The Time Is Now
Speaker: Rev. Matt Henry
Location: Whitney United Methodist Church
Date: January 25, 2009
The Idaho Statesman yesterday had an article under the large headline “Flight 1549 Survivors Face Life Anew.” When US Airways Flight 1549 splashed down in the icy Hudson River, Mike Berkwits was too busy getting his wife off the slowly sinking plane and out of the swift-moving water to worry about dying.
Now that he’s had a week to remember it, every time he tries to fall asleep, he can’t think about much else.
He sees passengers crying and praying as the jetliner bound for North Carolina hit the river. The desperate scramble to escape as water filled the aisle. The look on his wife’s face as they huddled on a wing, wondering if the ferries in the distance would arrive in time to save them.
‘I haven’t slept much. I keep thinking about it, replaying it in my head,’ said Berkwits, a 55-year-old business owner from Charlotte.
In my liturgy of a service of resurrection, which now many of you recently have heard way too many times, I express a sentiment that goes something like this, “Did you remember to say, what may always be the very last time you get to say it, ‘I’ll be waiting for you,’ ‘I’m so proud of you.’ It really hits home, doesn’t it? As I was thinking about this liturgy I realized I think there are a few sentiments missing here. I need to include sentiments now like this, ‘I’m so sorry for….,’ ‘I really regret that I……’ But that only would be for regrets and the meaning of living and dieing is that you should regret nothing. But perhaps all of us need and have cause to say we’re sorry for something at death’s door because our pride has made this necessary. Apologies may be such as, “Oh, sorry God I didn’t give you more time when I should have because right now I’m going to expect a lot of yours,” or, “Sorry, God, that you weren’t the thing I worshipped when I had the time because I worshipped instead at the altar of money. I worshipped instead at the altar of material comfort. I worshipped instead at the altar of appearances, of ego, of anger, or violence. I worshipped at the altar of self-gratification at others’ expense.”
Let’s take a look at what this might look like, worshipping at the altar of others’ expense. (plays a clip from the movie “The Bucket List”) So the question of the movie clip there, “The Bucket List,” reflects the notion that the time is now. And the question is, if you could find out when you were going to die, would you? Because, if we knew, we would no longer drift aimlessly down the river of life but we would begin to make certain choices. Choices like maybe this. I know a woman who said to me not too long ago, and she was dead serious when she said it, and she didn’t bat an eyelash. She said, “I’m going to spend my kids’ inheritance.” You know, that’s a mantra of boomers. I’m gonna spend my kids’ inheritance, I’m gonna spend the world’s inheritance.
Unfortunately, even death doesn’t guarantee we make right choices. Friends, I’ve done funerals for some folks that have tragically taken their “I’m sorrys” and “I forgive yous” to their grave. Even worse, they’ve taken their “I’m proud of you” and “I love you so much” blessings with them, forever more unspoken. An almost equally tragic mistake, I don’t say those blessings because I assume, “Well, she knows how I feel” or “I’ve said all those things to him.” Yeah, when he was five. These are all bad choices. They’re self-indulgent and self-centered and self-righteous to the very end.
Let’s look at two very different examples of things said at death’s door. This is from the Gospel of Luke. Then he said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’ This one comes from the Gospel of John. When Jesus saw his Mother and the Disciple, who he loved, standing beside her he said to his Mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the Disciples, ‘Here is your Mother.’ And from that hour the Disciple took her into his own home. The lesson here, my friends, is that right choices before getting close to death’s door are all about relationships. They’re all about restoring them and uplifting them and blessing them, amen? But here’s the kicker about the kicker. The time is now because all of us are living on borrowed.
When I read this story of Jonah I always am curious. The Ninevites and the Israelites were like the Bloods and the Crips, man. What was it about the Ninevites that called them to listen to Jonah, an enemy outsider? What is it about Hamas and the Israelis that causes them not to listen to each other’s mutually assured destruction or madness? Does it take spending three days in a whale’s digestive tract, and spit up in vomit, to bring someone to their senses? But yet we continue to live and die for riches and wardrobes and gadgets and pride and stuff. Now, just think about it for one second. Which gets more of your time, reading the Bible and praying or surfing the Web? Which gets more of your time, listening for Jesus or to the iPod?
We live, friends, for ephemeral things that the Psalmist says are all just a delusion. Imagining a set of scales he says, “In the balances they go up lighter than a breath.” That stuff…you know…our regrets, our remorse, our ego, our sense of self-justification, our sense of image. Poof…they’ve no weight, no mass, no importance, and no inheritance. No, we only have the now; this very second…that’s it. And that’s the beauty of dying. Most older people get this.
Some have even made changes to their lives in the weeks after the crash. Touched by the kindness of a young woman who insisted on giving up her dry socks and coat, Beth McHugh, 64, has promised herself not to keep strangers she meets at a distance.
Starting right then and there, everyone she meets—be it the TSA agent who patted her down for her first flight after the crash to the deliveryman who brought flowers to the door of her Lake Wylie, SC home—is getting a hug Amen? Linda Slupe, I wish you were here to hear this.
‘It connects you to people,” she said. “It’s all about celebrating life. It’s all about celebrating that people in our lives are the only important things in our lives.”
So far, no one has turned her down. Most older people know this, but not all, that the closer you get the less you fool around.
My brother Paul Entzminger lived an entire ‘nother lifetime with his wife in her last three months, because Esther and Paul were smart enough to know that the time is now. Even our new President, Barack Obama, knows this as he made abundantly clear in his Inaugural Address. The time is now. So, what are you going to do with the time that’s left you, when you walk out this door, even when this sermon is long gone? I mean brothers and sisters, the appointed time had grown short, and it’s growing shorter all the time. From now on let even those who have lives live as though they have none and those who mourn as though they were not mourning and those who rejoice as though were not rejoicing and those who buy as though they had no possessions and those who deal with the world as though they have had no dealings with it, for the present form of this world is passing away.
These words that I give you this morning I speak to you in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.