Dying to Live Rev. Emily Wilmarth First Presbyterian Church of Highlands, NC March 22, 2015 John 12:20-33 This week, I read the powerful story of Paul Kalanithi, a man my age who trained as a neurosurgeon at Stanford. Six years into his residency, he started showing signs of illness. Test revealed metastatic lung cancer. Never a smoker, this news came as a shock to Paul and his wife, Lucy. He underwent chemo and a long hospitalization after barely completing his residency. Days after being released from the hospital, his daughter was born. In a beautiful essay published by Stanford Medicine Magazine (and republished by the Washington Post, if you wish to go and read it for yourself), Kalanithi faces the reality of his mortality head on. Once a healthy, brilliant young man with all the potential in the world, he bravely confronts the truth that his time on earth is short. He writes: Time for me is double-edged: Every day brings me further from the low of my last cancer relapse, but every day also brings me closer to the next cancer recurrence and eventually, death. Perhaps later than I think, but certainly sooner than I desire. There are, I imagine, two responses to that realization. The most obvious might be an impulse to frantic activity: to live life to its fullest, to travel, to dine, to achieve a host of neglected ambitions. Part of the cruelty of cancer, though, is not only that it limits your time, it also limits your energy, vastly reducing the amount you can squeeze into a day I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described, hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed. i I thought about Jesus words about his death as I read Kalanithi s story. Jesus, too, knew that his time of death was drawing close. Jesus talks about death that brings life. He employs an agricultural illustration. The grain of wheat must die and fall to the earth in order for the seed to bear fruit. Without that death, new life remains impossible. Springtime is coming to Highlands. Daffodils and chirping birds and warm sunny days like yesterday remind us that out of the death of winter, springs forth life. Jesus implies that his death, too, will bring new life. But his words can hard to swallow. I think Kalanithi s writing and Jesus speaking are troubling for us to hear because the truth is, death is awful. Mourning is painful. Endings are deeply sorrowful. No wonder Jesus claims, My soul is troubled. To know that his death was immanent came with
such a heavy weight. Who wouldn t fear the pain, the abandonment, the utter loss that would come with such a death as his? Yet, Jesus preaches the truth that out of death comes new life. Our faith is built on this reality. Two weeks shy of Easter, we know that the tomb will come up empty, that death won t have the last word in the life of Christ. But, in order to arrive at the tomb, we must encounter his death. We must acknowledge the painful truth that God suffers and dies. In doing so, we must acknowledge our own mortality. The season of Lent addresses this reality like no other. We had to postpone, and then eventually cancel Ash Wednesday this year. So, we missed the opportunity to kick off the season by having our foreheads rubbed with ashes while being reminded that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. Still, for forty days we walk with Jesus toward the cross. We draw closer and closer to the death of our savior. The ancient practice of giving something up for Lent is based in the idea that sacrificing something in our own lives helps us better relate, or more fully understand the sacrifice of Jesus as he walked toward his death. I know there are mixed feelings about whether or not we should give up things for Lent. Some believe that the idea of giving something up chocolate, alcohol, fried food can be self-serving. That s a fair critique. Do we give up chocolate to bring us closer to God or to lose a few pounds? But, the idea of giving up something we really love about this life is exactly what Jesus is talking about when he says, Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Chocolate or fried food might seem trivial. Lent really begs us to look at what deep, insidious elements of life on earth keep us from knowing God, from following Jesus. When Jesus says, Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out, I believe he gives us a clue at how to do the work introspection, how to observe what our lives are really about. What rules our lives? What worldly powers do we cling to? What can t we give up, what can t we live without? Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber writes: Lent is about hacking through self-delusion and false promises. Lent is about looking at our lives in as bright a light as possible, the light of Christ, to illumine that which moth and rust can consume and which thieves can steal. It is during this time of self-reflection and sacrificial giving and prayer that we make our way through the over grown and tangled mess of our lives. We trudge through the lies of our death-denying culture to seek the simple weighty truth of who we really are. This is not a season of taking up self-denial, it s a season of relinquishment. We let go of all the pretenses and destructive independence from God. We let go of defending ourselves. We let go of our indulgent self-loathing. ii It is in living this way that we can walk closer to Jesus as his death draws near.
