THE TRAGEDY OF THE UNSEIZED MOMENT
Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
Prospect United Methodist Church
Bristol, Connecticut
October 11, 2009
Hebrews 4: 12-16
Mark 10: 17-31
Does the name Anthony Newley ring a bell? He was an English actor, composer and singer. Probably his most famous song was “Once in a Lifetime.” Remember that? If you’ve ever heard it, you can probably hear it in your head even now. Great lyrics with perhaps the finest lines being the end of the song: “This is my moment… I’m going to do great things.”
Have you known a moment like that? A moment when something stirs within you and you know that a unique opportunity is right before you for the taking. And in that moment, that wonderful moment you know also that whatever new thing is before you may never return again. That you may have but one chance to seize it. Can you think of a moment or moments like that in your life?
Or, in hindsight, can you better remember the experience, the empty feeling of “missing the moment,” of letting some such once in a lifetime moment pass? The kind that you look back on and say, “I coulda! I shoulda! If only I woulda!”
One way of looking at our lives in a kind of grand perspective, is to see our lives as a series of crucial moments – “destiny” moments some would call them. A succession of moments of decision. Some are large. We married, or we didn’t. We chose to live here or there. We chose this career, but not that. Other moments of decision seem small. But, looking back we can see that each moment, each decision determined the choices for the next, didn’t they? And, of course, no matter how much we might want to, we really can’t go back for another exact same chance.
A few years ago I was driving to the church. I saw an accident take place ahead of me down the road. A woman driving a Maxima crossed the northbound lane from a side street, and smacked into a Taurus driven by another woman in the southbound lane. They never saw each other. But I’d seen it. And it was clear who was at fault.
Both cars pulled over and stopped. What did I do? I whizzed by and could see that apart from badly dented fenders neither woman seemed hurt. And I thought to myself, “They’re fine, someone will stop. You’ve got to get to church – you know to save souls or at least answer the telephone.
But then guilt seized me, as it should have. So I turned around and went back to see if indeed everyone was okay. And they were. However, the woman who got hit, the innocent one, was very happy that I’d come back and gave her my card in case she needed me to tell what I’d seen to the police or insurance company.
I made a good decision. I was proud of myself.
But I’ve not always made good decisions. There have been moments when I’ve known I should say something or do something, but because of fear or timidity or insecurity or plain insensitivity, I’ve let the moment slip by.
Maybe you too? So we did nothing, we missed our moment. And, now maybe we regret it because we know that we can’t reclaim it – that special moment is gone forever.
But, it’s not just simply a matter of missing a moment you wish you could have back. For something much deeper may be occurring in our souls. Psychologists note that if a person doesn’t act on their strong feelings of right and wrong, they’re less likely to act on them later on when other such moments present themselves. They say that each time we fail to act we become more closed, more hardened, more desensitized, more emotionally paralyzed.
The ancient Pima Indians have a graphic understanding of this situation. They talk about a stone with spikes sticking out of it being positioned next to the heart. If a person hurts or neglects someone, or does something to break down a relationship, the stone begins to turn, and it continues to turn until the situation is set right or corrected. According to this fascinating legend, although the spikes rub against the heart, they don’t cut or puncture it; they merely rub and rub and the heart becomes more and more calloused. So that the longer one waits to correct a situation, the more calloused one becomes.
I’m not a psychologist, but this sure sounds like a good way to understand this phenomenon, doesn’t it.
There’s another problem we have with this whole business of seizing moments, and that is that we, at least many of us, trick ourselves by substituting emotion for action. Not consciously of course, but essentially.
The way it works is that we feel something strongly -- love or sympathy or appreciation or moral outrage -- but, then, all too often anyway, we seem to say to ourselves, “Well, I felt strongly about that. I guess that takes care of it!” And we do nothing. We trick ourselves into thinking that just because we felt the emotion, we’ve done something.
When I was at First Church, Stamford I hit upon the idea one summer during my vacation that when I returned I would pay attention to the wedding anniversaries in our newsletter and give a phone call of congratulations to the couples. I mean, why not? What a nice thing to do. People who are able to keep marriages together should be congratulated indeed! Just thinking about what I was going to do made me feel so good. What a great pastor I was. I couldn’t wait to get back to the office after vacation.
