Recently I heard about a man who had spent his life in the Air Force. One of his friends suggested that the family play the Air Force theme song at his funeral. His wife vetoed that idea. With a laugh, she said, “At your father’s funeral, we are not going to play a song that begins, ‘Off we go into the wild blue yonder!’”
Arthur Schiff died last year at the age of 66. You may not recognize the name, but I guarantee you’ve heard his voice. Arthur was a TV pitchman extraordinaire. He sold everything you can think of. He accomplished this in some 2,000 late night commercials. I know you’ve heard some of his commercials: “Buy now!” he would always say. Then he would describe his product’s amazing virtues, then he would use a phrase he coined himself, “But wait! There’s more!” Then he would give you one more bonus product to sweeten the deal. And everything sold for just $19.95.
When Arthur was assigned to sell an uninspired steak knife, he came up with the Japanese sounding name, “Ginsu.” Anybody remember the commercials for the Ginsu steak knife? Arthur used an amusing tag line to describe the Ginsus: “In Japan, the hand can be used like a knife,” he would say, “But this method doesn’t work with a tomato.”
Arthur was parodied by a series of late night comics starting with John Belushi’s Samurai Warrior, but he earned himself a place in the Pop Culture Hall of Fame when the comics character Opus the Penguin was portrayed as a helpless and addicted buyer of everything Arthur offered for sale. (1)
I can’t help but wonder if, as Arthur Schiff breathed his dying breath, he didn’t hear a voice saying to him, “But wait! Arthur, There’s more!”
Karl Shaw tells in his book Oddballs And Eccentrics about Charles Radclyffe, the fifth Earl of Derwentwater. Shaw calls Radclyffe a gamomaniac. Are you familiar with that term? Neither was I. Gamomania is an obsessive disorder characterized by persistent proposals of marriage. Charles Radclyffe proposed on fifteen occasions to the reluctant Countess of Newburgh who became so annoyed by the constant harassment that she bolted herself in her home and gave her servants instructions to throw him off the property on sight.
The Earl finally found a way into her house by climbing on to her roof and lowering himself down the chimney into her drawing room where, black from soot, he made his sixteenth marriage proposal. This time his persistence paid off and she agreed to marry him. (2) I guess he had finally worn her down.
That’s a remarkable story. Sixteen rebuffs and he had to climb down a chimney before she accepted his proposal.
That story’s almost as extraordinary as a riddle that some of the Sadducees posed for Jesus. As we tell this story we need to remember that the Sadducees did not believe in life beyond the grave. Still, they posed this question for the Master.
“Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and have children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless.
The second and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. Finally, the woman died too. Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
Quite a question. My first thought is, Men, stay away from that woman! She’s bad luck. It makes you wonder if perhaps she was poisoning all these husbands. Seven times a widow! But that’s beside the point. Theoretically, what the Sadducees want to know is, Whose wife will she be in heaven?
Again, the Sadducees didn’t believe in heaven in the first place, as the text plainly notes. They were trying trick questions on Jesus to see if they could get him to say something that they could use against him.
The Sadducees remind me of a joke I heard recently about the Jesus Seminar. Are you familiar with this group of scholars? They are a contemporary California‑based group of critics who have raised doubts about many of the Gospel accounts, including the resurrection. You may have read some of their pronouncements in the newspapers. They appear from time to time and invariably they cause an uproar among many traditional believers.
The Rev. Ronald B. Hall of Newark, Ohio, said when members of his congregation ask about the Jesus seminar, he explains how seminar members go over a New Testament text, then vote on its authenticity by placing a red, gray or black marble into a box. “I would tell them about the careful scholarship that went into their semi‑annual meetings and about their three‑color voting system,” Hall said. “I would tell them that after many years, they finally lost their marbles and published their findings.” (3)
The Sadducees’ approach to this riddle was less than sincere. They weren’t interested in what Jesus had to say about eternity. They simply want to trip him up. But, as usual, Jesus was up to the occasion.
Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels.
They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. But in the account of the bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
With his answer Jesus was firmly putting himself into the camp of those who believe in the resurrection. Of course, it would not be long until he was making resurrection a reality by his own return from the grave. “[God] is not the God of the dead,” said Jesus, “but of the living, for to him all are alive.” When our hearts are heavy with grief at the graveside of a loved one, Jesus is saying to us, “But wait! There’s more!”
