Standing the Test of Time1
10-12-08
Imagine with me, if you will, that it’s the year 2508. That is 500 years from today. Only God knows if this planet will still exist, or what it will look like. For the purpose of this sermon, imagine you are browsing about in a library (if any libraries even exist in 2508) and you come to the ancient history section. As you scroll through the titles, you come across "The Most Important Events of the 20th and 21st Centuries," which is not too catchy but, hey, we’re being hypothetical here. You open the book and there’s a list of the top 10 events that shaped the world way back then and still matter in 2508. Here are two questions to ponder: What are the top two events listed in the book and what events that have occurred in your lifetime will be remembered 500 years from now?
In order for us to add some perspective to this question, it might be helpful for us to go in reverse. What do you think are the two most important events that have occurred within the last 500 years? To think about this question, we have to travel all the way back to 1508. Do any of you even remember what was happening in 1508? It was a leap year. Michelangelo started his work on the Sistine Chapel. Maximilian I, the holy Roman Emperor, invaded Venice and lost. The Protestant Reformation would happen in another 9 years.
I couldn’t tell you the economic situation in Europe, the biggest health issue, or about any of the wars that were raging. Very little of what was important to the people of that day seems important to us today. We are products of our history, but even more so of our experience. We, by our very nature, are a lot more focused on the present, seeing the big events in our time as "earth-shattering" while not realizing that 500 years hence they will have likely been relegated to a textbook or some obscure Ph.D. dissertation. The wars that we battle in now are huge, and men and women are struggling around the world. Men and women are becoming widowers and widows, children orphaned. So it is difficult to imagine that things like 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq may only be a blip in the grand scheme of world history. Of course, to us they’re not. These wars are all-encompassing events, but once the veterans and contemporaries are gone, they seem less pivotal and fall into the long line of human conflicts that seem to happen in every generation. As memories get fuzzy, the reasons for the wars themselves become less apparent. Even world wars tend to lose their impact over time. World War I, was dubbed the "war to end all wars," and it quickly faded in the face of World War II which is, itself, slowly being replaced in the collective consciousness by whatever war we happen to be presently fighting.
So, if even war doesn’t stand the test of time, what does? Scandal? Can you name the players and the problem in the Teapot Dome scandal? (The Teapot Dome scandal refers to a bribery scandal of the White House administration of United States President Warren G. Harding. "Teapot Dome" is a reference to an oil field on public land in the U.S. state of Wyoming, so named because of a massive boulder that looks like a teapot overlooking the field.) Can your kids tell you what Watergate was about? Will anyone remember Enron 50 years from now?
Art and architecture have an enduring quality, but we can’t always grasp what was going on at the time they were created. There are probably only a handful of such architectural and artistic works that could evoke long-term memory, while there are so many more that lie forgotten.
Perhaps the most memorable markers for any age are the ideas and explorations that advance human understanding. New discoveries tend to last generations; for instance, the discovery that the earth is not the center of the universe, learning how to preserve food, the ability to travel in space, or mapping the human genome.
The apostle Paul lived more than 500 years ago, but had his focus squarely on ideas that would last. While in prison, Paul writes to his beloved church in the city of Philippi, miles and miles away. Philippi was a relatively small town of 10,000 inhabitants or so. At first it flourished because of gold mines nearby, but, at Paul’s time, it was mainly an agricultural center, situated on the edge of a fertile plain that produced grain and grapes for wine. Granted, Paul was sitting in a prison cell somewhere, he was writing to a group Christians who had challenges of their own. They were poor. Some of them were slaves. Most of them lived with very little security, living toward the bottom of the social ladder not only in comparison with our standard of living today, but even the standard of living back then.
So a prisoner of the gospel writes to prisoners of circumstance. Writing to the Philippians, Paul urges them to "stand firm in the Lord" (4:1). This is a significant word from an imprisoned man. It was especially important in the midst of an apparent conflict between Euodia and Syntyche, two women at odds within the Philippian church. Sensing their anxiousness about the struggle, Paul urges the community to move out of their present focus on the "earth shattering" problem of the current day, and instead "Rejoice" because "The Lord is near" (4:4-5). "Do not worry about anything," says Paul reminding them of the bigger picture, but guard your hearts and minds with "the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding" (4:7). It’s a peace that transcends even the cycle of human conflict. Sometimes it is really difficult to grasp such a peace.
