sun. “SUNRISE... SUNSET"
Isafah 46:6-8; 54:10
I Corinthians 13:8-13

Communion Meditation 4}
January 6, 1974 tf
John M. Buchanan

I missed the movie of ler on the none bust can remember the first time I head the
pa Cts me Rew
Sone “Sunrise,..Sunset.” I't a haunting melody, and my reaction to the lyrics, es I heard
hem on the car radio, was sadness. | he involuntary reaction, because I wasn't listening
articularly carefully. It AXMAEX was almost as if the song bad a power of its own to penetrate
eeply and get at a tender nerve.

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Listen to the werds:
\ "Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I doa't remember growing older...
When did they?
wow 15 the Tittle boy a bridggroom.
wow is the little girl a bride,
Unuer the canony I see them
Side by side.
Suprise... .Sunset...
Swiftiy fiy the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears.”
The tender nerve that song found in me; the nerve which I am assuming is universally
ender in ali men, is sadness at the inexorable movement of time: anxiety as a result of the
changes that time brings: nostalgia = that yesterday is gone and will never be again. _|
It's a tender verve that the holtay deason always touches. An important part of the way
@ célebrate Christmas as families is to remember the past. We look back fondly te our own
hildhood ana recall our excitement and glee as if it were yesterday. We remember the relatives
WO were an important part of that experience and are gone now. And as if that emotional load
ere not heavy enowgii, dong comes New Years just one week later; an event tviat forces us to

ook backward and contemplate the time waich is now gone, and to acknowledge that we are older

nd different.

The passing of Lime - like an ever-flowing stream is more important to us that we
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rdinarily realize. And it doesn't

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take wuch to prompt most of us to sadness and nostalgia.

_ SUARISE...SUNBET COMMUNION MEDITATIO! -2- JANUARY 6, 1974

The Bible tends to be direct, honest and hardnosed about the process of change and time

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that we're thinking about.| The ancient Jews and early Christians didn't kid themselves. Unlike

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a lot of other religions th

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‘y were sigularly unconcerned with making time stand still and
preservine forwever the glory and power of youth. | "Thre is a time for everythina"” EMXEMEEXX
Ecclesiates teaches - even dying. The Psalmist wrote"
“Of old thou didst lay the foundation of the earth.
And the heavens and the work of thy hands.
They will perish..."
And the prophet, whose -words-we-read-in-the-01dTestament lesson ~ ever-mere-qraphtcrby...
“AHL flesh is crass, and all its beauty is Tike the Tlower of the field. The grass
witheres, the flower fades...”
The prophet even acknowledged that there was nothing particularly permanent about those
vary symbols of permanence and stability:
“For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed...”
And in that beloved section of 1 Corinthians on love, we read Paul's unblinkine honesty
about time and chance: “The work of the prophets will end one day, the tongues of eestacy will
cease, and knowledge will vanish away."

In each of these passages, and throughout the Bible there is an absolutely honest acknowled-

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gement of mortality - the process of chance and _acaing in which all men are involved. / IF I
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have suggested that tha process 1s important; thathwhile we may not talke about it much, it fs a

loaded item for us emotionally. It fs somethine with which all of us must come to terms, in

some fashion or another.

And we do, ordinarily, in one of three wavs. The first, and perhaps most common, 6s to
try to ignore the passing of time, and more aggressively, to defy it. Me can pretend that time
isn't passing: or at least that it isn't making any difference. Everyone else may be getting
older, but not us. Now, thene is cbviously a heavy culture and conmerical contribution at
this point, The alvertising industry has ciscovered thet the American consumer wants power,
prestige, sexuality and youth, and that products are highly marketable if they promise the
preservation or reintroduction of youthfulness. There aren't, after all, many products on
television advertised by people over sixty: and if there are, its a very well manicurred

and preserved sixty. On the contrary, youth is attractive, alive; and sets the trend in

SUNRISE... SUNSET COMMUNION MEDIRATION ~2- JANUARY §, 1974
in clothing, music, automobiles. The reason is that there are millions of widdle-aged
people willing to spend woney in order to defy the processes of time.

