Sermon Library
“The Eternal Now’
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
April 12, 2009
Service Theme: Easter Message 2009
Easter Message 2009 April 12, 2009
The Eternal Now
By Gregg Anderson
Prayer and Parking Spaces
Maxine was already late driving toward an important meeting downtown and became even more frustrated when she could not find a parking place. Looking up toward heaven, she said, “Lord, take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I will go to church every Sunday for the next year.” Suddenly and/or miraculously, a parking place appeared. Maxine looked up again and said, “Never mind. I found one.”
I am not sure what to make of this story, but I thought it was food for thought. It has something to do with the power and expectations of prayer and/or doing things on our own. It could also be a good story about God and people working together like being co-creators.
We are familiar with the phrase, “God helps those who help themselves.” I think the theology of this is pretty good. God can do God’s part, but we always need to do our part as well. Most people attribute this saying to Benjamin Franklin, but it is also found in the ancient texts of Aesop’s Fables and plays of Aeschylus some 500 years before the time of Christ.
Drummond’s Bar and the Baptist Church
Here is a story about the differences of prayer which if it isn’t true, certainly could be true. In a small Texas town, Drummond’s Bar, a popular “watering hole” as they would call it, began construction on a new and larger building to accommodate their growing clientele and increase their business. The local Baptist Church only a couple blocks away started a campaign to block the new bar from opening with petitions and prayers. Construction progressed, however, right up till the week before the grand opening when lightning struck the bar and it burned to the ground. The church members were rather smug in their outlook after that, until the bar owner, Mr. Drummond, sued the church on the grounds that the church was ultimately responsible for the demise of his building, either through direct or indirect actions or means. The church vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection to the building’s demise in its reply to the court. As the case made its way into court, the judge looked over the paperwork. At the hearing the judge commented, “I don’t know how I’m going to decide this, but as it appears from the paperwork, we have a bar owner who believes in the power of prayer and an entire church congregation that does not.”
Belief Is Relative
I think it is safe to say that belief in God is relative. Faith and faith in God, however people may perceive this creator God, this source of life, this force of energy, comes in many different forms and perspectives. Most people consider themselves spiritual, but the word spiritual is then defined with a million different definitions. What is interesting, however, is that just about everyone on this planet considers themselves spiritual in their own way and in some way. This is a phenomenon which has been going on since the very beginning of history.
Easter Pushes the Limits
Easter, in one way, pushes the limits of spirituality, but in another way answers the most significant question of spirituality – the question of life and death. I have personally performed about 500 memorial services in Aspen. I have learned more about lifeby being involved with death than anything else. I have learned that in the end of life there are more questions than answers. I have learned that what is most important in life is not what one has earned or accumulated, but how one has loved and served and given.
We have also, if I may dare say so, experienced the fine line between death and life literally. How many of you have been present with a loved one who has taken their last breath? It would not surprise me that many of you have had this incredibly profoundexperience. I know that I have been there in many passages. It is an undeniable and mystical experience. I cannot explain it, but something happens at the very moment of death – something happens which is real and completely unexplainable. I suspect that many of you can nod your heads to this reality. There is a fine line between life and death and a fine line between death and life. I simply offer this gift to you on this resurrection Sunday.
The Walls are Paper Thin
I really love the image that Cynthia portrays in her book The Wisdom Jesus. She states, “What Jesus does so profoundly demonstrate to us in his passage from death to life is that the walls between the realms are paper thin. Along the entire ray of creation, the ‘mansions’ are interpenetrated and mutually permeable by love. The death of our physical form is not the death of our individual personhood. Our personhood remains alive and well, “hidden with Christ in God’ (to use Paul’s beautiful phrase in Colossians 3:3) and here and now we can draw strength from it (and him) to live our temporal lives with all the fullness of eternity. If we can simply keep our hearts wrapped around this core point, the rest of the Christian path begins to fall into place.” (page 133 – 134)
The distance between life and death and death to life is “paper thin.” I suspect many of us have experienced this “paper thin” reality. We have come close to death in our life. We have known a loved one who has come close to death in their life. We have known someone who has passed from life to death and have the sense that this passage has also been from death to life. The paper thin reality of life and death or death to life appears to be very real. We have experienced it. It is, indeed, paper thin.
The Eternal Now
We live in a reality which includes the finite and infinite, the temporal and the eternal. We live in time and space and time and space includes the temporal and the eternal, the finite and the infinite. The important thing to realize right now is that we live in between these two wondrous realms. This is our reality. We now live, at this very moment in time and space, on top of this mountain, on Easter morning, within the infinite and the eternal.
The psalmist said, this is the day which the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Let us indeed to do this. As we all know, each day is incredibly precious. Let us try to be very present each day. Hidden by the veil of time, eternity is pregnant in every moment of our existence, here, everywhere and always – the eternal now. The present is not only a dimension of time – it is also a gift. Being present is to receive the present. When we unwrap the present, we enter a world that is completely ours now. We receive the gift of life. It’s like preparing for a miracle.
There are thousands of interpretations and understandings of resurrection. Resurrection is part of the mystery of life. People believe in it metaphorically and or literally. I believe that Jesus is as alive today as always through his story and message and life. One doesn’t have to believe in a literal resurrection to believe in resurrection.
Paul Tillich writes, “God is the beginning and the end.” This is said to us who live in the bondage of time, who have to face the end, who cannot escape the past, who need a present to stand upon. Each of the modes of time has its peculiar mystery, each of them carries its peculiar anxiety. Each of them drives us to an ultimate question. There is one answer to these questions—the eternal. There is one power that surpasses the all-consuming power of time—the eternal: He Who was and is and is to come, the beginning and the end. He gives us forgiveness for what has passed. He gives us courage for what is to come. He gives us rest in His eternal Presence.
A respected theologian by the name of Walter Winks said, “The ascension is not a historical fact to be believed, but an imaginal experience to be undergone. It is not a datum of public record, but divine transformative power overcoming the powers of death. The religious task for us today is not to cling to dogma but to seek a personal experience of the living God in whatever mode is meaningful.” I encourage you to be present to the present as well as the reality of the eternal; the eternal now.
Gregg Anderson
Aspen Chapel
http://www.aspenchapel.org