Clayton J. Schmit - Sermon Untitled (June 4, 2000)
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| - | The third reading is from the Gospel | 0:12 |
| according to Saint John, | 0:14 | |
| the seventeenth chapter, verses six through 19, | 0:16 | |
| Jesus speaks, "I have made your name known | 0:21 | |
| "to those whom you gave me from the world. | 0:25 | |
| "They were yours, and you gave them to me, | 0:28 | |
| "and they have kept your word. | 0:32 | |
| "Now they know that everything you have given me | 0:35 | |
| "is from you; for the words that you gave to me | 0:38 | |
| "I have given to them, and they have received them | 0:42 | |
| "and know in truth that I came from you; | 0:47 | |
| "and they have believed that you sent me. | 0:51 | |
| "I am asking on their behalf; | 0:55 | |
| "I am not asking on behalf of the world, | 0:58 | |
| "but on behalf of those whom you gave me, | 1:01 | |
| "because they are yours. | 1:05 | |
| "All mine are yours, and yours are mine; | 1:08 | |
| "and I have been glorified in them. | 1:12 | |
| "And now I am no longer in the world, | 1:16 | |
| "but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. | 1:19 | |
| "Holy Father, protect them in your name | 1:23 | |
| "that you have given me, so that they may be one, | 1:27 | |
| "as we are one. | 1:31 | |
| "While I was with them, I protected them in your name | 1:33 | |
| "that you have given me. | 1:38 | |
| "I guarded them, and not one of them was lost | 1:40 | |
| "except the one destined to be lost, | 1:44 | |
| "so that the scripture might be fulfilled. | 1:48 | |
| "But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things | 1:51 | |
| "in the world so that they may have my joy | 1:55 | |
| "made complete in themselves. | 1:58 | |
| "I have given them your word, | 2:02 | |
| "and the world has hated them | 2:04 | |
| "because they do not belong to the world, | 2:07 | |
| "just as I do not belong to the world. | 2:10 | |
| "I am not asking you to take them out of the world, | 2:13 | |
| "but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. | 2:17 | |
| "They do not belong to the world, | 2:22 | |
| "just as I do not belong to the world. | 2:24 | |
| "Sanctify them in the truth; | 2:27 | |
| "your word is truth. | 2:30 | |
| "As you have sent me into the world, | 2:33 | |
| "so I have sent them into the world. | 2:35 | |
| "And for their sakes I sanctify myself, | 2:38 | |
| "so that they also may be sanctified in truth." | 2:43 | |
| This is the Word of the Lord | 2:48 | |
| - | Thanks be to God. | 2:51 |
| - | "I write these things to you who believe | 3:06 |
| "in the name of the Son of God | 3:08 | |
| "so that you may know that you have eternal life." | 3:09 | |
| Grace and peace to you on this seventh Sunday | 3:16 | |
| of Easter and the first Sunday following the day | 3:19 | |
| that we celebrate as the ascension of Christ. | 3:22 | |
| All theology is metaphor. | 3:30 | |
| When we try to speak about God, | 3:34 | |
| we have no way to get our minds | 3:35 | |
| around God's complete existence. | 3:37 | |
| So we do what we can. | 3:41 | |
| We think of God in human terms. | 3:42 | |
| We think of God in terms of human experience | 3:46 | |
| and we speak of God in terms of space and time. | 3:48 | |
| Sometime we use human concepts | 3:53 | |
| to help us understand who God is | 3:55 | |
| and what God does for us. | 3:57 | |
| We call God Father or sometimes a mothering God. | 3:59 | |
| We say that God loves us, | 4:06 | |
| forgives us, saves us. | 4:08 | |
| Loving, forgiving, saving, these are human actions. | 4:11 | |
| We know that God's kind of love | 4:15 | |
