This week has been an interesting week. We’ve had three people in the hospital, so I’ve been spending time there daily, talking with patients and their families about issues of life and death. The news has been filled with issues of life and death, especially as they’ve pertained to Terri Schiavo and the Pope. Last month I chose to focus on the text from 1 Peter today, which also deals with issues of life and death.
I’d like to say these all came together neatly in my mind, and it was easy to write this sermon. But that would be a lie. I’ve struggled with these issues this week, and bounced ideas off colleagues, and struggled to reconcile ideas that have been, at times, contradictory.
This letter of Peter was written to a church that was suffering. This letter was not addressed to a particular congregation, but to all the congregations in the region of Asia Minor. It was to be shared and circulated among them, that they all could receive the hope and encouragement the letter offered. The persecution of the church had begun, and to claim the name of Christ was to put yourself at risk. It was not an easy time to be a Christian, and I’m sure that there were those who faltered in their faith. How could God allow this to happen? Why did God allow this suffering?
The writer starts by talking about the significance of the resurrection, which we celebrated last Sunday. He offers praise to God, writing, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you….” As Presbyterians, we don’t think much about the new birth that we receive in Christ. For those of us who were raised in the faith, it is even harder to understand the concept of that new birth, since we have always known the faith and the living hope that we are promised. For the Christians to whom this letter was written, it was something they understood and to which they could relate. When they heard the gospel and chose to follow Christ, it was a new beginning for them. Their commitment of faith may have cost them their family and friends. They were making a choice, and leaving the past behind as they embraced a new way of life. Their lives were changing, but they were changing in a way that would endure beyond time and space, beyond the troubles of this life. They were receiving a hope that could not be damaged by anything that happened in this world.
The baseball season is about to begin. On opening day, every team will go out with the hope of this being their year, the year when they win the World Series. As the season progresses, that hope will fade for most teams, and by the All Star break the majority of the teams will have given up that hope—at least for this year.
The hope we have received in Christ doesn’t change—no matter what we encounter in this life. It can’t be changed, because it isn’t dependent on us or our circumstances or anything we do, but on Christ, and what he has already done for us. As Peter put it, it’s imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. No matter what happens in this life, we have that hope. Or as Paul put it, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
I’ve seen the impact of this hope with many of you as you have faced illness and death, for yourself or a family member. When Violet had her heart attack this week, she told the doctor she didn’t want to go through a cardiac catheterization, as she would not choose to have surgery at her age if it showed anything. She said, “I’ve had a good life.” For her, death isn’t the enemy. I have seen this attitude so many times, I remember one person who was facing death say to me, “I know I’m going to heaven, I just don’t know when.” Someone else told me this week that facing death has taught her to appreciate each moment, and not take anything for granted. Each day is a gift. I’ve been blessed as I’ve had the honor of walking with families through death and dying of seeing them embrace life—they’ve savored the time they’ve had with loved ones, even as they’ve viewed their impending death not as the enemy, but as the ultimate healing.
I’ve been struck by the contrast this has been to the highly publicized cases of these past few weeks. On Friday night, there was a headline article about the pope’s health crisis that was headlined, “No More Hope.” The news report quoted Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the Vatican’s health minister, as saying that the pope “is about to die.” “I talked to the doctors and they told me there is no more hope.” I contrasted this to what I had overheard Friday afternoon. I was waiting for an elevator on the 7th floor of the hospital. A woman and a man were sitting in the lobby talking about the pope. The young man said, “I think that one day soon our Heavenly Father will do the pope a huge favor and call him home.” For that young man sitting at the hospital, his hope for the pope took the form of waiting for the healing that would come when he died and went to heaven, or home, as the young man called it. For the cardinal, the hope he was seeking was that the pope would continue in this earthly life. At what point should our hope shift from seeking healing here on earth to recognizing that healing will come when we are, as the young man I overheard put it, “called home?” Is it a matter of age? Is it a function of how sick we are? Is it a matter how long we’ve been sick, or how much we’ve suffered?
