They promised me an income of up to ten thousand dollars a week. It would come in the easiest of ways; all I would have to do would be to sit at home and wait for it to pour in. They said the money would mount up effortlessly. Up to ten thousand dollars a week, made by promoting certain products, products which everyone would surely want, and by recruiting other promoters just like myself. I would not only be selling the soap, or shampoo, or floor wax, products. More than that, I would be selling franchises. I would be selling dreams, pushing out messages like the one I had just received, reaching everybody I could find through my computer. And from each patsy, er, I mean, each person, who nibbled, I would reap a bounty. Effortless money, up to ten thousand a week.
So ran the brightly colored blurb that came across my computer screen the other day. As you know, from seeing the news this week about the Heaven’s Gate people, today’s entrepreneurs don’t worry with bulk mailings and slick brochures. Today they use the Internet and create colorful web pages. But on paper or in cyberspace, a pyramid is still a pyramid, and I passed on that one, thank you, having noted that they did mention “up to” ten thousand a week, but didn’t mention how “far down” I might have to dig first. Some other time, thank you.
Still, there is a kind of wistful attractiveness to it, isn’t there? We all dream of getting ahead. We all dream of making it big. We all imagine a life in which the money doesn’t run out before the month does. Man, I sure hope the church treasurer has not forgotten that tomorrow is the last day of the month; my plastic is well worn! Don’t you get tired of running to the bank with this week’s pay check in order to cover last week’s bills, already written and mailed? We all dream of possessing a sure thing, and, this close to tax time, who isn’t looking for that magic fix! Ed McMahon, we could use you and your might-have-already-won letters right now!
But, of course, we know that such plans pay off for practically nobody. We know that one in a million hits the right combination. We know that one in ten million strikes it rich on the lottery. We know that even when we sit at home and fantasize ourselves playing “Wheel of Fortune” and being awarded a new Jeep Cherokee by Vanna, we know that it happens to only a precious few. About all most of us can do is to fantasize about it.
Unless there just might be a way to get what we want without laboring for it, day and night, week after endless week. Unless there is a sure-fire approach to success and happiness. Unless!
Actually there are two such possibilities. There are two ways we might actually get this elusive happiness thing. One of these is through the way of death. And the other is through the way of life. The way of death and the way of life.
I
Let’s think, first, for a minute, about the way of death. You can get rich by the way of death. People do every day.
Some get rich by sheer, brazen violence. Theft, burglary, mugging, all the rest. We live in a community which is beginning to feel an assault from this pattern. Just a few days ago one of our members told me that he could no longer put anything at all outside, because it would just walk away. Everything from lumber to tools to garden equipment would just disappear in his neighborhood. In fact, sometimes the garden itself; I can name you people in this community who have even lost azaleas to thieves who just come in and dig them up. Steal! That’ll work. That’s one way to get what you want. But it is part of the way of death.
It’s part of the way of death because it doesn’t care what it does to others or what it takes from them. It’s part of the way of death because it would just as soon take away a life as take away a wallet. Again, just a week ago, one of our members found himself pushed half into the open trunk of his car, with a gun barrel shoved against his neck and a demand for money shoved down his throat. Thanks be to God, it ended without anyone being hurt, but it was nonetheless part of the way of death.
But theft isn’t the only thing in the way of death. Business owners who force immigrant laborers to work for pennies, holding over their heads the threat of deportation back to some oppressive place are using the way of death to get rich. Firearms dealers who hide behind the “right to bear arms” clause in the Constitution and who mask as sportsmen, knowing full well that their guns will be used on the streets... they are using the way of death.
Drug dealers, from the nice neighborhoods of Montgomery and Fairfax counties, clean-cut people who would never shoot up a fix in a dark alley off 13th Street ... but who make deals and buy off officials in other countries .. these are just as guilty of the culture of death as the shadowy characters standing on the corners. Tobacco companies, knowing that smoking produces cancer, but keeping on in the manufacture and sale of death; distilleries, knowing that alcohol destroys families and takes lives, but posturing as the providers of social savvy and luxurious living, these too are guilty of the way of death.