| is actually far beyond our capacity to understand. | 4:17 | |
| We know that God's forgiveness is on a cosmic scale. | 4:21 | |
| God saves us from eternities of evils | 4:26 | |
| we cannot begin to imagine. | 4:30 | |
| We know very well that God is far beyond | 4:33 | |
| what our imaginations allow. | 4:37 | |
| God is beyond every mode of knowing or discernment. | 4:40 | |
| But we make a try at it anyway. | 4:45 | |
| We speak of God in human terms | 4:48 | |
| so that we might speak about God at all | 4:50 | |
| and attempt some kind of limited connection | 4:53 | |
| with the One who is so vast and incomprehensible | 4:57 | |
| that all creation trembles at the foot of God's throne. | 5:02 | |
| See, there's another one, a metaphor, | 5:06 | |
| God sitting on a heavenly throne. | 5:09 | |
| You hear preachers using metaphors all the time. | 5:14 | |
| If we tried to leave them out, | 5:17 | |
| we really wouldn't have anything to say | 5:18 | |
| and the preacher might as well sit down and be quiet. | 5:20 | |
| Now don't get your hopes up. | 5:24 | |
| (audience chuckling) | 5:25 | |
| I have metaphors up my sermonic sleeve | 5:27 | |
| that I haven't even thought of yet. | 5:29 | |
| Whenever I need one, I cook up a new one | 5:31 | |
| or I swipe one from someone else. | 5:33 | |
| You might catch me stealing a few | 5:37 | |
| from various writers this morning. | 5:38 | |
| Any time we talk about God, we use metaphors. | 5:42 | |
| All of Scripture then is metaphor, too, | 5:48 | |
| for it tells of God's love for us, | 5:51 | |
| God's forgiveness, and God's salvation in very human terms. | 5:54 | |
| Today, we read from the 47th Psalm | 5:59 | |
| and you saw some great Biblical metaphors there. | 6:01 | |
| God sits as a ruler on a heavenly throne. | 6:04 | |
| When we listen to God's Word, | 6:10 | |
| it helps us to understand at least something | 6:12 | |
| of what God wants us to know about. | 6:15 | |
| But still, there are some things that we simply | 6:18 | |
| cannot get our minds around. | 6:21 | |
| Some things like these words | 6:25 | |
| from the first letter of John today. | 6:26 | |
| John said, "And this is the testimony. | 6:29 | |
| "God gave us eternal life and this is life in his son. | 6:33 | |
| "Whoever has the son has life. | 6:37 | |
| "Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life." | 6:39 | |
| Eternal life. | 6:45 | |
| What kind of incomprehensible thing is this? | 6:48 | |
| Ordinary life we know well enough. | 6:53 | |
| We live, we breathe, we sweat, we toil, | 6:55 | |
| we laugh, we speak, we bend, we break. | 6:59 | |
| We are born. | 7:03 | |
| We grow. | 7:05 | |
| We age. | 7:06 | |
| We die. | 7:08 | |
| I like the way the hymn writer Susan Palo Cherwien puts it. | 7:11 | |
| "Through summer heat of youthful years | 7:15 | |
| "uncertain faith, rebellious tears. | 7:17 | |
| "When autumn cools and youth is cold, | 7:21 | |
| "when limbs their heavy harvest hold, | 7:24 | |
| "as winter comes, as winters must, | 7:28 | |
| "we breathe our last, return to dust." | 7:32 | |
| This is life. | 7:40 | |
| This is all we know. | 7:41 | |
| Sometimes it is full and pleasing. | 7:43 | |
| Sometimes it is sad and empty. | 7:45 | |
| For most of us, it is some of each. | 7:47 | |
| But then we wear out, or fall apart, | 7:50 | |
| or destroy ourselves, | 7:53 | |
| and the body which houses our experience shuts down, | 7:55 | |
| then life ends. | 8:01 | |
| It is finite. | 8:05 | |
| It is a candle snuffed out. | 8:07 | |
| Eternal life, this is one of those things | 8:12 | |
| we cannot get our minds around. | 8:15 | |
