“Lifting Up the Source of
Life”
by Bruce J. Johnson
A number of years ago now, a
beloved member of our congregation, Prall Merriam, gave me a reading that has
remained one of my favorites:
“Youth
is not a time of life, but a state of mind. It is the freshness of the deep
springs of life. No one grows old merely living a number of years. People grow
old by deserting their ideals. Whether 60 or 16, every human being may
experience wonder--- the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing appetite
for the future, the joy in living. For you are as young as your faith, as old
as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your despair. As
long as your heart receives messages of beauty, love, cheer, courage and power
from God and from your fellow man, you are young.”
(Discovered by Heather McMillan in
the bookshop at Norwich Cathedral in England, quoted in Quaker Monthly,
October 1990.)
As the years pass, I am
concerned about getting old--- not because of the inexorable march of the years
but because there times in our lives when the threat the world poses to the
spirit is formidable, threatening to close it off or shut it down.
I want it to be as Emily
Dickinson wrote in one of her letters:
“We
turn not older with years but newer every day.”
It is perhaps one of the
greatest challenges in life—a life that we so proverbial say “ages us”--- that
we be ‘newer’ every day.
Every time I read the story
of Nicodemus, a new challenge is issued:
When Nicodemus, an old man
and a Pharisee, approached Jesus under the cover of night, he comes as an
esteemed, knowledgeable ‘leader of
I read a great quote the
other day by a
“Truth has beauty, power and necessity.”
I wonder if Nicodemus,
though asking “How can this be?’--- knew that there was something beautiful and
powerful and most important of all, necessary about the truth that Jesus was
telling? A truth about God and God’s love, about Himself and his sacrifice and
about us.
Here was his question:
“How can anyone be born after having grown
old?”
Can one enter a second time
into the mother’s womb and be born?
It is a good question, an
inquiry into the possibility of starting over, becoming fresh, new and changed.
It’s a curious question for an old man, or maybe it is the only question that
aging men and women like us should ever really ask. How is it possible to start
over, to be youthful again, to step up and out of the old stuff that has you
feeling stuck and stale rather than free, looking back rather than looking
forward?
Nicodemus came to Jesus that
night --- knowing what he has known for a long time--- but knowing too that
there was something more, something new, something necessary and something
renewing.
The Seeker’s Bible Study gave
me a gift certificate for Border’s Books for my birthday. I purchased Rachel
Naomi Remen’s second book titled: My Grandfather’s Blessings: stories of
strength, refuge and belonging.
(copyright,
2000)
The following is one of her
wonderful reflections:
One of the things that I have learned
since my medical training is that it is possible to study life for many years
without knowing life at all. Often
things happen that science can’t explain.
Many very important things cannot be measured, but only observed,
witnessed, and ultimately trusted. Life
may not be limited by the facts. Science
defines life in its own way, but perhaps life is larger than science.
A friend of mine, director of research at a nonprofit
institute, had become interested in spontaneous remission of cancer. As his interest became more widely known,
people would call or write him to tell him their stories of unexplained
recovery from serious illness. One of
these was a young man who claimed to have had a spontaneous healing from a dire
form of bone cancer called osteogenic sarcoma.
He had been diagnosed many years ago as a college
student. Noticing a hard lump in his
right thigh, he had gone to see a doctor.
A biopsy had confirmed the doctor’s suspicion of cancer, and he and his
parents had been called to a meeting.
Sadly, the doctor told them of his findings and strongly recommended
that he have his right leg amputated at the hip. He was nineteen years old. Despite the urging of several doctors and his
parents, he had refused this surgery and had gone home to his parents’ farm without
any treatment to live out his life.
Nothing further had been done for him except that the pastor of his
church had asked those people who were so moved to pray for him at
My friend was captivated by this story. Through his work he had developed a
researcher’s healthy skepticism, but the man seemed so genuine and
matter-of-fact that he could not get the story out of his mind. Finally he called to ask a favor. Would I mind trying to track down the doctor
who had made the original diagnosis and see if he would confirm this story or
if he had kept medical records or a biopsy report? "How long has it been?” I asked. “Twenty
years,” said my friend ruefully. I started to express my doubts, but my friend
interrupted. “Please try,” he said. And so I did.
