Something More Pleasant

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

October 26, 2014

Something More Pleasant

Romans 14:7-9

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.

If we live, we live to the Lord,

and if we die, we die to the Lord;

so then, whether we live or whether we die,

we are the Lord’s.

For to this end Christ died and lived again,

so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

        

The children laughed as they raced around the yard

enjoying the beautiful fall day.

They chased each other,

giggling,

running this way and that,

and from time to time, tumbling,

but always bouncing back up laughing,

pointing out what tripped them.

Tombstones.

They tripped over tombstones.

The yard was filled with plastic tombstones,

more than a dozen of them laid out neatly

across the suburban lawn,

gray, ghoulish,

ready for Halloween.

Quite a few graveyards have sprouted up

in my neighborhood the past few weeks;

some small and simple,

others elaborate, large,

some even with sound effects,

voices moaning and groaning.

They are all designed to be creepy and scary;

they are all designed for Halloween fun.

Lately it seems we’ve been in the thrall of the dead,

or more specifically, the undead,

the walking dead,

zombies.

Television shows, books, movies.

It isn’t entirely new,

this fascination with the walking dead,

the living dead:

horror movies from the 1930s starring

Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi

had a fondness for things rising from the grave.

The classic 1944 movie “Arsenic and Old Lace”

is set in a house situated next to a graveyard.

And more than 30 years ago, in his video “Thriller,”

Michael Jackson showed us a side of zombies

we never would have imagined –

that they had dance moves

that no Monday night dancing star

could ever hope to match.

We laugh at our cinematic and seasonal focus

on the ghoulish.

But let a conversation,

a serious conversation,

start to go down the road of death and dying,

and our reaction is almost universal:

“Don’t be so morbid;

can’t we talk about something more pleasant?”

Talking about death and dying

makes us very uncomfortable.

We’d rather talk about anything else.

In Protestant churches we’ve gone so far

as to substitute “Reformation Sunday”

for the historical “All Saints Day”.

                                   

To talk about death can be more than uncomfortable;

it can be painful.

it can bring a rush of memories

of loved ones who have died:

grandparents, parents, spouses,

perhaps even children,

as well as friends.

Remembering may well evoke

waves of deep emotion,

profound grief,

feelings we don’t want stirred up,

feelings we work hard to keep tucked away.

To talk about death also reminds us    

of our own mortality,

of the reality that we will all die,

that for as long as any of us might live,

there will come a day, a time

when we will take a last breath;

Who wants to think about that,

even for the briefest moment?

For those of us of a certain age,

we are reminded to do things like

update our wills,

prepare health-care proxies,

make sure we have advanced directives and the like,

but even we don’t like to think about such things.

For years, our denomination has been

encouraging our churches

to have a “Wills Sunday” each year,

a Sunday to remind everyone to have a will,

and, of course, include the church with a bequest;

but I know of very few churches that actually do this.

And yet here we have Paul comforting us

reminding us that we need not be afraid,

for …If we live, we live to the Lord,

and if we die, we die to the Lord;

so then, whether we live or whether we die,

we are the Lord’s.

In Christ, through Christ,

we have the promise of life eternal,

the promise of “life everlasting,”

as we say in the Apostles’ Creed,

for “God raised Jesus from the dead,

… delivering us from death to life eternal,”

as we say in our Brief Statement of Faith.

We hear those words,

say those words that we say we believe,

“life eternal”, “life everlasting”

but still we struggle because,

after all, what do those words mean?

We wonder – what awaits us?

What will heaven be like?

Will the streets be paved with gold?

We’ve tried throughout history

to pull the curtain back

on the life that awaits us,

to catch even a glimpse of what lies ahead.

Will it be as Mark Twain described it in his story,

Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven:

“A harp and a hymn-book,

a pair of wings and a halo, size 13,

for Cap’n Eli Stormfield, of San Francisco!—

make him out a clean bill of health,

and let him in….

…When I found myself perched on a cloud,

with a million other people,

I never felt so good in my life. 

Says I, ‘Now this is according to the promises;

I’ve been having my doubts,

but now I am in heaven, sure enough….’

I gave my palm branch a wave or two, for luck,

and then I tautened up my harp-strings

and struck in. ”

Perhaps John Bunyan captured it

when he wrote in Pilgrim’s Progress

more than 300 years ago:

“You are going now…to the Paradise of God,

… and when you come there,

…your walk and talk shall be every day with the King,

even all the days of Eternity.

There you shall not see again such things as you saw

when you were…upon the earth:

sorrow, sickness, affliction and death,

for the former things have passed away.”

Bunyan’s picture is probably a lot closer than Twain’s,

but still, we don’t know.

And I think that’s because

God does not want us to know.

What God wants us to do is trust,

take on faith,

rely on the promise that we have life eternal

in Jesus Christ.

What God wants us to do

is trust the promise that comes

from our Lord himself:

“Those who believe in me,

even though they die, will live,

and everyone who lives and believes in me

will never die.”

(John 11:25)

In Marilynne Robinson’s lyrical novel Gilead

the elderly pastor John Ames

wonders what lies ahead for him

as he nears the end of his life.

He ponders in a letter to his son,

“In the twinkling of an eye.

…I am imperishable,

somehow more alive than I have ever been,

in the strength of my youth…

I live in a light better than any dream of mine.

…I have wondered about [this] for many years.

Well, this old seed is about to drop into the ground.

Then I’ll know.”

(Gilead, 53)

I love Halloween as much as anyone else,

and I love movies, including scary movies,

as much as anyone else,

but I wonder if our current obsession

with zombies and the like

makes it that much harder for us to think

not just seriously about death,

but more important,

for us to think faithfully about death,

so we can find comfort in the promise,

the assurance,

that we will have life,

life for all eterinity,

and that we will know love in this life

and in the life to come.

This promise of life is ours in our baptism

the beginning of life, new life in Jesus Christ,

when we die to what separates us from God,

and are raised to new life in Christ.

In our baptism life begins,

a life that will blossom and flourish

with the riches of love;

a life that begins and will have no end.                 

As Paul wrote to the Corinthians,

No one’s ever seen or heard anything like this,
never so much as imagined anything quite like it—
what God has arranged for those who love him.

(1 Corinthians 2:9, from The Message)

What God has arranged is life,

life grounded in love,

life that begins with a few drops of water

and such simple words:

“In the name of the Father,

and of the Son,

and of the Holy Spirit.”

Such simple words,

such pleasant words,

words that lead us to life,

words that lead us to love,

now, and always.

AMEN