What is the nature of our hope? Peter calls it a living hope, but that doesn’t mean our hope is dependent on continuing to breathe in this life. As I watched the situation with Terri Schiavo unfold, I mourned for her parents, for whom the only hope seemed to consist of her continuing to breathe on this earth. For them, keeping her body going, whatever its state, was the most important thing. I believe that losing a child to death is the most painful experience any parent can have, and I hope I never have to live through it. Yet I also have a hope that is not dependent on a family member continuing to breathe. We have a hope that survives death. We have a hope that conquered death. Our hope comes from Christ’s victory over death, and enables us to face whatever life brings our way. Yes, we grieve when a loved one dies, but we grieve for the loss, for the fact that we will miss that individual. We grieve, yet we also know that one day we will be reunited.
Peter is quite clear: as Christians we are not immune to suffering, in fact, being Christian was what brought suffering to the people to whom he wrote this letter. For him, suffering tested our faith, purifying it. Our faith is meant to be used, to be tested. If you look at a child’s favorite stuffed animal, it’s not the cleanest and best looking one—it’s the one that has been loved and cuddled until it’s worn and soiled. Similarly, the challenges of life wear on us, even as they strengthen our faith. A violin left safely tucked in its case in the attic may look good, but the storage results in the glue failing and the instrument falling apart. A violin that is used, and as a result worn, produces much better music. I remember hearing people complain about the Bible a pastor was using—it was literally falling apart. They didn’t think the pastor was showing enough respect for the Bible—what the pastor was doing was using the Bible—using it so much it was literally falling apart. That Bible had given her much more than an unopened, unused Bible ever could.
We are going to be tested, we are going to face challenges. We are going to experience suffering in our lives. Peter says that even in the midst of our suffering, we rejoice in this living hope we have received, or, as he puts it, “In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” God doesn’t cause our suffering, God doesn’t choose to test us, but God does take the unfortunate things that come our way and use them to strengthen us. God doesn’t promise us protection from life’s challenges, God promises to be present with us through them. The 23rd Psalm expresses it well, “even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me;” God doesn’t keep us from those dark valleys, God walks through them with us.
One thing those dark valleys do for us is help us realize what is really important. They help us to recognize and let go of the unimportant, and often it is those unimportant things that most interfere with our truly living the life of faith. In the language of the refiner, they burn away the impurities. A woman went to visit a silversmith to learn about the refining process. He carefully explained how he had to place the silver in the fire for just the right amount of time, so that the impurities were burned away, but the silver wasn’t destroyed. She asked him how he knew when it was done, he told her it was when he could see his reflection in it. As we face challenges in life, when we turn to God, others will see God’s reflection in us.
Peter writes that the result of our new birth into a living hope and traveling through the challenges and struggles of our lives is “praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
Again, among the memories I most cherish are the experiences I have had with you and the stories you have shared with me of the death of loved ones. In the midst of loss, and the tears that loss brings, I have repeatedly heard families offer praise to God for the healing that has finally come as their loved one has been called home. While there were some stories about the pope’s faith and one in which it said he told his aides not to be sad, because he wasn’t, for the most part, the focus of the media has been on the grief that has resulted from his death. I grieve the lost opportunity to demonstrate to the world the nature of our living hope.
How much healthier and more satisfying it is when we live our lives in the living hope that Christ has given us—a hope that leads to “praise and glory and honor”-- a hope that leads to the outcome of faith, “the salvation of our souls.” There are times when I think back and reflect on all the funerals and memorial services I have done over the years. I remember the people I have been honored to know, and whom I have seen be healed through death. I think about how wonderful it will be to one day be reunited with all of them, that is the hope we have—the hope that comes from knowing that our goodbyes are temporary, and one day we will be reunited with those who have gone before.
There is much pain and despair out there in our world. We have seen some of it in the media this week, but Terri Schiavo and Pope John Paul are just two of the many people who have died in this past week. The grief we have seen expressed at their deaths is just a small percentage of the grief that has been experienced this week.
Because of Easter, we have been born again into a living hope. Our living hope shines brightest in the face of death, because it is Christ’s victory over death. We live in a world that desperately needs to hear and experience that hope. We have an opportunity, a responsibility, to share that hope with the world. Let us live our lives in such a way that others can see what it means to live in the hope of the resurrection.
Christ is risen!
