Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Pentecost 2
June 18, 2006
W. Gregory Pope
TO LIVE LIKE YOU WERE DYING
Psalm 90; James 4:13-17
(“Live Like You Were Dying” by Tim McGraw played over the sound system)
He said I was in my early forties with a lot of life before me. And one moment came that stopped me on a dime. I spent most of the next days looking at the x-rays. Talking about the options and talking about sweet time. I asked him when it sank in that this might really be the real end. How’s it hit you when you get that kind of news? Man, what did you do? He said I went skydiving. I went rocky mountain climbing. I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu. And I loved deeper. And I spoke sweeter. And I gave forgiveness I’d been denying. And he said some day I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying. He said I was finally the husband that most the time I wasn’t. And I became a friend a friend would like to have. And all of a sudden going fishing wasn’t such an imposition. I went three times that year I lost my dad. Well I finally read the good book, and I took a good long hard look at what I’d do if I could do it all again. Like tomorrow was the end, and you got eternity to think about what to do with it. What should you do with it? What can I do with it? What would I do with it? (Tim McGraw, “Live Like You Were Dying”)
This song by Tim McGraw is, I believe, a fine example of the wisdom we find in Psalm 90. The simple wisdom that prays, “O God, teach us to number our days.”
This sermon has been at work within me since Holy Week. It was a week when, turning our faces toward the cross of Christ, we ponder death more than usual. This past year, it was an even darker week, as we thought we might lose our good friend, Bob Hieb. He is now doing miraculously better, for which we are profoundly grateful. But it was a scary week for us all. On Monday, things looked quite dark. By Sunday, Easter Sunday, Bob was back home.
And then to our great shock and dismay, three days later, our friend Buddy Revels falls dead of a heart attack. At the funeral on that following Saturday, Bob Hieb comes into this sanctuary with Brian Williams, who has just had foot surgery, Bob pushing Brian in a wheelchair.
(When I asked Bob about my sharing this today, he said he gets constant ribbing from some of you about how the two of them, at the moment, with such tenuous health, did not even constitute one full person.)
But there he was alive with Brian. And the unbelievable, heart-breaking irony of Buddy Revels’ body lying in a casket just a few feet away. It was more than many of us could take in during those days.
Since that time, this sermon has been at work in me. With the words of the psalmist a refrain in my mind, “Teach us to number our days.”
There’s an old saying about living every day as if it were your last. I’ve never cared too much for that advice. Because it’s not, I don’t think, very practical or wise. Think about it: Who of us would ever go to work or to school or to the doctor? Who would work for change in the world if we knew tomorrow would be our last day? We really cannot afford to live every day as if it were our last.
Charles Poole makes a helpful correction to that word of advice by saying, “Instead of living each day as if it were our last, we must live our lives with the awareness that one day will be our last.”
Now that may sound obvious. But if you look at how most of us live our lives it is not clear at all that we know one day will be our last. Rarely do any of us come to terms with the limitation of our time.
I did find a poet, Jane Kenyon, who came to terms with her limitations. In her poem “Otherwise,” listen to her description of a given day:
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
It will be otherwise.
(Jane Kenyon, Collected Poems, “Otherwise,” Graywolf Press, 2005, 266)
Here is one so deeply grateful for the simple pleasures of a single day: two strong legs, cereal, sweet milk, and a peach, work she loves, walking the dog, sleep, a mate, dinner on a table with candlesticks, a bed with paintings on the wall. She’s so aware and so grateful for these gifts. There is no sense of entitlement. She knows all these pleasures to be sheer gift.
The refrain gives reason for her gratitude - “It might have been otherwise.” All her circumstances could have been different.
Most telling is that last line: “But one day, I know, it will be otherwise.” It doesn’t take much living to learn that things as they are cannot be kept. Life will bring changes; some welcomed, some that break our hearts.
I recently learned that when Jane Kenyon wrote this poem she had something specific in mind. She was struggling under a terminal illness. Within a year of writing this poem, she died.
This poem reminds me of the work of another poet 2500 years ago - our psalmist for today, the author of Psalm 90.
The psalms are personal and corporate testimony to encounters with God. They form the prayer book and hymn book for ancient Israel’s worship of God.
This poet writes about God in ways many of us do not often think of God. There is much here of God’s wrath and anger and God having afflicted us - with what, the psalmist does not say. Because of words like these, the psalms, more than any other book of the Bible, are edited for Christian worship. The Christian faith is centered in the love and grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ. We hardly, if ever, speak of God’s wrath and anger. And so we often edit psalms like these. I stand guilty of sometimes doing so myself. But not today. I almost shortened the reading of this psalm but decided, no, let’s ponder the poet’s full meaning.
This poet doesn’t tell us why he or she believes that “all our days pass away under God’s wrath,” (90:9) or why the people “are consumed by God’s anger and overwhelmed by God’s wrath” (90:7).
