Better Than Life
Old
Testament Reading: Psalm 63:1-8
New
Testament Reading: Luke 14:25-26
This is All Saints
Day, the Sunday set aside on the Church calendar to commemorate the great
heroes and heroines of the faith, those who not only said they
followed Jesus Christ but also did follow him. They backed up their
profession with their actions. Perhaps they made no verbal
profession but confessed Christ clearly with their lives -- and more to
the point for my homily this morning: with their deaths.
This sermon was
suggested to me by Wayne Bond as a result of our Sunday School study of
the Book of Daniel. We read the stories of Daniel being cast into the
lions' den and of his three friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego being
consigned to the fiery furnace -- and surviving! The three confessors make
a forthright statement that their God is able to deliver them, but
that their faith in him is not predicated on any assurance that he will!
Here is an important distinction that we often miss because of the outcome
of the story. They do get supernaturally delivered (as does
Daniel). So we read it and say, "That's God for you! He comes over the
hill to rescue the righteous just in time!" Like the cavalry in a John
Wayne movie. Like Superman whenever Jimmy Olsen presses the button on his
signal watch. But Shadrach and company were careful to point out that they
didn't adhere to the Hebrew God because one of the fringe benefits was
miraculous escapes! No, though it was fully possible that their
prayer might be heard, they believed in him whether he delivered them or
not! Because in either case he was the Living God! His rescues had
nothing to do with that one way or the other! He might
rescue them or he might not! Either way he remained the living God.
A God who, unlike idols, is inscrutable to mortals.
And here was Wayne's
question, as I understood it. Why does the story only show rescues? Why
not martyrdoms? And why does God not come to the aid of his faithful ones
all the time? It would almost make more sense for him never to
rescue anybody! Because if he does it at all, why wouldn't he
want to every time? To this I have two answers. First, God is not a
machine and lacks the predictability of a machine. The belief in his
providence is an existential confession of faith, not a scientific theory
about the world. In science, a theory about nature has value only insofar
as it allows us to predict events on the basis of it. For instance, the
theory of natural selection set forth by Darwin and Wallace, if true,
should enable us to predict that when environmental conditions change
drastically, only animals with traits that happen to fit the new
environment will survive and flourish. If this is never observed to
happen, then something's wrong with the theory. In fact we do see it
happen. But if we hold the theory that God will always rescue the
righteous, we have, I hate to say it, a bad theory that miserably fails to
predict what will happen. This "theory" was tested and disconfirmed many
centuries ago. You may read the research report on it in the Book of Job
if you are interested. Faith in the providence of God does not mean that
nice guys finish first. Rather it means, if I may quote that research
report, "Shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord and not receive
evil? The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the
Lord." It is an attitude toward what comes. As Paul says, it is the
resolution to have sorrow that leads to life and to repentance, not that
which leads to death.
My second answer is
a literary one. The Book of Daniel is not really trying to inculcate the
deluded belief that God will always rescue. No, if you read to the end of
the book, it is apparent that he is writing for the encouragement of the
faithful Jews dying under the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes. He
promises them final vindication in that Day that God raises the martyrs to
life eternal. I believe that the deliverances of Daniel, Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abed-Nego are symbolic depictions of the end-time
resurrection. To be thrown into the lions' pit and the furnace symbolize
burial in a tomb, consignment to the forces of death. Rescue from these
living tombs is the only way the writer can present the promise of
resurrection in narrative form.
For myself, I would
not answer Wayne's question with the doctrine of a resurrection at the end
of history. I am not so bold in belief. I would point rather to the
resurrection faith of the Gospel of John. "I am the resurrection and the
life; he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live... I
tell you the truth, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead
will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live." I
believe the resurrection that Christ brings, the resurrection that is a
living reality and not the cold comfort of a mere doctrine, is the rebirth
to a life full of meaning.
And though I do not
aim to be the first in line to receive the martyr's crown, I do believe
that this resurrection of meaning is more in evidence, more clearly
displayed, in the fate of the martyr, the one God does not rescue,
than anywhere else! You see, the death of most of us is simply a cutting
off, a running out of gas before we have reached our destination For most
lives, death is an interruption of a sentence. We never hear the
punch-line, perhaps because the speaker himself didn't know it yet! The
lives of most are unfinished manuscripts. But the lives of the martyrs,
those who die for their faith or their principles, which is the same
thing, their lives have come to their logical conclusion. Viewing
their deaths you see the meaning of their lives. The life
led to the death in such a way as to make sense of the life, just
as a story makes full sense only once you reach the ending. The martyr for
Christ has died for Christ because he lived for Christ.
There was no discontinuity, as in the case of a death-bed conversion. No,
there is a flowing continuity, even though the life of the saint, the
martyr, the hero, seems to have been cruelly cut off. Where can I trace
any continuity? Precisely in the fact that they had come to live their
lives for something that was more important than their lives! And one day
it finally came time to decide either to forfeit life in favor of faith,
or to trade faith for life. To the martyr there is no real choice, or
rather the choice has long ago been made. And that is the secret of
sainthood. To live one's life for something more important than one's
life, whether or not the moment to sacrifice the one to the other ever
comes. If you so live, and the day comes, you will be ready. Even if your
sentence gets cut off, and does not end with the proper punctuation, the
drift of your statement will have become sufficiently clear long since. I
hope there is something more important to you than your life. The Psalmist
said, "Thy loving-kindness is better than life!" Jesus said that no one
who did not hold his own life as worthless by contrast was worthy to
follow him. What is worth more to you than your life?
Your answer will
reveal much. It will not reveal whether you have courage. I am not
asking whether in the event you would have the courage of William Tyndale,
of Martin Luther King, or of Thomas More. I just want to know what you
think you ought to do in that situation. That will tell us what
your life is about. Whatever you see as more important than your
life certainly should have a lot to do with the direction of your
life, with your priorities. I mean, if a thing is theoretically
important enough to die for, certainly it is important enough to
live for!
There are some
obvious items on the list. Of course you would die for your spouse or your
children. In a second. You would most likely die to defend your country,
or the principle of a free society. Would you die for your faith? For the
name of Jesus Christ? Or when it came down to that, would you suddenly get
very sophisticated and decide that you needn't be tied down to any
religious confession in particular? That it's good enough to be religious
in general?
Would you die to
preserve the Bible if there should come a day when, as the Emperor
Diocletian's troops did, a government tries to destroy all Christian
books? Would you die to protect the Mona Lisa from a vandal? I would not,
but an artist might well die for the Mona Lisa. And I would praise him for
it, though I would not see it as my calling. I have occasionally wondered
if I would die to protect the last surviving copy of Strauss's The Life
of Jesus Critically Examined or Bultmann's History of the Synoptic
Tradition. They are monuments of Biblical scholarship, and to lose
them would set back the understanding of the Bible. Would I? I don't know.
All I know is that if I knew someone else had died to keep them available
to me, I would be eternally grateful. I don't know what I would do, what I
would die for. Simon Peter certainly didn't know what he would do when the
crunch came, though he thought he did. But if I could decide what I
think I ought to do if such a day should come, then at least I'd
have an idea of what my life, now half-over, is about.
Copyright©2009 by Robert
M Price
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