Ah, but also add in every one of us who cares only for our own balance sheets, add in every one of us who is interested only in being comfortable and cares not at all about the lonely, the lost, the languishing, and the left-out. We too are looking for our happiness in the way of death, and it will work. For a time. For a little while. For now.
II
But there is a larger question. There is a long-term issue. What about the future? What about after here-and-now? What happens when the bloom is off the rose and the things that money can buy are decayed and broken? What happens when health breaks and we can no longer spend all we have accumulated? What about when death itself catches up with us and says, “Put it on ice, brother, because I have another agenda for you!”? When the bottom line gets to the very bottom line, what then will we have?
There was a young man, once, who determined that he would pursue this question. A young man who had already succeeded by most people’s standards. He had all kinds of possessions. Plenty of things, and to spare. He had a solid position in his community. He had a reputation of some standing. He even had an admirable moral record. He was a good, decent guy. The kind you would want your daughter to marry. The kind you would like to have living next door to you, assuming you can afford to live in his neighborhood.
This young man, however, wasn’t satisfied. Something nagged at him. Something kept gnawing at his heart, and he wasn’t satisfied. There just had to be a better way than this. There just had to be a way of life that wasn’t so caught up in death! He had worked so hard for everything he had, but what if he were to die tonight, tomorrow, and never get to enjoy it. His things were fun, but down deep he suspected they were the way of death. And as for being a good guy, the respectable citizen, well, that too was getting to be burdensome. That wasn’t fun any more. That too was beginning to feel like the way of death. In a word, life was boring. Glittering, but boring. Full of things, but empty. And he wanted more.
And so he came to Jesus with a searching question, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” Where is there a way of life and not of death? Where is there fulfillment and not devastation? Where will I find some joy and some peace, some life, instead of this droning drudgery, this same-old, same-old stuff?
Jesus gave him the prescription. It was very clear. It was quite concise, it was thorough and pointed. “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” Young man, walk away from the culture of death and come follow me. Give it all up, throw it away, because it is killing you, and just try life.
We ought not to be surprised when Peter hears this and blurts out an anxious question. That most outspoken and most impulsive of all of the disciples, Peter reminds Jesus, “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” We ought not to be surprised, because we haven’t figured out, either, how you can gain by giving and how you can have by not having. Jesus, there has to be a payday someday. We’ve done exactly what you asked us to do. We set aside our families, we walked away from our jobs, we abandoned the security of our fishing villages, and we are following you all over the map. Now when do we get ours? “We have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?”
Jesus tells him what he will have. He will have something, all right. Not what he expected, maybe, but better. Far better. “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundred fold, and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”
Everyone who has left everything, for my name’s sake, will receive .. and will inherit eternal life. But, watch out, many who are first will be last, and the last will be first. What does this mean? Eternal life? What’s that?
III
I don’t want you to think of eternal life as spending a million or so years twanging on a harp. I don’t want you to get caught up in images of angels’ wings and pearly gates and golden streets. I want you to see eternal life in a different way. I want you to see what Jesus is promising when he promises that what we will have is eternal life.
Eternal life means constant companionship and reconciled relationships. Constant companionship and reconciled relationships. And remember, the first will be last and the last will be first. Things are going to be turned upside down and backwards.
a
Eternal life means that instead of the loneliness that things bring, Jesus Christ will give us constant companionship. Instead of being surrounded with stuff, all of which actually pushes us away from others, eternal life means the constant companionship and unconditional love of Jesus Christ.
We live in an impersonal age, and a lot of that has to do with our material success. The more things we have, the less time we have for people. We drive around in steel boxes, with the windows closed, the air conditioning blowing and the radios blaring, and suddenly there’s nobody else in the world. No wonder we get aggressive when we drive; thanks to that thing, we’ve isolated ourselves from the world. We plop ourselves in front of television sets, and get to think of the people on the screen as more real than the ones in our own home. I went to the hospital to visit a patient not too long ago, not a member of the church, by the waty, and I guess he wasn’t too sick, because all I heard was “Uh-huh, uh-huh”, as his gaze was turned up to the TV screen. We have forgotten what human companionship really is.