The psalmist does say our iniquities and secret sins have been placed before the light of God’s countenance. Could it be, given the nature of this psalm, that God is angry over the little thought we give to the meaning and purpose of our lives, the large and small ways we forfeit this great gift of breath? Doing the things we know we should not be doing. And failing to do those things we know we should be doing. In what sounds like a commentary on this psalm, James says, “This is our sin.”
I do not know exactly what the psalmist had in mind when speaking of God’s wrath and anger, but I do believe it is true that God does indeed grow angry when we fail to live our days in gratitude and purposeful intention.
The psalmist wants us to know how precious our time really is. Listen to the lines:
“Our years come to an end like a sigh.”
“The days and years of our life, . . . they are soon gone, and we fly away.”
“Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
Perhaps the hardest lesson for us to learn is that our lives are limited, that at any moment we could cease to exist, that every second we breathe, even through tears, is pure gift.
But we don’t believe it, do we. Clearly we don’t believe it, or we’d spend less time in meaningless activity and live life with more radical gratitude, radical generosity, radical risk.
It seems for many of us it takes a confrontation with the possibility of our own death before we realize how limited and precious our life really is.
There are those of you who have felt that your own death was quite possibly at hand. You have come face to face with what you thought was your near death, and you’ve not seen life the same since.
Depending on how long ago your encounter with death occurred, you may have fallen back into that terrible human tendency to forget how precarious life really is.
There are monks who often greet each other with the daily reminder, “Remember Brother, one day you will die.” It is not a morbid obsession with death, but a daily encounter with the reality of our limitations, a reminder to never take one day of our lives for granted.
When we are faced with that reality, those who speak of it say their primary experience is not one of fear, but clarity. They see things they’ve never seen before.
They say death as an old friend who comes and shows you your life and teaches you that some things do not matter as much as you thought they did and certain things matter a great deal more than you thought they did.
Death shows you your life and says,”See how much you are loved.” Death also reminds you of some the choices you have made and says, “You’re not so bright, are you.”
The prospect of one’s own death, or the death of someone we love, are powerful teachers.
Why is it, I wonder, that it takes a crisis to remind us of the brevity of our days and how precious the choices before us? We can talk about how busy we are and the demands upon us. But I think the truth is we’ve not really wanted to remember who we are. We do not want to remember that we are creatures of limit with such a brief time to live. This is our sin. We wish to be gods, with no sense of time, no sense of the choices we make.
The strategy is to remember how easily we forget. And one of the ways we remember is to listen daily to wisdom like Psalm 90: “Teach us to number our days.”
Because as another line reads: “Our years pass away like a sigh.” Think of all the different things a sigh might say.
As we think of the passing of our years,
it might be a sigh of regret for something we have done or failed to do,
or a sigh of grief for what we had but couldn’t keep,
a sigh of longing for what we wanted but never got,
a sigh of anxiety for all that was never resolved,
a sigh of contentment that it was good enough,
a sigh of thanks for the love we got to give and also to receive.
I don’t know about you, but as I read those words this week, I thought to myself, the sigh I most want to have at the end of my days is the sigh of gratitude - gratitude that whatever wrong choices and mistakes I made, there were chances I got that I didn’t miss - to love well, to cherish, to savor, to give, to live, to work - all under the good news of my limits and the limitless grace of God who holds all our days with infinite care.
Grady Nutt, a dear friend of this congregation, who died far too soon, once said, “To me, this is the essence of living - to look back from the brink of death with a solid smile and say, “I’m glad I did that!”
The brink of death - who’s to say where that is? It may be our permanent residence. We simply do not know how many days we have left.
Did you hear the words of the song we played earlier? When asked what he did when the news of his foreseeable death sank in, he said, “I took a good long hard look at what I would do if I could it all again.”
And he said, “I did those crazy things I’d wanted to do but never did. I went skydiving, rocky mountain climbing, and bull riding.”
He said, “I made the changes in my life I had needed to make for a long time. I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter and I gave forgiveness I’d been denying. I was finally the spouse that most the time I wasn’t. I became a friend a friend would like to have. Certain things like going fishing with a parent, child, sibling, or friend were no longer impositions.”
The prospect of his own death was such a profound teacher, he said, ‘Some day I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying.’” To live with passion and purpose and gratitude for the gift of another day.
These words from William Law came across my desk this week:
“As the morning is to you the beginning of a new life . . .
Receive, therefore, every day as a resurrection from death . . .
And under the sense of so great a blessing,
let your heart praise and magnify so good and glorious a Creator.”
What is it you need to do? What have you been putting off?
If there is a letter to be written, why would you not write it this very day?
If there is a phone call that needs to be made,
if there is a relationship that needs to be mended,
if there is some work that needs to be done,
don’t put it off any longer.
Love those you’ve been given to love.
Forgive those who need forgiving.
And if some new calling is asking for you, follow it.
If some new risk of faith wants taking, take it.
May God teach us to number every precious day and fill in with purposeful living.
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CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
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