I revealed a big secret a couple of weeks ago; about how I went to the grocery store for the first time. Well, I’m still trying to figure out this thing called the grocery store.
The novelty is over now, the size, the selection, and what not. Now I’m having to deal with the day in and day out problems of buying groceries.
I’ve made a couple of trips to the grocery store since my first visit a few weeks ago, and the problem I run into is that I can never remember to bring a list.
So I never really know if I need something or if I already have it in the fridge or in the cabinet. This is really a problem when it comes to milk.
We never seem to know if we have milk or not.
And I’ve found myself blocking the aisle just staring at cartons and cartons of Pet, Superbrand, and Peeler’s milk trying to remember if I need to buy some.
This is an incredibly important decision! I don’t know if we have really and truly weighed all the consequences of uncertainty when it comes to buying milk.
If we think we have milk in the fridge and we don’t buy a gallon, only to reach for the carton in the morning, and we go "ha" and we almost throw the carton over our head because its so light without any milk in it!
There’s no milk! And we’re left having to put water in our cereal and our coffee, oh it ruins our day!
So we stand in the aisle of the grocery store and we buy a gallon so we won’t have to live the horror of waking up to an empty carton of milk.
And then we go home and start putting the items into the cabinets, cupboards, and the refrigerator only to see a full gallon of milk sitting there!
Oh no! Now it’s a race against the expiration date! We’re drinking milk at every meal, two bowls of cereal, we’re washing our hands with milk, flushing the toilets with milk, inviting every cat on the street to drink the milk!
Doing everything to try to finish that extra gallon milk.
Because there’s no worse feeling, there’s not any fear worse than drinking milk, the day after the day that is stamped on the carton!
And we ask everybody in the house, smell this!
I don’t know it is supposed to smell like, do you know what is supposed to smell like?
And we close our eyes, say the most heartfelt prayer of our lives and drink the last of the milk.
The reality of perishability.
Growing up I had what most everybody had. Except I bet you called yours by a much different name.
It was blue, it was the softest thing I’ve ever felt to this day, and it was with me wherever I went. It was my Hish. I don’t know where I got that name, I’ve never heard that word and neither had my parents, but that light blue blanket that I carried with me on car rides and to hotel rooms was my security blanket, my hish.
The older I got, the hish still stayed with me, although I didn’t carry it around with me wherever I went, but it held it’s share of safety pins around my neck as I was every superhero imaginable saving the planet from evils and terror.
It would flap in the summer breeze while I rode between the trees and tall blades of grass. It was there when I fell off the bicycle and would nurse my wounds and help stop the bleeding until mom could find a bandaid.
But over the years, as time discriminates no one, the hish began to fade, it began fray, and fall apart.
The hish was no longer fit to be a cape, it was too worn to provide comfort at night, and I was too old to take it on road trips. And it was lost somewhere between the boxes in the attic and the yard sales that accumulated over time and my security blanket was lost.
The reality of perishability.
Everywhere we look we are reminded of the reality of perishability!
All week, we watched as thousands of delgates and members from the media gathered in Philadelphia for the Republican National Convention.
We watched speech after speech, proclaiming to all who will listen about the perishability of the present administration.
And in two weeks, we’ll see in Los Angeles as the Democratic National Convention meets to proclaim to all who will listen the perishability of the rival platform.
But the reality is, no matter which party wins the presidential election, one day, their term, their time in office will end!
We cannot escape these reminders, as the seasons change and the leaves will soon begin to turn to fire and fall to the ground and as the grass begins to turn brown, we will remember that everything will one day perish!
We watch every night as days meet their end, parents rejoice at the beginning of school and their children cry at the death of summer vacation.
High school boys will play their last down of football, girls will dance their last step, because everything sooner or later comes to an end.
Infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle-age, all of these will come and go and there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop it.
There is not any medicine we can take, there aren’t any special words we can say, to stop time and change the course of life.
Everything will come to an end. Everything we see, touch, smell, taste, hear, and know will one day perish.
That’s why it’s so hard for us to fully and truly understand what Jesus is saying to us!
