A time to be born and a time to die…
I have in this bag some potatoes. Actually, they’re really old potatoes, rummaged out from the back recesses of my potato cupboard last weekend. I know you don’t have any like this at your house. They had to finally come out because of a leaky sink – that’s a longer and completely unrelated story. These potatoes were in a paper bag, half disintegrated and torn. They’re too soft to use well for cooking, and have begun to shrivel. I threw them in the compost bin, but later fished them out thinking they might be good to plant for a fall potato crop. Evidently they haven’t been sprayed with any kind of sprouting inhibitor, as many store-bought potatoes are. These potatoes have sprouted vigourously in the warm, moist air of the potato bin under my sink.
Seed potatoes are remarkable. Actually, they’re not seeds at all, they’re just potatoes that have been left in the bin too long (or long enough, depending on your perspective). Cut them, put them in the earth, and a new plant grows. Interestingly, unbeknownst to many, potato plants do actually flower and produce a seed pod, and producing potatoes from actual seed is something of a genetic marvel, with each seed producing potatoes that are utterly disease free, and genetically unique from the parent plant, every time – you should look into it if you’re interested. At any rate, that’s not how most of us – those of us who grew up with our fingers in the dirt, at any rate – learned to grow potatoes.
Most potatoes are grown from seed potatoes like these. A seed potato isn’t a pod containing the germ, as peas or beans have, there’s no pit to protect the seed until it’s ready to germinate, it has nothing attached to help it to take flight, the way maple keys or dandelions do. It’s just the potato, the same potato we slice and dice, peel, mash, fry, boil, unheralded source of vitamin C. The secret is in the eyes – those bits you have to cut out when you’re peeling. Each new potato plant needs only one eye, which will sprout and grow, and produce a whole new potato plant, a crop of new potatoes.
Have you ever dug up a potato plant at the end of a season? Best to start about a foot and a half out, maybe with a pitch fork or maybe a spade so as not to damage the new potatoes. So exciting to discover them there – big and little, 5 or 10 to a plant. Some still attached to the roots, others buried in the dirt, revealing themselves only with a wide sweep of your hand through the surrounding earth. Of the original cutting, there remains almost nothing at all, nothing except a spent and empty husk from which the whole plant has rooted itself. A successful potato harvest always requires the utter disintegration of the potato that gave it life, spending its own life force in order to bring forth greater abundance. There is no other way.
The theme for the summer’s series is “For everything a season…” It’s a theme that recognizes and names life’s transitions and changes, claiming with Ecclesiastes 3, there is a time for everything. Last week JD walked us through our chronic and frenetic timeliness, asking, But when is it God’s time? Marilyn, the week before, wondered with us, when is the time for silence, and when is the time for speech? Ecclesiastes 3 is a litany of opposites, a list of diametrically opposed sets, claiming with each one, a time for both. Time for weeping and laughing, seeking and losing, tearing, sewing, keeping and throwing away. This morning I would like to consider the first pairing in verse 2: a time to be born, and a time to die.
Living and dying, life and death.
Our culture places high value on life. Sustaining life, resisting death is the highest good. We do anything to keep things alive. We live in these bodies that are aggravatingly mortal. We work hard toward a dream and when its time has passed, letting them go is sometimes unbearably hard. Staying young is our culture’s holy grail, resisting the aging of our skin, the graying of our hair. Whole industries have sprung up in the interest of resisting the aging of our bodies. By one estimate, the global market for cosmetic surgery will exceed $40 billion in 2013.
· Heroic measures, miracles of modern medicine, pulling people from the brink of death at all costs, miraculous machines breathing life into the body of a barely formed little one, born too soon
· Life and its definition is the fulcrum of today’s culture wars – abortion and end of life debates.
o When does life begin?
o Who gets to end it?
o sustaining life even when the living is a living death
o ending life, when life has barely begun
When we do participate in death, our participation is generally tidied up of any unpleasant reminders that we do so.
· Our meat comes neatly packaged, boneless, skinless, pre-cut, and we hardly have to think of the person who did the killing for us. What a gift not to have to get our hands dirtied…bloodied…and yet we’re hardly even grateful.
· Our elders become invisible to us, uncomfortable reminders of our own mortality
· We in the 1/3 world have the luxury of pretending it doesn’t exist.
