(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Life Itself” originally shared on July 3, 2024. It was the 318th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
What is life? And why does the Christian
Church have a diminished presence in the Western world today? The answer to
both questions is the same. Today, we’ll find out what it is.
When I was in seminary I took a quarter of
CPE.
CPE, or Clinical
Pastor Education, is a program where seminarians are trained to be pastoral
counselors in a hospital setting and elsewhere.
Seminarians work
with a small group of other seminarians and a pastoral counselor who has
undergone specialized training beyond college and seminary for several years.
The psychological reflection
and exposure to a variety of human trauma is very intense. If married couples
get divorced while one or both is a seminarian, it’s most likely going to
happen during CPE. If a student drops out of seminary, it’s most likely going
to happen during CPE.
I studied in the
CPE program at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois, near Chicago.
One of the parts of our program was viewing an autopsy.
In preparing us for
the experience, our counselor asked the six of us how we thought we would
respond. Would we seem fine because we repress our feelings, and then have
nightmares for a couple of weeks? Or would we have a hard time getting through
it, and then be fine?
Each of us, all six
of us, had exactly the opposite reaction to what we expected.
My father was
having quintuple-bypass open heart surgery that summer, and when they pulled
the sheet off at the beginning of the autopsy, there was the body of a man who
seemed to be about my father’s age. I could barely stand there.
The pathologist
removed various organs, and some were passed around for us to see with our eyes
and weigh in our hands. I remember receiving the heart and being shown the
location of the infarction (heart attack), and I was having a hard time. I
remember a liquid that smelled like bubble-gum that was being used to mask the
smells, or maybe it had some other purpose. I don’t remember that.
I do remember the
pathologist’s assistant. He called to my mind the B-horror movies I had seen
growing up. If his name had been Igor, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
While the procedure
continued, and most of us were struggling, he ate his lunch, a peanut butter
and jelly sandwich. It was just another day at work for him.
And when it was
over, before we left, he asked if he could ask us a question that he,
apparently, had regularly asked previous cohorts who had come through.
He said,
“Yesterday, this man was living his life. He was with his family, his friends,
his co-workers; he was eating and drinking and sleeping. Now he’s dead, and
he’s on this table.
My question is, ‘What’s
the difference between yesterday and today?”
It’s a good
question, isn’t it? Has a human every lived who hasn’t asked that question?
I don’t remember
what any of us answered. Probably something theological. That’s what you get
when you ask budding theologians a question. 😊
What is life
itself? Let’s look at the beginning.
The Bible’s stories
of Creation are more concerned with the “Why?” and “What?” questions than with
the “How?” questions.
“Why is there
something, rather than nothing?”, “Why are we here?”, and “What is life itself?”.
The Bible answers
the last question by describing Creation in Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis,
the first book of the Bible, a title that itself means, “the origin” or “coming
into being.”
The first living
things that God created were plants, as in Genesis 1:11,
11 Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation:
plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit
with the seed in it.” And it was so.
But actually, God
didn’t create the plants directly. God created the conditions for them to live,
and then God called them into life.
The same for the living
creatures of the sea, air, and land, as in Genesis 1:24,
24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living
creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the
earth of every kind.” And it was so.
God didn’t create the
living creatures of the sea, air, and land directly. God created the
conditions for them to live, and then God called them into life.
And the same for
human beings, only different, as in Genesis 1:26,
26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image,
according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,
and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild
animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the
earth.”
God did create the conditions
needed for human beings, but God then created humans directly, and in God’s
image. And, whatever else that means, it means that we were created for a living
relationship with the one true living God.
It’s described even
more directly in the second Creation Story, in Genesis 2, verse 7,
7 then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a
living being.
God breathed the
breath of life into the dust of the ground, and it became a male human being.
And he took a rib from the man and made a female human being, both made from
the same stuff, in Genesis 2:21-23,
22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man
he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said,
“This at last is
bone of my bones
and flesh of my
flesh;
this one shall be
called Woman,
for out of Man
this one was taken.”
Human life was created
with the breath of God.
Likewise, Paul
writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:16-17,
16 All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for
teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient,
equipped for every good work.
The Bible itself is
the primary means by which God speaks to us. It is inspired.
The word “inspiration”
shares its root word with the word “respiration”. Some translations of 2
Timothy 3:16 begin, “All scripture of God-breathed”.
Like human beings,
the Bible is God-breathed. It’s filled with God’s breath of life.
We encounter God in
the act of reading or hearing the Bible read.
We encounter God in
the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion.
We encounter God in
worship, worship that is directed toward God and not toward ourselves, as Jesus
said in Matthew 18:20,
20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am
there among them.”
We are made for a
personal relationship with God and that relationship defines all other living relationships.
God is the
source of life. Of life itself. This is central to who we are, yet the Christian
Church has a diminished presence in the Western world today. Why?
I think that the
names of our magazines tell us the answer.
Comedian George
Carlin had a lot of problems with the Christian Church, based on his
experiences. But he also gave us a great deal of relevant social commentary.
I heard him do a
routine once where he talked about how the most popular magazine in the country
was once “Life” magazine. Life! It includes everything. Then, the most popular
magazine was “Time”. An aspect of life, but still pretty big on its own. Then it
was the magazine “People”. Not as big as time or life, but significant. Then it
was “Us”. Not those people, just us. Then, the newest and most popular magazine
was “Self”.
Now magazines are mostly
serving niche markets. That’s it.
God, the source of
life, has been replaced in people’s lives with their self.
That’s the human
condition.
Martin Luther, the
16th century church reformer, described sin, or separation from God,
as being human beings curved in upon themselves.
The good news, the
gospel of Jesus Christ, is that we are reconciled with God and with one another
by the cross of Jesus Christ, the blood that gives life, because the cross
overcomes our separation and restores the living relationship with God for
which human beings were created, which we rejected.
We are made new, by
God’s grace at the cross, as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:16-17,
16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human
point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we
know him no longer in that way. 17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:
everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
Do you remember the
movie “Frankenstein”, or the novel by Mary Shelley? A young scientist assembles
human and animal parts and animates them. Murder and other calamities result
but the monster isn’t the animated being, it’s Dr. Frankenstein, the man who
played God.
Life itself reveals
the presence of God within us, and no human being controls God. God’s gift to
all who receive it is new life, it is becoming a new creation through the gift
of faith and baptism. It begins in the transformation of our old lives and
extends to eternity.
Today, “eternal”
life is not just an expression of quantity, but is also an expression of
quality. We are transformed by God. And it can begin right now.
There is no death
for us because we died in our baptism. “Death” is now just a transition from
one form of life to a perfected one in Jesus Christ.
What’s the
difference between a dead person and a living person? In Christ, it’s only what
you can see in this world. God’s presence is eternal.
We are the people
of God. We are alive now and forever. Let us make our appeal to the world.
As Paul continues,
in verses 18-21,
18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself
through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to
himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message
of reconciliation to us. 20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making
his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to
God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so
that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Life itself is a
relationship for which we were made, and its giver and object is God. Let us
live it as God intended it to be lived.
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