The Reverend John E. McGinn, Rector
Saint John’s Episcopal Church
Sandwich, Massachusetts 02563
October 28, 2007
Pentecost 22
Today’s sermon is taken from
the Epistle for the day 2 Timothy, chapter 4, verses 6-8 and 16-18.
Before I begin the sermon I
want to say that I sinned last night and stayed up for the whole Red Sox game,
and I am a little tired this morning, so please bear with me.
I mentioned to you last week
that a long time parishioner, Phyllis Curran, passed away the week before. One of the things that struck me about
Phyllis is that she was one of those people who I thought aged gracefully, and
even though she had a number of aches and pains and other things that were
going on in her life, she still continued with her life, and you know, she
talked about her life in a very positive way.
As I said last week also, that she had been the head of our Episcopal
Church Women, and one of things that she enjoyed doing was having a card rack
in the parish hall where she provided us all with these cards for Thanksgiving,
anniversary and birthday; and the money that was collected for these cards went
to help people in need through the United Thank Offering.
Another thing Phyllis did,
and we have the flowers this morning in her honor, is that she really liked to
have the two vases of flowers, and she arranged them herself. I can remember she lived over in Pocasset and
had to come over one of those breach ways coming across, and whether it be windy or cold or snowy or raining, she came across always
to arrange those flowers and be here at the service on Sunday morning. Phyllis was one of those people who just
believed that you needed to keep going on and do the best that you can.
In her last hours, I was
called to the nursing home where she was staying, and as I got there I was told
by the staff that she was non-responsive.
I went in and I began praying over her.
I like to say that I pray with people, and I guess that was more
like it, but I prayed with her and saying some familiar things like the Lord’s
Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm. Her
breathing was very labored. I know I don’t have any miraculous powers,
but it’s amazing to me how her breathing became much more peaceful as she heard
the prayers that she had heard all her life.
Now, I want to talk this
morning for a few moments about aging.
That is a subject of particular interest to some of us. All of us are aging, of course, but we
probably view that process a little differently when we turn sixty than when we
turn sixteen.
Today I want to focus on one
man in scriptures who handled aging, I think, quite well. His name is none other than St. Paul. We don’t know how old Paul was at his
death. In Philimon,
chapter 1, verse 9 though, Paul refers to himself as an old man as well as a
prisoner of Christ Jesus. We may not
think of his being old because he was still quite active. He was writing letters and traveling, and
when he wasn’t in prison for his preaching, he was encouraging churches. Yet, of course, none of these activities
required youth.
Paul’s last letter may have
been to his young protégé Timothy. And
listen as St. Paul reflects on his life in today’s epistle which was just read
by John Dingus: “For I am already being
poured out like a drink offering and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished
the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge will award to me on that
day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing…I
have fought the good fight, I have finished the race.”
Think about Paul’s words in
light of his life, then think about your own
life. Author Stephen Covey in his Seven
Habits of Highly Effective People encouraged people to begin with the end
in mind. Think about what you will be
able to say about your life when it is nearing its end.
I once read that when we
write people’s biographies, we should start with their death and not their
birth. After all, we have nothing to do
with the way our life began, but we have a lot to do with the way that it
ends. How will your life end? How will others sum up your contribution to
the world?
The thing that is obvious in
Paul’s words both here and throughout his letters is that Paul had no
regrets. That would be a wonderful way
to end your life, wouldn’t it? No
regrets.
Anyone who had visited Phyllis
or had been part of Phyllis’ life would know that she had no regrets.
One thing Paul didn’t regret
was the service he had given Jesus. He
could have. He could have whined, as
many of us might, “Gee, I should have stayed where I was in Tarsus…I could have
been a magnificent success as a tentmaker; with what I know about organization
and sales, I could have distributorships all over the Europe and the Mid
East. Instead, I’ve been planting
churches made up of ungrateful people who grumble and back fight and are
continually backsliding into the unsavory lifestyles of their pagan years. I’ve been ship wrecked, I’ve been beaten, I’ve been criticized, even run out of town. I have spent an extraordinary amount of time
in jail, and for what? I have accumulated
no real estate, no pension, no IRAs, and none of it has been easy.” That’s what St. Paul could have said. When he gave his life to Jesus, he probably
envisioned a Norman-Rockwell kind of world.
What he got was a Picasso. Life
had been hard for him. And now listen
again to his words: “I have fought the
good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the
faith.”
When Paul said that he had
kept the faith, he meant that he endured, in spite of all kinds of stress and
discomfort. I think we need to
understand this. The life of faith can
be hard, and Jesus put it like this: “The
gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction; and those who enter
by it are many, for the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life
and those who find it are few.”
The life of faith can be
hard. There are people who have quite
good-paying jobs because they could not reconcile the activities they were
asked to do with their Christian faith.
There are people who have experienced social ostracism and some physical
danger because they could not reconcile the racial and ethnic and sexuality
attitudes of their community with the teachings of the New Testament. There are churches today that gloss over this
truth. They would take the way of the
cross and make it only ornamental, not life changing. But they are betraying what it means to be
the church of Jesus.