The Rev. Crnest Campbell of Riverside Church fa few York calls it the ‘nee de Leon
anxiety": Ponce, you will recall was a Spanish Conquistidor who discovered Florida, but

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what he was really looking for was a legendary spring the waters of which could made o
men young again. Ponce was S2 wien he set out to find the fountain of youth and Campbell
observes that: “Those of us wie have known the heat of forty summers or more can readily
identify wk with this quest. We fight the calendar the way @ loosing football team fights the
clock,”

Sr consider tse 1973 phenomenon of Bobby Riggs. The importance of boaby Riggs for most
men, I think, was not that he got on the court with the Women's Wimbeldon Cuamp - obviously
that didn’t pan out ~ but that at his age he could bok end act and sound like a brash oyoung
man. Or George Slanda, 16, still playing for the Oakland Raiders: when he shuffles onto the
field to do battle with 25 year old behemoths, gray hair and ail, every middle-aged man in
America feels good, Or Frazfer, the ancient lion. blind, as mangy, crippled, who died this
year; but whose conpany was so pleasant for his two younger mates that they literally stood

him up between thom to take his daily stroll.

Now there is somctaing very good and very healthy about refusing to give

time brings: there is no raason to roll-over and play dead. Life is precious and needs to be

lived enthustastically - vigorously. But it can become a sickness, a neurotic refusal to deal

with reality, a charade. | Richard Lancaster suggests that one of the most important develop-
mentai tasks we must accomplish is the realization that we are not imwortal: that, in fact,
we are not in complete control of the way life will come at us. We need to cultivate control
of the way life will come at us. We need to cultivate the integrity ef age: the grace of
living honestly with the changes time has wrought. And that is most diffacult to do if we
are caught in an obsession with youth.

‘A second way of dealing with the movement and change of time is to resign oneself to
This is the stoic position that says: you can't beat it, so why fight it? There is honesty
and courage and dignity here ~ but also great sadness. The person who is simoly resigned to

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the passing of time, always seems te be looking backward to the good old gays. The past always

seems better than the present, and the future is regarded only with depression. I know a lot

_ SUNRISE. ..SUNSET COMMUNIGH BEDITATION othe JAMUARY G, 1974
of people like that:people “putting in time": waiting to die: living with all the measuringz
zest and significance of their lives located somewhere in the past.

But there 1s a third position. There is a way of dealing with time and change that says
“yes” to it: that embreees chance: that sees each new day as an opportunity for crowine, exper-
iencing, learning, living anew. When I encounter it in an older person I am alwevs deeply
moved. Cn Christmas day we patd a visit on an elderly lady in a Nursing home, and I anticipated
a@ rather devressine experience, Instead we found here sitting up brightly, surrounded by
cards and winter pictures she had cut out of magazines, thrilled with the snow and wanting
to talk - of all things ~ about the proper oven temperature to bake a turkey. It was a good
experience for ali of ts.

The victorious way of dealing with time and chance jis based on faith. Mot that shallow
wishful thinking that God will protect us from time, or make life easy for us; but that behind
all the changes of the years, all the sunrises and sunsets, fs something that never changes.

Listen again to the intecrity of the Bible:

The grass withers and the flower fades

But the word of our God will stand forwver.

The mountains may depart and the hills be removed,

But my steadfast love wil 1 not depart frow you....says the Lord.

“Prophecy will pass away: tonoues will cease: knowledae will disapnear. But love never
ends... the love of God in Jesus Christ."

There is inkex intecrity thmx here: honest accertance that time is moving; that €bence
1s happening to us. But - it's all going on within the framework of somathine that never changes.

"My steadfast love gashall not depart from you."

“Is this the little cirl I carried?

Is this the little boy at play?
Yes it is. Sut an even better poem was penned by Pebert Browning
“Our times are in his hand
Who satth, 4A whole I panned,
Youth shows but half: trust God:

See all, nor be afraid." (Rabbt Ber Ezra)

JUNRISE...SUNSET COMMUNION MEDITATION ob JANUARY 6, 1974
The promise of the Gospel is that God's lave is permanent. It does not change.
So at the beginning of a new year ~- as we Took backward and forward - we come to that plece
where that love is celebrated and poured out and shared. His table.
“Our God, our help in ages past,
Gur hope for years to come,
Be thou our guard while life shall last,

hegerns

Ang our eternal home.” AMEN

Father, we are grateful for the time you have given us. Grant us grece to accept the changes
that have happened to us: and faith to live each day in your love that never changes. Through

wren

Jesus Christ our Lerd. ACN