is the gospel as preached in so many Christian churches, a gospel that says life here stinks, but that’s okay, because being a Christian is all about dying. In fact, in many churches and for many people, Christianity has been reduced to a sort of death insurance, a game we play to hedge our bets for the afterlife. Check the right boxes, whether that be attending Holy Days of Obligation and receiving Last Rites in the Roman church or answering an altar call, being dunked and voting Republican as a Southern Baptist… check the right boxes for whatever denomination you belong to and Saint Peter will meet you at the pearly gates (I didn’t even know there were oysters in heaven!) and there will be scales or a book or something and then you’ll be let into heaven and it will be just like here but better and you’ll be with your loved ones, we’ll just ignore that thing Jesus said about marriage not working the same way in heaven, (you know, the trick question about the woman who outlived multiple husbands)… we know what heaven is like and getting to heaven is what a Christian lives for! And I believe this death-focused faith is a form of Christianity that is itself death, that is emptied of meaning.
A quick scholarly and theological side note for those into that sort of thing: Broadly this form of belief is based on the notion that the Creator has organized everything to accomplish an end, in Greek a “telos,†so this is teleological theology. However, this is not completely consistent with God as portrayed in Hebrew Scriptures. When early Christianity met Greek philosophy, a terrible thing happened. God was turned into a Platonic form, an abstraction, with all sort of wicked results, including the rather insane belief in predestination. Christians have been stuck trying to believe two impossibly contradictory concepts of God at the same time for most of the last sixteen hundred years. Fortunately, some theologians and even scientists are today once again claiming a living God, and a living God might just be making it up as she goes along, winging it, continuing to create and to love.
The truth when it comes to death is that Jesus as recorded in scripture does promise us life eternal, but is annoyingly vague about what that looks like. Now let me be abundantly clear… I trust in Christ’s promise. But all of the loose talk we hear about heaven and hell, these elaborate descriptions of the afterlife are just inventions, made up, meaningless. In the theological trajectory of Hebrew belief, angels and bodily resurrection were late inventions. We start to see imagery of resurrection when Ezekiel describes the old dry bones coming back to life, though the prophet is clearly using the bones to represent the nation. It is only after the Exile that people came to believe that God’s love and God’s justice could only be fulfilled after our earthly existence. They came to have confidence that God’s promises, which often did not result in earthly wealth or military might, must be fulfilled after death.
Death is scary for many, it is one of the great unknowns we try to control, it is in our nature to want certainty. We have always wanted certainty. Three thousand years ago, when the earliest Psalms were written, we wanted certainty. The Psalms are among the oldest writings in the Hebrew Scriptures. Some may have actually been composed as early as the Davidic Kingdom, consistent with the tradition that they were written by King David himself about three thousand years ago, while other Psalms clearly originate after the Babylonian Exile, about five hundred years later. The collected psalms were, and are, both the hymnal of the ancients, meant for public worship and still used for worship and prayer to this day, and intensely personal, filled with love and hope and rage and despair. They are one half of a conversation with our Creator, elegant, heart-felt, people crying out to the divine.
Today’s psalm, the 23rd, is probably the best known. It is one we learn in childhood, that we recite in times of distress. We take comfort and confidence from it in moments of trial and in moments of grief. It is an expression of our faith. It is worth noting that like any ancient texts, there are decisions to be made in translation, and the line we often hear as “I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever†could as easily mean “I will return to the House of the Lord forever,†which could certainly nuance the reading, leading us to see it as also pointing to life everlasting. But I’d like to focus on that other line, “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death†or as many of us know it from older translations, “yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.â€
I do walk through the valley of the shadow of death, every day. So do you. I walk… I do not dwell in the valley of the shadow of death and I certainly don’t obsess about. Christians who make our faith about death miss a very important point, one that the Psalmist knew. I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I walk. And I am not afraid. I will fear no evil. I know that I am returning to the House of God, but right now my task is to walk. Jesus says “Be not afraid.†So be not afraid!
Jesus does not say to the crippled “Sit there on your mat until you die.†It has always been to the advantage of those parts of the church aligned with earthly power to emphasize the post-mortem promise, to emphasize life after death. But this is not Jesus.
Jesus is about now. Let the dead bury the dead. You, drop your nets and follow me. Sell all that you own and follow me. Go out and preach and heal and baptize. Go, do it now! There is an urgency to Jesus because the Kingdom of God is here. The Kingdom of God is here! You, get up off of that mat. Roll it up. Walk. Right here, right now.
I am not a self-help guru disguised as a minister. I am not going to promise you that following Jesus is going to land you a promotion, alleviate the financial pressure that is crushing you. Walking the path of Jesus is not always going to be easy, is not always going to be green pastures. Sometimes there are injustices and obstacles, sometimes we will walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Keep walking. Not because you live to die but because you live to live!
Jesus says “Be bold! Get up and walk! You might fail, you might even die, but death is not the end. Have confidence. Be not afraid. Fear no evil. I entered Jerusalem and confronted hostile sects of my own people, confronted the powerful and brutal Roman occupiers. I was tortured and executed, it was worse than any game on your kid’s X-box. And death did not win, empire did not win. Love won. Life won. God won. You can win. Get up and walk. Be bold. Live into God’s dreams for you. Now. Worry about being dead when your dead.
Waltz through the valley of the shadow of death. Waltz because death is defeated and you have confidence in God’s promises. Waltz, for this is the day the Creator has made. Squeeze every ounce of holy you can out of it. Amen.