LIFE’S SECOND QUESTION

John M. Buchanan

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

The great philosopher, Immanuel Kant, said that there are
three questions in life:

"What can we know?
What must we da?
What can we hope for?"

I’m not sure he had Immanuel Kant in mind, but one of the
very distinguished Biblical scholars and teachers of our time,
Waiter Wink, put it ever more powerfully. Wink says:

"The fundamental question for the first half of
our pilgrimage is ‘what is the meaning of my
life?’ The question for the second half is, ‘With
the time IT have left, how can F make a
difference?‘"

Life’s second question —
"What must we do?

"With the time I have left, how can I make
a difference?"

Sometimes life puts that question to us urgently. The late
Arthur Ashe was a world champion tennis player, captain of Ameri-~
ca‘s Davis Cup Team, who in the course of heart surgery, con-
tracted AIDS from a blood transfusion. As he was dying he wrote
a wonderful book, Days of Grace.

After his first by-pass surgery and the decision to retire
from playing tennis in 1979, Ashe experienced a sense of uneasi-
ness, restlessness. He reflects:

“How could I be dissatisfied, even subtiy, with my
Life to that point? T had lived a fantasy of a
life. But I was dissatisfied. Who knows what
force gnaws at us, telling us that our accomplish-
ments, no matter how sensational, are not enough,
that we need toe do more?" fp. 39]

"T wanted to make a difference, however small
in the world." [p. 43]

Life’s second question. Immanuel Kant, speaking out of the
dim past, and Walter Wink from a modern classroom, and Arthur
Ashe, in the middle of an unplanned, unexpected collision with
his own mortality: they all sound like a young man who one day
came to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good deed must TI do to
have eternal life?" He'd obviously been thinking about it a lot,
too.

He's a very attractive young person. Jesus looked at this
young man and loved him. He was so earnest, so sincere, so hard
working, so purposeful, so successful.

What must I do to inherit eternal life? Life’s second big
question. ... There’s something gnawing at this young person,
and who doesn’t know what it feels like? She's gat it all:
great job, good friends, lots of travel, promising future and a
growing portfolio with her broker. . . but there is this gnawing
dis-ease. . . this middle of the night dissatisfaction. What
more must I do?

Jesus doesn’t condemn or criticize the young man. He appre-
ciates him. When he tells the young man to follow the religious
rules, to keep on keeping on, and the young man assures him that
he’s already doing all that, Jesus prescribes: tells him some-
thing further to do. . . and it’s stunning.

"Sell your possessions - give the money to the
poor. Come - follow me."

One scholar, commenting on the text, said that if you aren’t
appalled by this message, you have not yet heard it.

The young man, Matthew explains, went away grieving because
he has many possessions. He was appalled. JI can understand
that. I’m appalled too. Who isn’t? Sell everything? Give it
all away?

You and I live in a culture that promises us, and our chil-
dren, that you can buy life. You can establish happiness and
security if you earn enough, have enough, accumulate enough. We
live in a “consumer culture."

The trouble is consumer culture doesn’t deliver on its
promises ta provide happiness, and, in fact, works to the detri-
ment of institutions which can - family, schools, non-profit
public organizations and churches, mosques, synagogues. Cornell
West whose fine new book, Race Matters, looks evenly and intelli-
gently at the malaise of racism, poverty, unemployment and esca-—
lating violence in which we find ourselves, and in a recent

interview said that when a market economy ~ which we now know is
in some way necessary - becomes a market culture - mediating
institutions that hold us together start to deteriorate. And why
not? Why wouldn’t family, school and church deteriorate if the
philosophic, spiritual drive behind the culture is greed, self-
ishness, narcissism?

Jesus did not condemn this young man. He had a wonderful
opportunity to launch a diatribe against success and its rewards
but he didn’t. He did not condemn his wealth. He loved this
young man.

What’s wrong with him? Well, he’s not free, for starters.
He was already in bondage. His inability to sell all means that
what he had - owned him. I’11 bet he was too busy to enjoy life.
T’ll bet he worked so hard to get ahead, he couldn’t remember
what "ahead" meant. 1/11 bet the task of securing what he had,
scurrying to keep up with inflation, was so important that he
had no time, no love, no passion in life.

I think that’s why he came to Jesus. He was engaged in a
struggle for his own soul. And for him the prescription was
surgical: let it go - give it away - and come follow me.

The most reassuring part of the story is that the disciples
themselves were amazed and asked, "Then who can be saved?" They
weren't wealthy obviously. They had given up about as much as it
is possible to give and yet they knew that they still loved what
they had.

Arthur Ashe wrote,

"T’m glad I have enough money to live comfortably.
I decided long ago that, on the whole, I much
prefer having money to not having it. On the
other hand, I also learned a long time ago what
money can and cannot do for me. From what we get
we make a living. What we give, however, makes a
life." [p. 176]

~ found Arthur Ashe‘s memoir touching because he experienced
and wrote about, in a compressed period of months, the human
condition. Most of us, thank God, don’t have that necessity.
And yet, we are not here forever. We have only so many chances
to make a difference.

When Arthur Ashe made public announcement of his condition,
he became angry, depressed; and then, after three weeks his anger
began to subside and the idea of AIDS and what it meant about the
future began to integrate.

He wrote:

"You come to the realization that time is short.
These are extraordinary conditions. You have to
step up. How much time I had left, I did not
know. However, FE could net ignore the fact that
AIDS, as well as heart disease, was exacting a
heavy toll on my body. I had no time to waste."

So he began to speak out on the topic of ATDS: how you get
it, how to keep from getting it - and how urgent it is for ail of
us to understand the terrifying prospect of this epidemic contin-
uing unabated.

He opened his heart and his resources and established a
Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS, and an association for African
American Athletes, and an Institute for Urban Health at the State
University of New York, and a chair in Pediatric AIDS Research at
St. Jude’s Hospital, Memphis; he became more vocal and active
politically, protesting U.S. policy on Haitian refugees and
getting arrested at the White House.

And he wrote:

"As I settled into this new stage of my life I
became increasingly conscious of. . . an exhilara-
tion. I felt pain, but also something like pleas-
ure in responding purposefully, vigorously. I had
lost many matches on the tennis court, but IT had
seldom quit. I was losing, but playing well now:
my head was down, my eyes riveted on the bail, I
had to be careful but I could not be tentative."

[p. 251]

And it seemed to me, reading this graceful book and thinking
about what it means to be alive and well, with an opportunity to
make a difference, it seemed to me that Arthur Ashe had in fact,
discovered his answer to life’s second question and that you and
I might pay careful attention.

At the end of the book, not very iong before he died, he
wrote,

tr am a fortunate man. Aside from AIDS and heart
disease, I have no problems."

[p. 292]

There are opportunities every day to make a difference. How
said to miss them.

It is our deepest trust that our ultimate destiny is in the
gracious hands of a loving God.

Life. . . your capacity to make a difference, to lave and
work and care. . . to participate in and to empower, and to
support institutions that bring healing and hope to others - your

fulfillment and purpose and even your happiness, all of that is
in your hands.

Life’s second question. . . What must T do?

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