And so when death touches us, we are unprepared. As though we didn’t know it was coming. As though we didn’t think it was possible. As though in the dying something has been betrayed. I once went fishing, caught a fish and killed it, and when it had died I felt like I had killed God. We know that life is sacred. And yet so is dying. A time to be born, and a time to die. For everything a season.
I would like to pause for a moment to acknowledge that this sermon, as every sermon should be in my opinion, is gauged to this time and place, a sermon for you, predominantly 1st world folks for whom death and destruction are not constant companions. One commentator I read suggested that the power of Jesus’ proclamation was that he was a symbol of abundant life in a world that only knew death and suffering. I contend that in our culture, in our time and place, we have the opposite problem. We feel entitled to life, so we hardly recognize the value of the abundance Jesus has to offer. You can see how a different sermon would be required in a different time and place.
I should also acknowledge that I myself have not been touched intimately with death’s most devastating effects, as many of you have been. And some of you are closer to the end of your life than others. Several of you have indeed experienced death and suffering on a scale that is unthinkable to the rest of us in cultures and contexts far from here. I would like to honour and privilege your journey when it comes to the question of living and dying, and welcome your reflections afterward, either in the context of the sharing time or afterward in more private conversation.
In the Christian tradition, life and death have resonances, apart from our physical living and dying. If any of you were baptized by full immersion, living and dying were likely key metaphors. Dying to sin, and rising to new life in Christ, putting to death the old self symbolically by being immersed in the waters, and rising again as a new creation. That’s from Romans 6:3 where it says, “we have been buried with Christ by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” And Jesus words about life and death have echoed through our tradition, particularly through the gospel of John. Jesus said, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born anew (or from above)” (John 3:3). “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” And again, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath (John 3:36). And the text read this morning from John 10, “The thief comes only to steal and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Later still, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish” (John 10:27-28).
The requirements for living and dying would have been well rehearsed among the Jewish Christian community whom John addressed. Indeed, these texts from the gospel of John have resonances from the Torah, the guiding texts for the people of Israel. The Deuteronomy text is clear about the relationship between living and dying. The text is set up with one dualism set against another in an easy, almost mathematical equation. The choice is yours, says Yahweh in the text, whether you live and prosper or die amid adversity and suffering. Obey and you will live; turn your heart away and you shall perish. Follow my commands and serve me and you shall prosper with many descendants in a land that I will give you; disobey and you will die. “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live” (Deut. 30:19).
Perhaps, as a people of the book, it is not surprising that we have thought that we have choice when it comes to our living and our dying. It seems to me that this Deuteronomy text is the one by which we have lived. We set up systems of do’s and don’ts, lists of what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate, tomes and volumes explicating right belief, codes of conduct, spoken and unspoken, sometimes written and sometimes merely mutually understood (putting newcomers among us at a distinct disadvantage, I might add.) As though if we do everything properly, according to what’s right and good, and in keeping with commonly accepted standards of normalcy , and in line with community expectations we can purchase clemency for ourselves As if we can, by our own muscle and merit first of all determine and then codify God’s purposes in the world, and then carry it out, earning for ourselves God’s promise of life and prosperity; fend off this thing that we fear – death itself..
Well, it didn’t work for Job, did it? You remember Job – “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” He was unfailingly faithful and observant, careful in all things and even offered extra sacrifices in case his children would sin and turn away from God (Job1:1-5). By Deuteronomy’s equation, he should have prospered all his days without suffering; God should have blessed him as God promised to do in return for faithful service. But instead Job suffered – his children died, one after another, his vast property and livestock were destroyed. He was left with nothing, and he sat with his friends in ashes, tearing his clothes in despair. Still working within Deuteronomy’s paradigm, he questioned God – “Why have you made me your target? Why have I become a burden to you? Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity?” (Job 7:20). Do you rememb
er God’s answer? “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?” (Job 38:4-8). God’s questions continue through chapter 38 and into the next! Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you give the horse its might? Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars, and spreads its wings toward the south?
I am God, Job, and you are not. Your understanding is but a fraction of my own. And none of your formulaic efforts to preserve your own life encapsulates the truth of the universe. I am God, and you are not.
