Can any of you tell me what time it is? It’s all right to look at your watches now. (Just don’t start looking at them and shaking them when I get into the middle of this sermon!)
How do you know what time it is, or what time itself is? There is a mystery in the concept of time that is difficult to comprehend. The one obvious fact about it is that it is related to perceptions of change. If there were no change, would the concept of time have any meaning?
Actually, we cannot answer such a question because change is the essence of our existence. Even the cells of our bodies are constantly changing and being replaced. We live in the cycles of night and day, the changing seasons, and the processes of aging.
Time and change are for us inseparably related. We cannot imagine a condition without either of them. We can only thank God for the fact that in the providence of creation the dimension of time was provided to accommodate change and make a place for us.
Yet the concepts of time and changelessness are all mixed up in our thinking about eternity and eternal life, which is what I want us to focus upon this morning. We fear and abhor death because it appears to be a condition both of absolute change and absolute changelessness. Our hearts are thrilled, therefore, with the Gospel’s promise of eternal life. And we are like children thumbing our noses at the "grim reaper," as we join Paul in shouting, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"
But how mature is our thinking about eternity and eternal life? Is our focus on changelessness, endless existence in time, endless change in an endless existence, or what? Is eternity out yonder, beyond this life, or does it embrace the here and now? Is eternal life quantitative or qualitative?
The point I wish to make, one that seems of paramount importance to me, is that we consider the now-ness of eternity and the qualitative character of eternal life.
In the lesson read this morning from the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus is quoted as saying to the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection, that God is "not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him." That time had little bearing on the condition of eternal life he had already indicated. Those who are counted worthy of the resurrection from the dead, he had stated, do not engage in such change relationships as marriage, "for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God."
In his follow-up response to a question from the Pharisees, who did believe in the resurrection, he made plain what he considered to be the essence of the kind of religion that put the quality of eternity into life. It was, he said, in the whole-hearted loving of God and neighbor.
I freely admit that I may be as confused as the next person about eternity and the nature of eternal life. The limitations in my understanding are highly visible to me. I am still struggling, for example, with the words of the old Sunday church school song that spoke of "when the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more." I am plagued with visions of life after death being related to gates of pearl, streets of gold, white robes, happy singing, and endlessly monotonous pleasant existence.
I can’t avoid sentiments similar to those of Charles G. Blanden, who wrote a little poem in which he said:
I cannot think of Paradise a place
Where men go idly to and fro,
With harps of gold and robes that shame the snow;
With great wide wings that brightly interlace
Whenever they sing before the Master’s face -
Within a realm where neither pain nor woe,
Nor care is found; where tempests never blow;
Where souls with hopes and dreams may run no race.
Such paradise were but a hell to me;
Devoid of all progression, I should rot,
Or shout for revolution, wide and far.
Better some simple task, a spirit free
To act along the line of self forgot -
Or help God make a blossom or a star.(1)
In my confusion, however, I have a growing conviction that eternity is now, and that eternal life is essentially a quality of existence. This may not be all, but it is for me the foundational concept. It is what comes through most vividly to me in the many words and images of the Scriptures.
A simplistic analogy was brought to my mind somewhere along the line in the days of my schooling. I am sure it is nothing new to most of you, but I have cherished it as both provocative and intriguing.
It states that if you and I could maintain sight of this scene in this moment in time and be swept away from it at the speed of light, we would see it as forever remaining the same, unchanging. As I ponder this, I find myself thinking that God is unfettered by time and space and has the perspective of infinity. In his sight, therefore, every moment and movement of our existence must be fixed in his awareness. It is all a part of eternity.
Was it in this sense that Jesus said God "is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him"? In other words, are all who have ever lived always alive to God in all the terms and conditions of their existence?
Whatever the answer may be to such intriguing questions, one fact is crystal clear. A yearning for eternal life is structured in the makeup of the human heart and mind. More than this, eternity, like a magnet, exerts a constant tug on our daily living. It prompts us through conscience to distinguish between right and wrong, and to choose the right. It stirs in us the ethicizing impulse to grope beyond what is toward that which ought to be. And by thus involving us in the valuing process it draws us toward the kind of living that has enduring quality in it.