You see, Paul’s worldview of what really lasts was bound up in his understanding of the cross and resurrection. The death and resurrection of Christ was the linchpin of history, ushering in a new age and anticipating an age to come. He understood that human history comes to an end (in fact in his understanding of scripture, he thought that would be sooner rather than later). But Paul also understood that God’s kingdom does not end. Rather than promoting great deeds or monuments to mark his place in history, Paul sees his own history as culminating in his desire to "focus in on the timeless nature of knowing and following Christ." Everything else- accomplishments, reputation, legacy, fame, knowledge - aren’t what ultimately matters.
What really stands the test of time, Paul says, are the ideas and actions that mirror Christ. "Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things" (4:8). Paul had a strong sense of the timeless as opposed to the temporal. This is not a sense that comes naturally to most of us. He understood the difference between that which was eternal and that which is passing. He believed in the Unseen as having more value, or as being more "real" than the Seen, and understood that everything, - including war, scandal, discovery, art - we see when we look around is some day going to pass away. Nothing will be left as is. Something may be built in its place, but it too will come down either because we tear it down, or because it falls under its own weight. Another really important war will be fought in the future and memories of past wars will become even fuzzier. But Beauty, well, that’s a concept, an idea, a form that is absolutely eternal. As is Love, Truth, Justice, Honor, Pleasure. These things cannot, repeat, cannot be destroyed. These things simply are. There is no power on earth that can destroy these things. These concepts are ours to claim and ours to share. They are ours to glean and ours to teach. They are ours to seek and ours to act on responsibly. That’s why Paul suggests that in anxious times, in our worrying moments, we should return to the Timeless, to the things that really count.
Having brought my daughter into this world in a time of war, economic crises, great wealth and great poverty, violence both real and created for entertainment, I need to be reminded that love, beauty, truth, justice, honor, pleasure, faith, these concepts endure and continue to inform my life. These concepts allow God’s grace to seep in and return some hope to even the bleakest of situations, like conflict within the church, or market collapses. I can only imagine what young Abigail, or young Abel, Sam, Noah, or Jake, or young Makenna and Mason, or young Emily, young Andy, what young Raquel and Rachel will see in and experience in their lifetimes. I can only imagine the scandals that will threaten to bring this great nation to a halt, and or, God forbid, the wars that take the lives of their friends and family. I hope that in the course of their complicated, beautiful, often mucky journeys that they never lose sight of love, beauty, truth, justice, God’s grace. These concepts are made manifest in families and communities that remain steadfast, and embody these principals. For we serve a God of love, beauty, truth, and justice, and are called nurture one another in the principals that will stand the test of time. As we baptize Abigail today, I pray that she may experience the beauty and love that her family, both biological and Christological can share with her. I pray that she understands the transformative power of Christ’s death and resurrection; his message of justice and grace.
Of course, as Paul suggests, in order to stay connected, with self, other, and, most importantly, with God we should pray (4:6). But having done that, what are we to do? What do we do when, having prayed and prayed and prayed about something, the distraction and the issue and the irritation remains unresolved? We must, the Bible says, transition to the Timeless. When we do, what emerges from our lives will have a touch, a shadow of the Timeless about it as well. Few of us will be remembered individually 500 years from now, or even 50 or 100 years from now. "Our lives on this earth are, by and large, pretty brief and not historically noteworthy. If we really want to increase the store of human happiness and well-being and leave our mark on the world, then, the best way to do it is to follow the way of Christ, to think on and do the things that really matter in the long view of the kingdom. Truth is that humans have short memories, but God doesn’t. What we do for God is what will really last!" To that I say, thanks be to God!
1The opening questions and concept come from an article entitled, "Surviving the Centuries," written by Bob Kaylor, Senior Minister of the Park City United Methodist Church in Park City, Utah.
Blessings,
Melissa