It is surprising to me, then, that John returns to what seems to be another simple equation, albeit with a new twist. In a reworking of Deuteronomy’s equation, Obey God’s commandments and live, John’s seems to be: Believe, and live. My own tradition has taken that mathematical formula and made hay – believing in Jesus is it’s own guarantee of life everlasting, whatever that means. Our understanding of right belief, despite our tremendous disagreements about what that might mean, has given Christians everywhere the permission to display our entrance card to heaven proudly and prominently, with the sometimes tacit implication that those whose belief and practice doesn’t line up to ours are sunk. People who don’t believe. People who do, but believe wrongly (however we define that). People who seem to believe rightly but interpret things differently. Or live differently. Or make different choices on the basis of what they believe. And sometimes we feel free to tell them, like Job’s friends told him, that they obviously fall outside of God’s intentions and as such are doomed.
I think such simple equations make God tired.
But there’s something else that we might have missed here in John’s gospel, something that doesn’t quite add up. I think John’s on to something that we haven’t always picked up on, probably because it’s confusing. In John 11:25, John writes, “Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.””
Wait a minute. It’s almost like he got the equation wrong – let me read it again. Those who believe will die, but actually they will live. AND everyone who lives and believes will never die. Living and dying are all mixed up here, and they’re in the wrong order. But notice that this kind of life is all couched from the beginning in the resurrection. And resurrection, by definition, requires death before there can be new life. The way of Christ is the way of death on the way to new life. Like the seed potato, that needs to give of itself, in order for newness and life to burst forth.
This is the life that Jesus calls us to. It is not a life spent putting off death, but a willingness to die and to let die in order that we can truly live. But the calling is not a calling to death for its own sake, it’s not about becoming constricted and sacrificed (though that might sometimes be required) on the altar of God’s will so that our living is like death even as we breathe. On the contrary, it’s a calling to a life abundant, a life overflowing with God’s goodness and mercy, a life that responds to the movement of the Spirit in the new work that God will do in and through us.
Our refusal to allow the cycle of death and life to take its natural course interrupts God’s intention to do a new thing among us. It’s like putting new wine into old wineskins – what God will bring into being no longer fits into what was. And we end up like a root bound plant – beautiful and bursting with potential for fullness, yet hampered and hindered from new growth, confined in a too-small space where there is no room to breathe, much less grow.
What in your life may have to die in order for new life to emerge? What convictions, what grudges, what bitterness or arrogance, what ego, what plans, what conflicts, what self-centredness or best intentions are alive in you that are preventing you or the people around you from coming into fullness? For Job, it was his earnest belief that he could understand the scope of God’s working in the world. For his friends it was their need to talk when they should have been listening. For some of us it might mean setting aside our grievances, or our pride. For some it may mean stepping out of our need for power and influence to notice how our voice silences others. Maybe it’s not about following rules but about a quality of living, about fullness and love, and about having your feet on the ground, standing side by side in unity, and solidarity. What God-breathed potential do you feel burgeoning inside, and what it standing in the way of its emergence? What is waiting to be born?
Resurrection can happen in church communities too. Jon and I went to a little city church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania called Laurel Street Mennonite. Laurel Street had begun as a mission church – a church on a hill in the midst of a Christ-less city, they said. For much of its 50-year history, Lancaster Mennonites had faithfully come into the city from the safety of their rural homes every Sunday in order to reach people for Christ. And while the ministry never completely died, it was ever and always an uphill battle, and the leaders struggled to encourage community members to attend and commit, bring their children. The story goes that the Mennonite leaders had a tough time trusting its community members in leadership positions, with the community always being seen as the “needy” and the “ministered to” and the communting Mennonites as the “helpers” “leaders” “ministers.” About three years before we arrived, the lead pastor had submitted his resignation, and 75% of the supporting members, most of whom lived outside of the neighbourhood, went with him, along with the dream to evangelize the city. What remained was the leftovers, a handful of community people, a hodge podge of people who had never quite been trusted with leadership or vision. A new pastor, a handful of energized and willing people, and a new vision to be a church in the city, and the church has been resurrected. God did a new thing once the old thing was allowed to die.
How can we at TUMC open our hands to the movement of the spirit? I wonder – though I confess I know nothing about it or its history – what needs to die in the original vision for 6 Lark in order for that dream to come to fullness? What needs to be composted in us in order for us to be more welcoming of the stranger and open to difference? There is a time to be born and a time to die. Like the seed potato, giving of its own substance in order for new life to emerge.
Jesus promises new life, eternal life, abundant life. But not without death. God, through your Son, enable us to open our hands from our clasping to life.
Enable us to receive your resurrection and to overflow with your abundance. Amen.