| It is too large. | 8:17 | |
| It is too wide. | 8:19 | |
| It is too far beyond our realm of human experience | 8:20 | |
| to find for it useful categories in our thinking. | 8:23 | |
| Trying to comprehend eternal life is like | 8:27 | |
| trying to imagine what lies outside of the universe. | 8:30 | |
| It is like trying to imagine what God was doing | 8:35 | |
| before the moment of Creation. | 8:38 | |
| An ancient wag gave a rather sarcastic answer | 8:42 | |
| to this question. | 8:45 | |
| He said, "Before the creation of the heavens and the earth, | 8:45 | |
| "God was creating hells for people | 8:48 | |
| "who ask such stupid questions." | 8:50 | |
| St. Augustine knew of that answer | 8:55 | |
| and he didn't like it very well. | 8:57 | |
| He gave a much more truthful answer to the question. | 8:58 | |
| He said, "I, I am ignorant | 9:01 | |
| "of things I do not know." | 9:05 | |
| And when St. Augustine contemplated eternity, | 9:09 | |
| he could not get his mind around it. | 9:12 | |
| In the end, he said simply, "Oh God, | 9:16 | |
| "how deep and profound is your mystery." | 9:21 | |
| As a believer, aren't you sometimes embarrassed | 9:29 | |
| by the ways that people have tried to capture | 9:33 | |
| a picture of eternal life? | 9:35 | |
| People without imagination often grab | 9:37 | |
| for the most mundane metaphors. | 9:39 | |
| We trivialize our understanding of heaven. | 9:42 | |
| We make it laughable and insignificant. | 9:45 | |
| I was once told of a Victorian soprano who sang | 9:50 | |
| ♪ I want a man ♪ | 9:55 | |
| ♪ I want a man ♪ | 9:58 | |
| ♪ I want a man shown in the sky ♪ | 10:01 | |
| Huckleberry Finn got about as lousy a picture of eternity | 10:10 | |
| as ever there was given in literature. | 10:13 | |
| When the grumpy old Miss Watson told Huck | 10:16 | |
| about the bad place, the place we know as hell, | 10:18 | |
| he said he wished he was there. | 10:22 | |
| He didn't mean any disrespect. | 10:25 | |
| He just wanted to get away from grumpy old Miss Watson. | 10:27 | |
| He wasn't particular where. | 10:31 | |
| And then she told him about the good place. | 10:33 | |
| Listen to how Huck described it. | 10:38 | |
| "She said all a body would have to do there | 10:41 | |
| "was to go around all day long with a harp, | 10:44 | |
| "singing forever and ever. | 10:48 | |
| "So I didn't think much of it. | 10:52 | |
| "But I never said so. | 10:54 | |
| "I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there | 10:56 | |
| "and she said not by a considerable sight. | 10:59 | |
| "I was glad about that because I wanted | 11:04 | |
| "him and me to be together. | 11:06 | |
| "I couldn't see no advantage | 11:08 | |
| "in going where Miss Watson was going, | 11:10 | |
| "so I made up my mind not to try for it." | 11:14 | |
| (audience chuckling) | 11:17 | |
| Eternal life. | 11:19 | |
| What John is telling us in this letter | 11:22 | |
| is far greater than the place we call heaven | 11:25 | |
| where angels get their wings | 11:27 | |
| every time a bell on earth rings | 11:29 | |
| and where people float around on clouds | 11:32 | |
| behind some vast pearly gates, | 11:34 | |
| and from where angels descend to fiddle around | 11:37 | |
| with our lives looking an awful lot | 11:39 | |
| like Roma Downey or Della Reese. | 11:41 | |
| Beyond our silly imaginings, | 11:49 | |
| we just don't know what metaphors to use | 11:53 | |
| for something that is so far beyond our experience. | 11:55 | |
| It is a mystery. | 11:59 | |
| And yet it is one that John wants us to know about. | 12:02 | |
| He says, "I write these things to you | 12:05 | |