And now comes the computer, and when I first checked in to on-line services, my son, who works for one of them, said, “Look out, Dad. It’s addictive.” Well, I’ve managed to stay clear of the chat rooms, but isn’t it remarkable that there is a whole crowd of people who find it more comfortable to talk with somebody through a machine than face-to-face? We’ve got it all backwards! We want companionship, and yet we are afraid to do what it takes to get it. We are afraid to give up our toys and our props. We need a different kind of companionship.
Come with me to the nursing home, and there you will see people reduced to the bare minimum. You cannot tell whether they have bulging bank accounts or whether they have nothing. All of them are in much the same circumstances. They can do little more than manage the tiny space around their beds, and maybe not even that much. But I’ve learned something from these folks. Some of them are lonely, but some are surrounded with friends and loved ones. Some are all alone and some are able to maintain a quality of life despite their disabilities. Those who have known and followed Jesus as their lord find that they are not lonely, they are not anxious, they are not fearful of the future. For they have eternal life. They have something that will keep forever, even though the world has told them it’s not worth very much. But they have learned, those who are forced to live out their lives in these humbling circumstances, they have learned that the first shall be last and the last first. They have eternal life.
Eternal life is constant companionship. Eternal life is knowing Christ as the friend who never fails, the companion who never grows weary, the presence that never wanes. Eternal life is constant companionship.
b
And second, eternal life means reconciled relationships. Eternal life means reconciliation of all the things that are out of balance. Eternal life points toward a day when the last will be first and the first last and the injustices of this world will be set right.
Think of Good Friday and its travesty of justice. Think of those shady trials they gave Jesus. Kangaroo courts if there ever were any. A show hearing in front of the Roman governor, who allowed himself to be bullied by the throng into doing what they wanted. A hasty moment before Herod as a political favor to a visiting princeling. A closed-door scene with some religious ruffians who wanted to protect the delicious income they enjoyed from the Temple. No justice there, none at all. Talk about people living out the way of death! They did it, every one of them, from priest to Pilate, from soldier to citizen. They lived in the culture of death.
And so surely Jesus’ friends must have been angry. Surely they must have felt the sting of that injustice. Surely their powerlessness, their inability to affect the course of justice, must have stung them. Mingled with their loss was the awful knowledge that the powers that be had done them in, again.
But very early in the morning, on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb, there to be greeted with life-changing words, “He is not here. Behold, He is risen, as He said.” He is risen, and in His rising He is going about making wrong things right.
For I believe that the culture of death is now dead. I believe that the way of life will prevail. I believe that because of Christ, the old ways of injustice are doomed, and the way of love will triumph. I believe that eternal life means that someday, somewhere, you and I are going to find that every thing we have suffered at the hands of injustice is going to be set right. You and I are going to discover that the last shall be first, and the first last. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill be made low. The crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. Eternal life means a world in which, at last, justice is won, relationships are reconciled.
If you follow Jesus, even though this world is bent on hurting you, even though you feel that the system is set against you, even though you may feel that racism has limited you and sexism has stereotyped you, even though you may think that the powers that be are interested only in their own enrichment and not in yours, I tell you that justice has been won. That victory is on its way. I tell you that the last shall be first and the first last and that eternal life is here, it is here and it means that God’s justice shall be done in God’s own time and in God’s own way. But it is guaranteed. It is coming. Christ is risen. And eternal life, justice, reconciliation, is coming.
c
What then will we have? If we set aside all the props and follow Christ, what then will we have? Eternal life? How do I know? How can I say this?
Because they went down that path to that tomb, and He was not there, for He was let loose in the world, and He lives. He has become our constant companion, He has reconciled our relationships.
Because I have put my hand in His nail-scarred hand, and felt His love for me. Because I have dared to place my fingers in the breast which bled for me, and I can feel His love, I am who am the chief of sinners and the least of all saints, I who have been the last am now among His chosen ones. Jesus Christ, eternal life, is mine. Mine now, mine forever.
How do I know? How can I say this? Because He lives I can face tomorrow; because He lives all fear is gone; because I know He holds the future, and life is worth the living just because He lives.
What then will we have? Nothing, but everything. The last first and the first last. Nothing, but everything. Not death, but life, eternal life.
