Some Questions about Life
He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Matt 22:37-40 (NRSV)
A Sermon By The Reverend O. Thomas Miles
Silver Spring, Maryland 20910-4123 - Copyright 2007
* * * * *
If I appear embarrassed this morning
there is good reason, and
I offer apologies.
Today I come to you,
not with a sermon;
I come with
some questions
about something for which
you all have ample experience.
I come with
questions about life.
I come also with
other kinds of questions.
All of these questions
caused me to
come to you without a sermon.
Last week provided
plenty of time
for sermon preparation.
And the lamp of inspiration
burned bright
even if only
as a flickering ember.
But time and inspiration
suffered gravely
because of a wind
that almost
raged in the mind.
It was a storm
that threatened
personal peace and
disrupted
sermon preparation.
It was a storm that came in the
form of three questions
striking as violent lightening
against a darkened sky.
Answers did not
come as a rainbow
after the storm passed.
But I found comfort
in that fact
that you all
possess wisdom
that enlightens the mind.
So I decided
to put the questions to you
certain that you
will give me answers.
The winds of the storm
that came to me
phrased the first a question
in the simplest of words:
"What is life?"
Not questions about life
as a bio-chemical thing,
nor life
as simple existence.
My question is,
pure and simple:
What is life?
Now unless
my hearing
has waned so much
that my imagination
gets the best of me,
I seem to hear someone saying,
"Well, isn't this strange.
I thought clergy knew
what life is.
"At least, many of the clergy
I've met
acted and spoke as though
they knew what life is.
"And here
I'm told
that is not so."
What makes such thinking strange
is the fact that Jesus
frequently spoke about life
as though
everyone who heard him
understood exactly
what he meant.
In his parable of the prodigal son
Jesus has the son's father
explain why
he celebrates
the prodigal son's
return home:
"'. . . we had to celebrate and rejoice,
because this brother of yours
was dead and
has come to life;
he was lost and
has been found.'"(1)
Note that, as usual,
Jesus does not explain
what he means
when he uses the word life.
Yet, it is safe to assume
that most people
who hear this story
know exactly
what Jesus means.
We know
because like the prodigal
we also
have lost life and
discovered what it is
only by losing it and
returning to it.
In the story of
Jean Valjean and the bishop
who gives to Jean Valjean
the silver candlesticks
he had stolen
from the bishop,
the bishop explains
what he perceives life to be.
The bishop tells Valjean:
" . . . my brother,
you belong no longer to evil,
but to good.
It is your soul
that I am buying for you.
"I withdraw it
from dark thoughts and
from the spirit of perdition, and
I give it to God."
For the bishop
life is
something transformable-
like the prodigal's life;
like your life and
my life.
So life is-
I do hope you are not expecting
some grandiose definition.
Remember how clergy
don't know exactly
what life is.
So life is-opportunity.
Not opportunity for
worldly success or
achieving every goal we set for ourselves or
winning every battle or
landing on two feet every time.
None of that!
Life is opportunity-
to be godly.
Jesus said so
when he said
"'You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, and
with all your soul, and
with all your mind.'
"This is the greatest and
first commandment.
And a second is like it:
'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
"On these two commandments
hang all the law and the prophets."
There it is!
The great hint
regarding the answer to
the question
"What is life?"
The opportunity to be godly-
to love God,
to love someone in your life-
family member,
friend,
stranger-
and to love that someone
with the same
respect and compassion
that you show toward yourself.
Those opportunities
come every day
as surely as the sun rises.
You don't have to
look for them
They occur naturally in life,
as natural as rain and sunshine.
And they are not necessarily
giant moments
that require magnificent
deeds of goodness
on a gargantuan scale.
American philosopher-psychologist
William James
said of himself:
"I am done with
great things and big things,
great institutions and
big successes and
am for those tiny,
invisible,
molecular,
moral forces
that work
from individual to individual,
creeping through
the crannies of the world
like soft rootlets . . .
which, if you give them time,
will rend the hardest moments of a [person's] pride."
To love God,
and to love "neighbor"
as though
you were responding to your own needs
in those multitudinous
seemingly inconsequential moments
the accumulate into
what we call life.
Who knows when
one of those moments
will come to you or me
unannounced,
unexpected,
unrelenting?
The answer seems to be
that such moments
exist always;
that life is one continuous
succession of opportunities
to love
God and the
so-called neighbor.
Irving Ben Cooper
held a number of judgeships
including that of
U.S. District Court for the
federal district of the
southern district of New York
He wrote this about his childhood:
"My childhood was an ugly one.
I was always worried and frightened.
There were . . . six children, and
I felt the obligation .
as keenly as did my parents,
that the rent must be paid
on the first of the month.
"It was a constant issue,
as was the grocery bill.
"Whether or not this boy's shoes
could be repaired that month, and
could he take the cardboard
out of the shoes. (Show of hands?)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The heartache
was the absence of someone
to talk to and confide in,
someone who would understand.
"And all around me
there was evidence of hurts,
wounds, injustice
that I saw affect
not only the lives of the
members of my family
but many families
in the same house and
on the same street.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"On rare occasions,
thank God,
I met those whose behavior
I considered exemplary. . . .
"Their labors of love . . .
were not sporadic or occasional,
but constant and habitual."(2)
Not sporadic or occasional,
but constant and habitual!
Those words
ring with a sound similar to
"You shall love the Lord your God . . . [and]
your neighbor as yourself.'
On these two commandments
hang all the law and the prophets."
Well,
again I apologize
for not having a sermon
but only questions.
And those other questions
I wanted to ask you-
they will have to
wait for another time.
I must some how
find out
what life is
by loving God and
whoever happens
to be my so-called neighbor.
And I must also discover
what Jesus
meant when he said
I must
cast myself
into the middle of
loving another person..
As you leave the sanctuary
please, if you know what life is,
tell me
so I can share it with others.
And again-my apologies!
1. Lk. 15:32.
2. E. M. MacIver, ed., Hour of Insight, 61-2.