It turned out to be easy. The doctor, a relatively young man at the
time he treated this patient, was listed in his state’s medical association and
still in practice. Encouraged, I called
and got him on the phone. After the
usual introduction, I told him that I was calling to see if he had kept the
medical records on a former patient. It
was so long ago that I doubted he would remember, and then I told him the man’s
name. His response was immediate. “Of course I remember him,” he said with
feelings. “I’ve thought of him many times over the years. What a senseless tragedy. Are you calling on behalf of the family?”
“No,” I replied, and told him that the man was still
alive. “Thank God,” he said. “Where did
he have his surgery?”
“He didn’t have surgery,” I replied. There was a pause. When he spoke again, I could detect a change
in his voice. “Then what happened?” he
asked. So I told him the story as it had been told to me. There was a long silence and then, without
another word, he hung up the phone. I
called him several times afterward, but he never returned my calls.
Most of us encounter a great deal more Mystery than we
are willing to experience. Sometimes
knowing life requires us to suspend disbelief, to recognize that all our
hard-won knowledge may only be provisional and the world may be quite different
than we believe it to be. This can be
very stressful, even frightening. But if
we are not willing to wonder, we may have to hang up the phone on life.
Indeed, when Nicodemus came
to Jesus under the cover of night is was surely showing his willingness to
wonder and to take the risk of seeking out Jesus and asking the necessary
questions—not hanging up the phone on life.
Frederick Buechner, in his
book Listening
to your Life talks about what he thinks is the meaning of the
strange parable that Jesus tells about the man who gets caught without food in
the fridge by an unexpected guest. No stores are open and the guest is hungry.
So you go to the house of a friend to borrow some food. ‘Don’t bother me, the
friend says, The door is locked, the lights are out, the kids are in bed and
everyone, except me, is asleep! Go home! But you keep on pestering him until he
finally gets up and gives you what you need. Then Jesus adds: “For everyone who
asks, receives; and he who seeks finds and to him who knocks, the door will be
opened.”
(Luke
11: 5-13)
And his point seems to be
that that the secret of prayer specifically and the life of faith generally is
in the persistent seeking--- finding out what is so beautiful and powerful and
necessary about this truth that God is revealing in Jesus, specifically on the
cross.
Buechner says that Jesus is
saying simply that we have to keep at it, keep speaking into the darkness and
even if nothing comes, speak again and then again. And finally the answer is
given.
It may not be the answer that
we want --- the kind of stop gap peace, the kind of easy security, the kind of
end to loneliness that we are apt to pray for. Christ never promises peace in
the sense of no more struggle and suffering. Instead he helps us to struggle
and suffer as he did, in love and for one another. Christ does not give us
security in the sense of something in this world such as some cause or some
principle or some value, which is forever. Instead he tells us that there is nothing
in this world that is forever. All flesh is grass. He does not promise us
unlonely lives. His own life speaks loud of how, in a world where there is
sometimes so little love, love is always lonely. Instead of all these, the
answer that he gives, I think, is himself. If we go to him for anything else,
he may send us away empty or he may not. But if you go to him for himself, I
believe that we go away with the deepest of all our hungers filled, our wounds
healed, our insecurities addressed, our hopes not dashed and our love not
disappointed.
(Pulpit Resource, Vol. 31, No.1, p.36)
In today’s lesson from the
gospel according to John, Jesus actually cites this morning’s passage from the
book of Numbers (Numbers 21: 4-9), the story of Moses and the fiery serpents.
You will remember that Moses said to the people that although the fiery
serpents still prowled the land and were biting people, those who were bitten
need only look upon the bronze figure of the serpent on the post and they would
live. God’s forgiveness endures and gives life!
Well, Jesus too was saying
that all we need to do is to look upon the cross that is lifted up and we will
know the measure of God’s love and in that measure, the fresh new life that is
its gift.
Now, we may ask, as Nicodemus
did, how can this be? But the answer is clear: “Because God so loves the
world…”
So, today, we lift high that
cross ---the source of new life in our midst. In receiving it and the blessings
of the Spirit we are born anew in God’s grace.
Amen