| "who believe in the name of the Son of God | 12:07 | |
| "so that you may know that you have eternal life." | 12:10 | |
| Whatever it is, however we shall find it, | 12:15 | |
| John wants believers to have full confidence | 12:18 | |
| that this great incomprehensible gift belongs to them. | 12:21 | |
| It is no achievement. | 12:26 | |
| Simply a gift that comes from God's gracious hand. | 12:28 | |
| John writes these things so that all believers | 12:33 | |
| can have confidence in the gift. | 12:35 | |
| The kind of confidence that Billy Graham has. | 12:39 | |
| At age 81, last week he said that as his time on earth | 12:44 | |
| draws to a close, he is very much looking forward | 12:47 | |
| to going to heaven. | 12:50 | |
| Aren't you? | 12:52 | |
| Assurance that we have eternal life. | 12:56 | |
| Yes, this is John's purpose. | 12:58 | |
| But a definition of what it will be? | 13:02 | |
| No. | 13:04 | |
| And when or where? | 13:05 | |
| No. | 13:08 | |
| These things are far beyond us. | 13:09 | |
| But there is one thing about eternal life | 13:14 | |
| that we can understand. | 13:17 | |
| One thing that matches perfectly | 13:19 | |
| with our human experience. | 13:21 | |
| One part of this vast mystery that we can know. | 13:24 | |
| One thing for which we don't need pharisaical metaphors | 13:28 | |
| in order to get our minds around it. | 13:32 | |
| Because if it really is eternal life, | 13:35 | |
| then it must include the life we have, | 13:40 | |
| the life we know right here and now. | 13:45 | |
| Eternal life has its beginnings in the present. | 13:49 | |
| "The kingdom of God is at hand," Jesus said. | 13:53 | |
| Or as he puts it in the gospel lesson from today, | 13:57 | |
| Jesus prays that we will be protected from evil | 14:00 | |
| as we are left here to do the ministry. | 14:03 | |
| No rapturous escape from the perils of the earth for us. | 14:08 | |
| No, we are left here as followers of Christ. | 14:13 | |
| We are protected by God. | 14:17 | |
| We are sanctified. | 14:19 | |
| We are given the truth to uphold us and to proclaim. | 14:20 | |
| But we are left in the world. | 14:24 | |
| And so, dear friends in Christ, | 14:28 | |
| open your eyes and behold | 14:32 | |
| your salvation has begun. | 14:37 | |
| This is eternal life for you. | 14:41 | |
| This moment is part of it, | 14:44 | |
| and its location is precisely here. | 14:47 | |
| Now I don't mean to say that this is heaven on earth. | 14:51 | |
| Although, Duke Chapel meets all my personal expectations | 14:55 | |
| for heavenly architecture. | 14:58 | |
| (audience chuckling) | 15:00 | |
| Our choir this morning is a good one. | 15:01 | |
| Even though it is not made up of angels, by and large. | 15:04 | |
| And Sue Closemyer does a wonderful job with the choir. | 15:09 | |
| Although I suspect the heavenly choir itself | 15:13 | |
| will be directed by Bach. | 15:15 | |
| (audience chuckling) | 15:17 | |
| No, this is not heaven on earth. | 15:20 | |
| This is our place. | 15:24 | |
| This is our time. | 15:25 | |
| It's all we have. | 15:27 | |
| It's all we know. | 15:28 | |
| But because it is ours, | 15:29 | |
| it is the front end of an eternal life | 15:31 | |
| that is promised by Christ and witnessed to by John. | 15:34 | |
| For those who believe and those who breathe, | 15:37 | |
| eternal life is here and now. | 15:42 | |
| The first installment of something vast beyond imagining. | 15:46 | |
| And then, if this is it, | 15:52 | |
| take note of what it looks like. | 15:56 | |
| It may be on the test one day. | 15:59 | |
| There is supposed to be a day of judgment | 16:01 | |
