April 6, 2014 John 19:1-16a
Fifth
Sunday in Lent Psalm 146
Frederick
Buechner (1926)
Life (from
Beyond Words)
Life
– the temptation is always to reduce it to size. A bowl of cherries. A rat race.
Amino acids. Even to call it a
mystery smacks of reductionism. It is
the mystery.
As
far as anybody seems to know, the vast majority of things in the universe do
not have whatever life is. Sticks,
stones, stars, space – they simply are.
A few things are and are somehow a live to it. They are broken through into Something, or
Something has broken through into them.
Even in a jellyfish, a butternut squash.
They’re in it with us. We’re all
in it together, or it in us. Life is
it. Life is with.
After
lecturing learnedly on miracles, a great theologian was asked to give a
specific example of one. “There is only
one miracle, “ he answered. “It is
life.”
Have
you wept at anything during the past year?
Has
your heart beat faster at the sight of young beauty?
Have
you thought seriously about the fact that someday you are going to die?
More
often than not, do you really listen when people are speaking to you instead of
just waiting for your turn to speak?
Is
there anybody you know in whose place, if one of you had to suffer great pain,
you would volunteer yourself?
If your answer to all or most of these
questions is no, the chances are that you’re dead.
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