INVITATION TO LIFE

April 28, 1991

8:30 and 11:00 a.m. Worship Services
Join M. Buchanan

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
1 John 4:7-12
John 15:1-11

“I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that
your joy may be complete." | ~John 15:11 (NSRV)

There is a revolution going on, Time Magazine announced in a recent
cover article. It is a quiet revolution at the moment and it is not
universally visible, particularly if you live and move and have being here,
in this neighborhood, or a neighborhood like it. Nevertheless Time reports
that there are very major changes happening in the way Americans are
thinking and behaving these days. :

The titie of the article is “The Simple Life." "Upscale is out.
Downscale is in. Flaunting is gauche... if you've got it, please keep it
‘to yourself, or give some away.” The magazine proposes that we have tired
of the socially acceptable greed of the 80s, that we gave ourselves to the
ideology of wealth and acquisition and discovered at the end of the decade
that it didn't deliver. We weren't any happier.

Time researchers report that:

‘ * 70% of the people interviewed would like
to slow down.

* 60% believe earning a living is so alli-
consuming they never get time to enjoy life.

* BMW sales are down 28%. Hondas are up 29%.

* "Dynasty" and “Falcon Crest" have been .
replaced by “Married..,With Children,"”~
"Rosanne" and “The Simpsons." People who
loved "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous"
are now watching "The Frugal. Gourmet."

* Even divorce is down slightly.

Most of the dramatic examples were from the upscale colunmn: the 20%
of the American people who benefited from the 80s.. - -

Time's examples of pecple who have consciously chosen simpler life-
styles were, frankly, people who could afford to - the $150,000 sales rep |

who counted the bottles of motel shampoo on her shelf one night, guit her
job and bought a grocery store; and the most visible of all, the investment
Superstar who one day walked away from the Fidelity Magellan Mutual Fund to
be at home and make sandwiches for his schoo] children, but walked away
with fifty million dollars. Nevertheless, we do seem to be in a period of
change. Even the social scientists are impressed. Time quoted Martin
Marty, whose observations on American culture are consistently wise and on

target, to the effect that we are perhaps in a "hinge period in the
country's history."

The question raised by the excesses of the 80s and the current signs
of change, of course, is an old one and an important one. It is the
question behind all the philosophy in the world. It is:

“How shal] we live the brief span of time granted to us
in a way that allows us to experience it fully, to get
as much from it as we can? How can we live as
thoroughly and productively as possible? How can we be

happy? What is the secret to living a full and joyful
life?" ,

It is not an academic matter. We can treat it abstractly but for
most of us it is a question we ask and answer, in one way or another, in
the decisions we make daily, decisions about how to use our time, our
resources, our skills: decisions about giving ourselves to this person or
that person, this cause or that cause; decisions which, in one way.or
another, have to do with our love. ;

_ Among the people who asked the question were the friends of Jesus of

Nazareth around the year 33 A. D. The question had been prompted by their
sense of the nearness of tragedy.

That situation was anything but joyful. It was the Last Supper. And
in the Gospel of John what is said on, the occasion is extensive. I have
always thought someone must have asked something like, "Lord, what are we
going to do now? What will we do after you're gone?"

_

In response, he told them four things:

First, he would be the source of their life; his love.for them would
a . .
continue, even after his death. They could count on that love, live in it;
abide in him, is the way he put it.

Second, he told those frightened people sitting around he would live
in them, abide in them, as they loved one another.- “Like a vine and
branches” is the way he put it. “I am the vine -— you are the branches."

Third, this life of abiding in Jesus, and Jesus -abiding in you is
characterized, not by grim piety, nor other worldly spirituality, but by
its fullness, and joy and productivity - again like a luxuriant vine.

And fourth, if you miss all this, if you_don't learn to live in him
by loving one another, it's a kind of non-life, a kind of_dying, a kind of
being discarded and thrown away. like the pruned dead branches. -

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The mystery, the uniqueness, is his suggestion that the person who

loves possesses divine life, God's life. Writing a letter some years
later, John will say it plainly:

"If you love, God lives in you."

That's quite a claim.

So Jesus, as the 15th chapter of John conveys it, brings us close to
the big philosophy question: “How shall we live?" and close actually to
the current quiet revolution which is beginning in our own culture as a
response to one set of answers which we now know didn't work.

“How shall we live?"

It's not that we intend to be unhappy. It's not that we mean to be
less than fully alive, less than passionately absorbed in living every
minute of the time granted us. It's not that we mean to be glum and

resentful and frustrated so much of the time. It's just that over the
years we get distracted.

"We are like travelers who set out on a trip with joy
and clarity,' someone observed, 'but somewhere along
the line we forget where we are going, and before long
we are not aware of how far from life itself we have
wandered. '"

{[Daybrook, A Contemplation Journal, April, 1991, p. ij

Those massive, dramatic shifts Time Magazine reports, from fast track
to the slow lane, from high-flying sales rep to grocery store owner, from
superstar deal-~maker to house-husband are, on the one hand, inspiring.