It was the tug of eternity that prompted the prophet Micah to ask, "What doth the Lord require of thee?" And it was a magnificent insight into truth that enabled him to see the answer: life with God, life with eternity in it, is in doing justly, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God. (Micah 6:8)
The poet Joseph Addison, in trying to account for our longing for immortality, concluded that
‘Tis the divinity that stirs within us,
‘Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter
And intimates eternity to man.(2)
There should be no doubt about it. God wants us to live, to have life and have it abundantly. He proved it in the sacrifice Jesus made for our salvation - salvation that meant fulfillment, the filling out in our lives of the dreams God had for us. In Jesus he put squarely and clearly before us the way to eternal life, the kind of life that endures forever.
Eternal life, therefore, is not merely a concern of ours. It is God’s concern for us. What we long for God is working for - and seeking our cooperation in the process.
As the Scriptures remind us, however, eternal life is God’s gift to us, a pure act of his grace. We cannot produce it or earn it. We can only accept it or destroy our chances to enjoy it.
Though there was neither a rebuke nor a full explanation of the mysteries involved, Jesus’ response to the Sadducees was clearly a challenge to take a fresh look at the whole question of eternal life. Can we sense the challenge to take a fresh look at our own thinking on the matter? To do so should help us toward a better stance for faith and living, even though the mystery may remain with many puzzling points to ponder.
Shall we consider, for example, that our longing for eternal life may be primarily an expression of our fear of death? If this is the case, shouldn’t we be looking for a more positive basis? A negative attitude toward death seems a poor substitute for a positive attitude toward life. Moreover, important as it is, physical existence is not the only measure to be used for life. The testimony of martyrs through the ages has been that there are things more important to life than life itself.
We may well ask ourselves, too, how we see this life in relationship to the life we anticipate after physical death. Is it continuous or discontinuous? Do we see this present life as a testing, prelude, or qualifying run for the real life to come? Or are we looking upon our day-to-day existence here as an integral part of eternal experience? Seeing eternity as being now, versus viewing it as beginning after physical death, can make a great deal of difference in our living.
Very possibly, however, the most important consideration has to do with where we are in our thinking about eternal life in quantitative-versus-qualitative terms. Are we focused on it as an endless extension of time, or as a fellowship with God and all his saints in the appreciation and enjoyment of the highest values and meanings that life can give? After all, what meaning could endless existence in time have for persons who have never really lived - in the sense of entering with God into the fulfilling dimensions of life for which they were created?
Life that has never begun cannot be ended; nor can life that has embraced enduring quality ever be denied the meaning of its reality.
Yes, my friends, life can be eternal. It is a gift of God’s grace, guaranteed in Jesus’ life and by his death on the cross. Eternal life is ours to appropriate and experience in the hereand-now, and for all of reality that stretches beyond the boundaries of time. Neither physical death nor the end of time can obliterate the meaning in it.
The keys to the Kingdom in which life of the eternal kind is experienced are found on many pages of the Scriptures. To Zechariah the Lord said, "Render true judgment, show kindness and mercy each to his brother, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart."
Micah’s words about justice, kindness, and humility, which we have already noted, are by no means unique. In one way or another they are echoed throughout the Bible.
In very concrete terms, Jesus spelled out the emphasis on loving God and neighbor. Judgment, he indicated, occurs where one’s relationship is defined in response to persons experiencing such conditions as hunger, poverty, sickness, imprisonment, estrangement, or other forms of distress or need. In such human relations is revealed one’s relationship to God, and all that is eternal hinges on that relationship.
In this light, Jesus’ injunction to seek first "the Kingdom of God and his righteousness" takes on special meaning. This is the highway that leads to eternal life.
The bottom line for all of us in this consideration is whether we are willing to accept the gift of eternal life and begin the process of enjoyment, growth, and fulfillment that are the basic dividends of its reality.
The Apostle Paul obviously was very here and now conscious when he enjoined the Corinthians, saying: "Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation." (2 Corinthians 6:2) Will you hear him, and begin now to live the life that is eternal?
1. Charles G. Blanden, "Paradise," in 1000 Quotable Poems, An Anthology of Modern Verse, compiled by Thomas Curtis Clark, Vol. I, (Chicago: Willett, Clark & Company, 1937), p. 334.
2. Joseph Addison, "Immortality," from "Cato," as quoted in 1000 Quotable Poems, An Anthology of Modern Verse, compiled by Thomas Curtis Clark, Vol. I, Ibid., p. 324.