Everything, and I mean everything that we know here in this life has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
We are born, we grow up, we grow old, we die.
We get a job, we work hard, we retire.
We prepare a meal, we eat, we do the dishes.
Everything we know has a genesis, a beginning, everything we know has a life-span, and everything we know has an ending.
We can set our clocks by the truth of nature of life! Beginning, middle, end.
So when Christ talks about a life that will never end, we scratch our head.
When Christ talks about a time that has no beginning, no middle, and no end, we can only wonder!
When Christ mentions a bread of life that will never perish, we can only imagine.
This is so unlike anything we’ve every experienced before!
Sure, there may have been times that have seemed like an eternity:
Some sermons have left me wondering if I was in heaven or hell because surely time was not moving!
We’ve all felt like were looking eternity square in the face, in the line at the DMV, waiting for that check to come in the mail, waiting for that special someone to call, or waiting for someone to call that may bring bad news.
But the lines ended, the mail was delivered and the calls came!
There is nothing more mindboggling, more wonderful, more hopeful than a life that never ends! A peace that stands still! A love that doesn’t begin or end but simply exists between every creature, angel, and puppy.
A life that doesn’t end, a bread that is does not perish.
A life that we may not be able to understand, but a life that feels us with hope.
What could be more wonderful than that?
I received my South Carolina United Methodist Advocate in the mail on Friday. This is the monthly magazine that keeps all United Methodist’s informed of what’s going on in the Conference and in all of United Methodism.
One of the first things I read when I open the magazine are the letters to the editor. There are usually some pretty good letters from people I know, saying things I wish I had the guts to say.
But when I opened the magazine on Friday, I read a letter that from a lady that I thought I’d never read in the Advocate.
The lady was writing to complain about this thing called grace. She admits this thing called grace is a little new to her. In her letter she writes this:
"Those who have believed that they are saved by grace have lost their souls to burn in hell forever. Jesus demands complete obedience to his laws! In the saved by grace doctrine, one does not have to love his neighbor,
love others and obey the commandments. This saved by grace thing is the reason for all the hate and racism."
She ends her letter by saying that those who say they are saved by grace "have no future with the Lord!".
If there is anything that is harder to understand, harder to comprehend, more wonderful to discover than the reality of the nonperishable life with God is the reality of the nonperishable grace of God.
It is so hard to understand many people simply don’t believe it’s possible, much like the lady who wrote the letter to the Advocate.
Just as we know by living in this life that everything has a beginning, a middle, and an end, we also know that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
We know that in this world of give and take, we have to give what it takes, because nothing is given to us, nothing is certain.
But our God is not of this world! The wonderful thing about the grace of God is that it is GIVEN to us by faith, and that it IS certain through faith.
The grace of God is not perishable, it is always and forever, calling us to God through faith, picking us up when we fall, cleaning the bumps and bruises we acquire through living.
The grace of God is working within us to make us that which God has called us to be – perfect in love.
Through our faith in Christ, we are able to live on the bread of life, one that is not perishable, one that never ends, never fades, never frays, never dies.
A bread that is without an expiration date.
A bread that justifies us before God and sanctifies us as we grow in faith.
Our lives are perishable. Our wishes, hopes, dreams, and desires will also some day perish. Everything that we will, will someday whither away.
If we based our salvation on what we will, on what we do, on how we act, paradise will be a lonely place.
If we plan on our actions to save us, the same actions that forget birthdays and run red lights, and can never see the oil light come on, we may have a problem.
But through faith, through faith we are able to live on the bread of life, a bread that gives us grace that makes us perfect in the eyes of God, a grace that understands that we will fall not just once, but countless times.
A grace that moves us, a grace that makes us worthy, and a grace that shapes us into what we are supposed to be.
A grace that remains, through seasons and storms, through heartache and maddening love.
A grace that survives attacks from letters, doubts, and words from other people.
A grace that never perishes in faith.
A grace that sustains us through all of our beginnings, all of our middles, and carries us into eternal life when we find our end.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.