They are, on the other hand, always a bit depressing because most of us

aren't going to.do anything quite like that because most of us can't,
frankly. ,

We have not totally sold out to the culture of materialism and the
gods of mammon. The simple fact is that it takes working all day even to
live simply here and you cannot, most of us cannot, at least, work in

business, law, medicine, at our own pace, at a schedule of our own
devising.

There was.a letter to the editor in this week's Time from an
emergency room physician who said he wanted te slow down and live a simple
life, but he had been on emergency room duty for thirty hours and another
patient was being wheeled in. Thank God for hin.

It is too easy to criticize, to look out at the world in which most
of us live with disdain, with a terribly oversimplified moral arrogance,
as a place where living means always meeting someone else's social
standards, acquiring material satisfaction, and pursuing power and status.

Let's not engage in that.
For most of us, the resolution, the accommodation, the reordering of

priorities, the conversion if you will, will-come from within, not outside
the life we are living.

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Jesus said there is a connection between the amount of love you have -
for others and the amount of the divine life that lives in you. And so,
for many of us, it may not be so much a matter of walking away from our
profession as it is paying attention to important matters and important
People.

There is a haunting line of T. S. Eliot that goes:
"Where is the life we lost in living?"

It may be a matter of time - simply taking time for the important
things; stopping the game many of us play, namely hiding behind our
busyness, using our calendar as an excuse for not paying attention.

Michael Quoist, French priest, wrote a prayer years ago for all of
us. It's a prayer about never having enough time and how life slips
through your fingers:

“I'd love to help you, I haven't time. I'll come back,

IT can't wait, I haven't time. I must end this letter...

I can't accept. I can't think, I can't read, I'm swamped,
I'd like to pray...

“You understand, Lord, they simply haven't the time.
“Lord, you must have made a big mistake in your calculations.

“There is a big mistake somewhere, _
The hours are too short,
The days are too short,

-- Our lives are too short."

[Prayers, p. 96-99]

If you don't love -. which means paying attention to the things and -
the-people that matter to you - it's a kind of death. If you don't love
one another, Jesus told them, I can't abide in you; you will be cut off
from the source of real life; you will be like the pruned branches of a
once productive vine. :

James Baldwin, who wrote so beautifully about life and love, observed
one time:

"The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we
break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and
the light goes out."

[Nothing Personal, cited by Dan Wakefield, in

“Notes of Native Son," in G.Q., August 1988 }

Sometimes it takes a tragedy to teach us that. If you have
experienced the sharp, unrelenting pain of grief, you know how isolating it
is and how alone you feel. And, hopefully, you also know how healing and
literally life-giving the presence and touch and caring of other people can
be. ; ; ;

Dan Wakefield tells about it in a recent book, The Story of Your
Life. His bestseller, Returning, chronicles his own spiritual journey, and

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4/28/91

now Wakefield is spending a lot of his own time on the important matters.

' He is still a very successful author - working on @ new novel about New
York City in the fifties. He is also an. unapolopetic churchman. Near the
end of his latest book he relates the story of a free-lance writer whose
brother had just died of AIDS.

She had gone to a healing service at King's Chapel, Wakefield's
church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“It was for people in pain. Much to my surprise, there
was a part of the service that included the laying on
of hands for people who felt they needed it. Much to
my surprise, I went forward rationalizing that, if
other animals besides humans surround themselves by
their kind in times of trouble, it was okay for me to
do the same. As the minister put his hands on my head,
two other people from the congregation closed in around
me, and I let them absorb my hurt.

"'T will tell you this,' she said, 'I am not quite sure
what we are supposed to discover here on earth, but I
am quite convinced that we are supposed to discover it
together.'" :

Jesus promised that as his friends learned to love each other, he
would live in them. He made an extravagant claim, namely that this is the
secret; this is how any of us can live our lives fully. It is the way the
miracle of joy happens in the middle of life.

Many of us are waiting for it to happen, waiting for the mystery and
power of God to be revealed to us perhaps like a lightning bolt out of the
blue, or sitting under the influence of a charismatic preacher, or in the
searching, probing discipline of private prayer. But Jesus said it is
often right in front of us, or perhaps more accurately, within us, in our
hearts: that place within us where we are capable of love - for him, for
life, for families, and friends and dearest ones and neighbors.

Hear it then, as a blessed invitation to live. Hear his words to
his friends 2,000 years ago as the secret for which you have been
searching:

“Abide in me," he said, and "I will abide in you and your joy will be
full." Amen. ;

t+ +t eet

_Dear God, love us in all our pride and stubborn resolution. Love us -o
in our vulnerability and weakness. Love us in our grim determination to
succeed. Love us so that we begin to love and to live and to know the
fullness of the joy you promised in Jesus our Lord.- Amen.

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