| factored in there somewhere. | 16:03 | |
| And what kind of life is it? | 16:06 | |
| Surely no mansion in the sky. | 16:09 | |
| But an earthly and very often an earthy dwelling place | 16:12 | |
| where things seem very familiar. | 16:18 | |
| We live in a world of great natural beauty, | 16:21 | |
| but around every corner we find, | 16:23 | |
| if we have our eyes open, | 16:25 | |
| we find confusion, and deception, and despair, pain. | 16:27 | |
| It is a world of injury and injustice. | 16:34 | |
| It is a world of hangovers and hunger, | 16:38 | |
| of alienation, self-preservation, hatred. | 16:43 | |
| This bit of eternity seems sometimes | 16:50 | |
| to be a sorry place where people need our assistance | 16:54 | |
| but there never seems to be enough time | 16:58 | |
| nor sufficient resources to go around. | 16:59 | |
| It's a landscape that is torn apart by winds | 17:03 | |
| and devastated by either too much or too little rain. | 17:06 | |
| And some portions of this world are pocked by mortar blasts | 17:11 | |
| and others are crowded burial grounds | 17:16 | |
| where thousands of too-young people | 17:19 | |
| lie in cold cellars as the chief harvest of war. | 17:21 | |
| We have a pretty stretch of country | 17:29 | |
| here in Durham, North Carolina. | 17:31 | |
| I, for one, hate to leave it. | 17:33 | |
| But even here in what the locals like to call God's country, | 17:37 | |
| there is potential for poverty and great disaster. | 17:41 | |
| Shortly after last year's floods, | 17:48 | |
| I know you remember them very well, | 17:50 | |
| I was holding a preaching seminar | 17:53 | |
| over here at the Divinity School for local pastors. | 17:55 | |
| One of the participants was a pastor | 17:59 | |
| who was doing his work in the areas of the state | 18:01 | |
| where the floods had done their greatest damage. | 18:04 | |
| He shared with our class a poem that he had written | 18:07 | |
| that grew out of his work. | 18:10 | |
| I asked him to read the poem to the class, | 18:13 | |
| but he declined. | 18:16 | |
| He said, "I don't think I could get through it." | 18:17 | |
| He asked me to read it. | 18:21 | |
| I read these words. | 18:24 | |
| "She stood there. | 18:29 | |
| "She just stood there. | 18:31 | |
| "Head bowed, shoulders stooped. | 18:34 | |
| "She looked older than her 86 years. | 18:37 | |
| "She stared at the floor and then glanced at the door | 18:40 | |
| "as if wanting to run. | 18:43 | |
| "For here was no fun the first time back home. | 18:45 | |
| "The first time since the soldiers had come | 18:49 | |
| "and told her to leave. | 18:51 | |
| "No argument. | 18:53 | |
| "No reprieve. | 18:54 | |
| "The truck carried her off | 18:56 | |
| "with other unfortunates to someplace. | 18:58 | |
| "She just stood there. | 19:02 | |
| "Not looking anywhere. | 19:05 | |
| "Lips fixed. | 19:07 | |
| "Hands hanging limp at her side. | 19:09 | |
| "She stared at the pile of soggy things | 19:12 | |
| "left wadded in what looked like rings | 19:14 | |
| "of mud, and waste, and countless filthy things | 19:16 | |
| "left there by the dirty waters, | 19:19 | |
| "uninvited but that had invaded her home. | 19:21 | |
| "78 years, this had been her home. | 19:25 | |
| "Her father pounded the nails and put up the rails, | 19:30 | |
| "and the posts, and rafters, and walls, | 19:34 | |
| "and roof, and floor, and door, and steps, | 19:37 | |
| "and made a place to call home. | 19:40 | |
| "For 78 of her living years, she had held back the river. | 19:44 | |
| "But on that night when the soldiers came, | 19:50 | |
| "she knew that she had lost the game of the river bluff, | 19:54 | |