I don t think that Jesus means that we are supposed to literally hate life. I think he means that when we love the part of life that separates us from God when we cling to power, self-reliance, material things, and all the trappings thereof we place our allegiance with the rulers of this world. This doesn t necessarily mean actual people in power. It means the things that put barriers between us and God. Maybe an addiction to chocolate or alcohol, or an insatiable desire for fine food does distance you from God. Maybe a drive to obtain new and better stuff gets in the way of your devotion to serving Jesus Christ. On a less material scale, our fears, prejudices, assumptions, anger, reputations, need for affirmation, or desires can become the central forces of our lives. And when we succumb to the rule of these things, we put distance between ourselves and God. I think that the work of hating these elements of our lives in this world is the hardest work we do. We don t easily turn our backs on these rulers of this world. I ve never known someone to give up fear for Lent. But, Jesus says that when we let this devotion die, new life is born. All along his walk to the cross, Jesus shows us what it takes to turn away from false gods, to deny the ways of this world. When the soldiers come to arrest him, Peter turns to violence in defense of Jesus, cutting off the ear of the high priest s slave. Jesus might have appreciated Peter s valiant action. But, rather than gratitude for this show of defense, Jesus commands Peter, Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me? (John 18:11) He heals the slave s ear. Again, when Pilate questions Jesus whether he is the king of the Jews, Jesus answers, My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here. (John 18:36) Jesus rejects the notion that fighting determines winners and losers. He proclaims a kingdom in which love rules and love wins. In his crucifixion and death, the rulers of this world appear to come up as the winner. But, I believe that long before even his trial, Jesus had relinquished any power the rulers of the world had over his life. Jesus went to the cross with not one single stumbling block between him and God. Jesus preaches the truth that out of death comes new life. The rulers of this world don t win. The tomb comes empty. All of this begs the question, to what must we die in order to find new life in our midst? If we can learn to hate the things that really kill, to turn our backs on false rulers of this world, what beautiful things might be born in this life? Dying to our fear of people who are different from us might mean the birth of new, fulfilling relationships. Dying to the assumption that we can t change the world might lead to a tiny step that changes one life for the better. Dying to the belief that things we own make us acceptable in this world might inspire us to give more away to people who actually need some material goods. Dying to the disappointment that we can t change the ones we love might help us change ourselves in order to love those people better.
I ve noticed that the Lent practices more people seem to gravitate toward are the opportunities to embrace positive change, like our volunteer opportunity to serve here in Highlands during Lent. Or writing notes of gratitude on each of the forty days. One proposal I read this year on a blog I frequent suggested giving up the practice of focusing on the faults of other people and, instead, looking for their good qualities. Separation from God isn t limited to our own personal relationship. Our distance from God has everything to do with how we relate to the rest of God s creation, too. Jesus and the neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi both offer us the gift of perspective that comes from the final days of life. I don t know, but I do suspect that when the end of our mortal days on earth stares us in the face we come closest to the understanding of what it means to hate our life on earth. We won t hate it because it is about to end. We will hate it because its time will no longer seem endless. When our days are numbered, we will no longer believe we can try harder tomorrow or pray more next week. Once our time becomes precious, we might draw closest to Jesus. Lent reminds us we don t have to wait that long. Paul Kalanithi died this month, on March 9th. Stanford published an obituary that told a rich story of his life. iii He wrote and taught during his last months. Doctors gave his articles to patients in their own last days. He worked with Stanford s palliative care education and training program, offering his perspective from both sides as a doctor and patient. He mentored younger residents, training them not only as surgeons, but also as caretakers. Everything about his story is beautiful to me. I read his words about facing death, and I hope my life can reflect truth and honesty and letting go of vanities like his. Out of his death comes so much life. Kalanithi wondered if he ought to write a collection of letters to his infant daughter, to part from this world leaving some sort of legacy. He decided against it. He left only these words for her to read when the time was right: When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing. And as hard as it is to confront mortality, I believe that in Christ, death surely does not speak a final word. Jesus proclaims, And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. May we use these last weeks of Lent to draw closer to Jesus and the cross.
i http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2015spring/before-i-go.html ii http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/02/why-i-love-ashwednesday-and-lent-part-2-death/ iii http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/03/stanford-neurosurgeonwriter-paul-kalanithi-dies-at-37.html