I made one call. Got an answering machine. Left my words of congratulation. Intended to call back another time. But I felt so good for having made the call and left the message, I never did. In fact, I never made any other phone calls either. I meant to, but feeling good for having made just one call seemed to scratch the itch that I was feeling to do something good. And then my life got busy with other things.
This ever happen to you? We trick ourselves into thinking that just because we felt it, we’ve kind of dealt with it.
Think about your own experience: How many phone calls or letters or notes or emails of love or support or encouragement have you meant to make, but didn’t? How many “I’m sorry’s” remain unspoken. How many “Thank you’s” never were said? How many “I love you’s” are still unexpressed?
And how many life commitments, major life changes have been intended, but are still not made.
Because we missed our moment!
Such is at the heart and soul of the Gospel reading about the rich young ruler. He comes to Jesus, he says, in search of the real life. But when Jesus tells him his preoccupation with money will have to go, that he’ll in fact have to give all of it to the poor, the young man backs off.
Clearly the man is inspired by Jesus. Something definitely is stirring within him. He knows Jesus is right, that Jesus has the answers to life. He knows deep down that he should act; he feels it – but he turns away sorrowfully.
He has it all: wealth, youth, power – the big three. I mean, aren’t those the things our world tells us we need to be happy: wealth, youth, power? And this guy has them. But something is missing. There’s an emptiness, a void, a vacuum, a hunger.
And, in the single best moment of his life he sees the answer in Jesus. But when Jesus offers him life, he turns away: he misses his moment.
He was a good man (the story makes that very clear), but he lets this unique opportunity slip through his fingers.
If you think about it, the rich young ruler is not alone in the New Testament in this regard. There’s the older brother in the story of the prodigal son whose pride ad resentment of his younger brother made him miss his moment. And Pontius Pilate who could have caused the whole rest of Jesus’ life to be re-scripted had he not missed his moment. And of course Judas himself who walked, talked with Jesus, but missed his ultimate moment of dedication.
All these people graphically depict the tragedy of the unseized moment. And unseized moments almost always comeback to haunt us.
Jim Moore, a Methodist minister in Houston, tells about when he was a sophomore in college there was a new student who transferred into his school. He says that in one of their classrooms the chairs were in a semicircle, and they sat right across from each other.
Moore says the young man had the saddest face. He seemed terribly lonely, probably because he had come in mid-year. He didn’t seem to know anyone. Moore says he remembers feeling sorry for him and thinking he ought to make an effort to welcome him, get to know him, introduce him to some of his friends. But he just never got around to it.
Then one morning Moore picked up a paper and read the headline: “Local College Student Commits Suicide.” It was the transfer student. He’d left a note saying he couldn’t go on because he felt so lonely. Moore, with profound regret, has never forgotten the moment he let pass by.
I have no idea what moment in your life looms large right now; no idea what opportunity is before you that may never be there again. Maybe you haven’t thought about it either, in exactly that way.
But now you can. Can think about this particular, wonderful moment in your life.
So, what word is waiting for you to speak to someone? Is it a request for forgiveness? Or, do you need to forgive someone?
Who is there that God may be calling you to befriend in some way?
What action have you been thinking about doing, but have put off?
Or maybe you know you need to deal with an addiction that has taken over your life. Maybe no one knows. But you know you’re not in as much control as you’d like to think.
Or maybe you’ve been toying with a job decision. Or a whole life change that will bring new possibility and hope and joy.
Maybe what looms before you is a decision that is very spiritual. A decision for Christ. A decision to serve Christ in some new way. To give yourself to a cause that is greater than you.
What or who is right now before your eyes, so to speak, in this moment, this wonderful moment of your life, a moment that will never happen again?
Dear friends, seize this moment!
As we ponder God’s nudging in our lives, we’re going to pray together. First in silence. You might want to let faces, names, places, situations sort of bubble up in front of your closed eyes. One at a time. Is this person, this event your moment? Ask God: Is this the moment you’re calling me for? I’ll not speak for another 30 seconds or so.
Loving Christ, help us to respond to this moment, to seize this moment in our lives. Grant us clarity; give us courage. For this is your moment with us. Amen.