| "and all that stuff you do to block back the waters. | 19:58 | |
| "She just stood there. | 20:02 | |
| "And looked everywhere she could look | 20:05 | |
| "without moving her head. | 20:06 | |
| "And then she turned and walked out the door. | 20:09 | |
| "And silence exploded in our ears. | 20:14 | |
| "No words of sadness. | 20:17 | |
| "No sound of grief. | 20:18 | |
| "No echo of leaving. | 20:19 | |
| "Only the sloshing of footsteps through soggy floors | 20:20 | |
| "and out the doors. | 20:24 | |
| "Where is God in a widow's sadness | 20:27 | |
| "who had buried a father from this failing mess of a house | 20:34 | |
| "and laid a mother to rest from its sagging walls, | 20:39 | |
| "and a brother, and a sister, and a sister, | 20:43 | |
| "and a husband, too? | 20:48 | |
| "Where is God when those final years on earth | 20:51 | |
| "are only filled with anger and pain | 20:55 | |
| "caused by a river's angry rain? | 20:57 | |
| "Where is God? | 21:02 | |
| "She just stood there. | 21:04 | |
| "And then she shuffled away." | 21:09 | |
| Afterward, the pastor admitted to us the truth | 21:15 | |
| about this old woman in the poem. | 21:19 | |
| It was his mother. | 21:23 | |
| "I write these things to you who believe | 21:28 | |
| "in the name of the Son of God so that you may know | 21:30 | |
| "that you have eternal life," John said. | 21:33 | |
| It begins right now in this imperfect world. | 21:37 | |
| God's testimony is true. | 21:42 | |
| This is the gift of faith. | 21:44 | |
| Not yet a great heavenly reward | 21:46 | |
| or a sumptuous eternal banquet, | 21:48 | |
| but the chance to make this world | 21:51 | |
| something more than a living hell. | 21:54 | |
| You who believe in the name of the Son of God | 22:00 | |
| are given new life. | 22:04 | |
| New life that begins now and lasts for all eternity. | 22:06 | |
| There may come a time when you feast at the banquet | 22:11 | |
| or sing in Bach's heavenly choir, | 22:13 | |
| but for now, your eternity is here. | 22:16 | |
| So how should you spend it? | 22:24 | |
| By serving the living and searching for metaphors | 22:27 | |
| with which to speak of God's love. | 22:31 | |
| This is the new creation that we live our lives like Christ, | 22:34 | |
| scouring the world for persons in need, | 22:38 | |
| acting in love toward all who approach us, | 22:40 | |
| receiving each as if she bore the face of Jesus. | 22:42 | |
| Didn't you think that eternal life would be | 22:48 | |
| a more perfect place? | 22:51 | |
| But it isn't. | 22:55 | |
| Not today. | 22:56 | |
| Maybe someday it will be. | 22:58 | |
| Your first stop in eternity is here. | 23:01 | |
| This is God's life in the Son. | 23:05 | |
| Your sins are forgiven, your life has been restored, | 23:08 | |
| but your address hasn't changed. | 23:13 | |
| So pick up your shovel, put on your gloves, | 23:16 | |
| roll up your sleeves, begin. | 23:21 | |
| We serve the Son by serving God's people. | 23:26 | |
| You may not always do your best. | 23:31 | |
| You may grow tired and angry. | 23:33 | |
| Your patience might run a little thin. | 23:37 | |
| But this is what we have been left behind to do. | 23:40 | |
| Christ has ascended to heaven. | 23:45 | |
| We are left behind to dig in | 23:49 | |
| and make the Kingdom of Heaven a living reality right here | 23:53 | |
| in the place we know best. | 23:58 | |
| Oh, and one more thing. | 24:03 | |
| Don't worry about not having enough time. | 24:06 | |
| You have a gift called eternal life. | 24:09 | |
| You have all the time in the world. | 24:12 | |
| Amen. | 24:16 | |
| (organ music) | 24:21 |