This is the most important good news that humanity has ever received. Everything else pales in significance. We hear of breakthroughs in the medical community from time to time. News about progress in the war against cancer, and heart disease, and diabetes, and Alzheimer’s, etc. And we are grateful. We want to cling on to life. But deep in our hearts we know these are only holding actions. One thing in life remains inevitable: we all shall die. We all shall lose people we love to death. There is no more hopeful good news that can come to us than that which was announced 2,000 years ago: Death has been defeated. “O death, where is your victory; O death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55)
I want to tell you about a man named Arthur Stace of Sydney, Australia. Stace earned an unusual nickname during his lifetime--Mr. Eternity. The name reflected the incredible impact this one man had on his fellow countrymen.
Stace grew up in desperate circumstances, the son of alcoholics who left him to fend for himself. He rarely went to school, stole to support himself, worked in a variety of criminal businesses, became addicted to alcohol, and lived on the streets.
But in 1930, Arthur Stace heard the message of Jesus Christ and turned his life over to his Savior. Inspired by an evangelist’s message on eternity, Stace began writing the word “Eternity” wherever he went. He tried to keep his new vocation a secret, writing this important word on the sidewalks and public buildings of Sydney each night. He believed that God was calling him to remind others to consider their spiritual state.
The citizens of Sydney couldn’t stop talking about the mysterious man who wrote the word “Eternity” on every public place he could reach. They soon nicknamed him Mr. Eternity. In 1956, a local pastor discovered the identity of Mr. Eternity, and interviewed him for a local newspaper.
Arthur Stace died in 1967, having written the word “Eternity” over half a million surfaces throughout the city of Sydney. In the year 2000, when Sydney hosted the summer Olympics, city officials honored the memory of Arthur Stace by stringing golden lights across the Sydney Harbour Bridge spelling out that one crucial word: Eternity.
Thirty-three years after his death a formerly homeless illiterate man was making his influence felt due to his obsession with one word, eternity.
No one had to tell Arthur Stace, “Wait! There’s more!”
I hope no one has to convince you that there is life beyond the grave. I know, sometimes it seems too good to be true. But, without eternity, life does not make sense.
Most people fear death. Nothing can be more human. This world is so beautiful. Who would ever want to leave it? And life is so precious. We want to hold onto it as long as we can. No wonder people fear death.
Neil Simon, who wrote The Odd Couple and Barefoot in the Park, was asked on the old Dick Cavett Show whether making a lot of money concerned him. The studio went dead silent when Simon answered, “No . . . what does concern me is the fear of dying.” (4)
For some of us death represents the great unknown. We read the biblical accounts of the resurrection and we believe, but still there is that hesitancy.
The Reverend George Alexander tells a profoundly moving story about a woman he met when he was beginning his clinical pastoral education. She was 71 years old. Alexander was 24. She had a lifetime of experiences; he was just beginning his struggles with the mysteries of ministry.
She told him about her life, good times, bad times, awful times; her husband, children, grandchildren, church and her Lord. She was warm and candid. “I’ve lived a good life,” she said. “The Lord’s been good to me but my husband’s gone, my children are grown; its time to rest, to go home, be with God and with my husband.”
Alexander, with the inexperience of youth, thought she was afraid of surgery. So he reassured her.
“Oh,” she said, “these are fine doctors and the nurses are great but I’ve had a good life, a full life, I’m ready to go home.”
The young pastor-to-be was baffled in the face of her contentment; she was calm. Nurses came to take her to surgery and she asked him to read the 23rd Psalm. He read it, she shouted it and the nurses joined in what became, says Alexander, an unforgettable moment of joy. He later went to see her but the nurses met him, told him, before this elderly woman of faith could be put to sleep, she went to sleep; she went to be with God.
Here is how George Alexander sums up his experience: “I’d listened critically with ears and mind but my heart knew. I named the voice of God fear, accepted the joy in her life and denied her enthusiasm about death. I stood next to eternity and couldn’t accept it.” (5)
Many of us are like that. Eternity is a concept, but not a reality. We give assent to it with our intellects, but fear it in our hearts.
A child was afraid to go down into a dark basement.
“Daddy” she said, “I have to go downstairs. Would you come with me?” She thinks about it for a few moments and then adds, “Daddy, would go first and turn the light on?”
I wish Arthur Schiff, the TV pitchman could come back to us this morning and testify, “But wait! There’s more.”
Of course, we do have someone who has been to the other side and returned to tell us that he has prepared for us a room in his Father’s house. “[God] is not the God of the dead,” said Jesus, “but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
1. THE JOKESMITH, Volume XXII, Number 4, Copyright 2006, ISSN 0749-4351.
2. (Castle Books), p. 11.
3. “Easter, Favorite Time of Year” by David Briggs, AP Religion Writer.
4. Leighton Ford, Good News is For Sharing, p. 31
5. Saint Catherine’s Episcopal Church, Marietta, GA. http://www.stcatherines.org/RevAlexanderSermons.html.