Paul knew that the life of
faith can be hard. He had experienced
it, but still he had no regrets at the end of his life…that he had given his
life to Jesus. Paul had no regrets. He didn’t regret the service he had given
Jesus, and he didn’t waste time regretting what he was before he met Jesus.
I think this is
important. Paul was not a nice person
before his encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road. He was a religious zealot - somewhat like the
religious zealots who have caused such havoc in our world in recent years:
bombing abortion clinics, bombing office towers, taking thousands and thousands
of innocent lives. Paul had only one innocent
life on his record, but that one was more than enough to condemn his soul to
hell. He was there when the apostle
Stephen was stoned to death. He even,
the scriptures tell us, held Stephen’s cloak while the mob did its work. Not only did Paul not intervene, he helped
create the climate that had brought about Stephen’s death. Paul knew all about hate speech. He had been guilty of it himself. His target was the early Christians. No wonder that later Paul called himself the
chief of sinners.
Still, Paul ends his life
with no regrets. Oh, I am sure that if
Paul had been given the opportunity to go back and to clear up his record, he
would. I am sure he would have given
anything if it had never happened, but you can’t go back. The past is passed. It cannot be amended. Yet Paul knew three things: First of all, he knew that God had forgiven
him. The slate had been washed clean by the blood of the lamb. Second, Paul knew that he was a new
person. The old Paul, or Saul as he was
known then, was dead. And this is very
critical: When Jesus touched Paul, he
made him a new person; his motivation was different, his heart was different,
his orientation was different. This was the man who wrote, “If I speak in the
tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a resounding gong or a
clanging symbol. And if I have the gift
of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith
that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and
surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind; it does not
envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it is not rude, it is not self
seeking, it is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices
with the truth. It always protects,
always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” We all know that from 1st Corinthians 13,
verses 1-7.
And does that sound like the
kind of religious zealot who could persecute people who didn’t believe people
who didn’t believe the same way he did?
I don’t think so. Why sit around
regretting what he had once done? That
was somebody who no longer existed. And
this is why repentance is so important.
If you are still the same person that you were when you first sinned,
then sooner or later you are going to make the same mistake again. But if God has turned you around to the
extent that you are a new person, fully committed to the values that Jesus has
instilled in your life, then let go of the past. There is no reason for guilt, no reason for
further periods of remorse. You are a
new person. The old person is dead. God had forgiven him, and now he was a new
person.
But one more thing…Paul knew
that God had taken the broken pieces of his old life and used them to make him
a better person. Now bear with me for a
moment; but this I think is a very important point. God can take even our simple past and make
something beautiful out of it. That’s
hard to grasp. God can use even your
simple past for God’s work. Do you
understand that God can take the broken pieces of our former lives and use them
to build something beautiful. We often say that God does not cause
suffering, but God can use suffering to make us better persons. God certainly does not cause us to sin, but
God can take even our sins and use them to God’s glory.
Paul is an excellent
example. Paul had been the picture of
intolerance, filled with self righteousness and hatred toward others. And maybe that is why in his new life in
Christ he was so eager to ensure that his newly adopted faith was as free from
intolerance as possible. And that’s the
way it works sometimes. The person who
has been a slave to drugs and alcohol, for example, is the best person to reach
out to others who are similarly enslaved and to show them a better way. That’s why Al-Anon works, that’s why AA
works. So it was in Paul. He had been so intolerant of the early
Christians. Who better to teach the
early Christian community to be tolerant of others, especially Gentiles.
Now to be sure, we have used
Christianity of a vehicle of hatred of different groups at times in our
past. But that was not St. Paul’s fault.
Remember it was Paul who wrote, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor
free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” That sounds awful inclusive to me. And even though he had experienced many
problems in his life, Paul came to the end of life with no regrets, either
about his past or about his current situation.
And one reason he had no regrets is that his eye was not on the past,
but on the future. He writes, “I have
fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that
day, and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”
The Greek word for crown is stephanos, and it refers to a wreath that is usually woven
like a garland and placed on the winner’s head at the end of a race. It’s just exactly like the one that is placed
on the winners of the Boston Marathon.
But in St. Paul’s case, this is not just any crown; it is the crown of
righteousness.
I want to talk about that for
a moment. Paul was not receiving the
crown because he had been righteous; that is, because he kept to the rules and
didn’t offend anyone. And some of us
hear the word righteousness, and we are turned off by it. In the New Testament a righteous person is
one who lives in a right relationship with God and his or her neighbor. This does not mean that we are perfect. As long as we are clothed in flesh, we will
be imperfect, but we know beyond any shadow of a doubt that Jesus died for
us. We know that God is the Lord of our
lives and that all God’s children are our brothers and sisters. And we know at the end of our lives, all
imperfection will be removed from us, and we will live forever in perfect
harmony with God and with all of God’s creatures. This we’d like to call heaven. This is what happens when we receive the
crown of righteousness. It is not
something that we merit. It is the
culmination of everything that God has done in Jesus to make us his own.
Paul had no regrets. He didn’t regret the service he had given
Jesus. He didn’t waste time regretting
who he was before he met Jesus. Paul
knew his life was in God’s hands, and his eye was fixed on the crown of
righteousness he would receive at the end of the race. No wonder Paul aged so well. What would be better for anyone than to come
to the end of life with no regrets.
Amen