00:00:00.000 - 00:00:30.040

The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler-Thielman. Today's sermon is based on the scripture from John chapter 8 verse 48 through 59. Our sermon is entitled "Reflections on the Big 6-0." Jesus is seeking to convince some of those who oppose him of his deity, and

00:00:30.040 - 00:00:59.280

one of the methods that he uses is to make reference to the fact that he has come to them out of eternity itself. But they reject his claim. They say to him, "You are not yet 50 years old, and you have seen Abraham, who lived more than 1,500 years ago." The thing about that question of the Jews which particularly

00:00:59.280 - 00:01:32.360

intrigues me is, "Why 50 years old? Why did they not say, 'You are not yet 40 years old,' or 'You are not yet 60 years old?'" The answer is found in Numbers chapter 4. It is recorded there that a Levite priest could retire when he reached his 50th year. It was assumed that he had worked enough and thought

00:01:32.360 - 00:02:01.680

enough and experienced enough to settle back and to think over all that had occurred and to arrive at some conclusions. Now, retirement age in these days is, of course, later than 50 years. We've pushed it beyond 60. But I had been thinking to myself about what my conclusions are as my pastoral ministry

00:02:01.680 - 00:02:37.600

comes to a close. What I would like to share with you then are my reflections on the Big Six O, my certainties after 34 years as a pastor. First and most obviously, there is the certainty of my own death. I reject utterly those who do not take death seriously. There are the liberals who try to smooth death over

00:02:37.600 - 00:03:07.280

by using happy and soft-sounding phrases like "asleep" and "passed away." They act as if to die is to go on a journey with a round-trip ticket. And there are the fundamentalists who try to blame every death upon God. I remember a few years ago in New York State when the entire homecoming court of eight girls from a

00:03:07.280 - 00:03:35.320

college there in New York, every one of them was killed in a horrible automobile accident. And one of the local ministers got up into his pulpit on the following Sunday and said, "How good it was of God to give them welcome into heaven, the true and the ultimate homecoming." I don't believe in a God who goes around killing

00:03:35.320 - 00:04:12.560

collegians. Death is not a joke, and death is not a reason to praise. The Bible says very clearly that death is the last enemy, and it required nothing less than the crucifixion of Christ to rip from its ugly maw its hideous sting. Now I suppose that to some of you younger folks, death seems very remote. But

00:04:12.560 - 00:04:38.680

believe me, the consciousness of it will grow. I don't know if you know what I'm referring to when I speak of a cipher on an organ. A cipher is when one of the pipes does not close, and so that pipe continues to sound, and there's no way to turn it off. I remember going once to a recital, and in the second number, the

00:04:38.680 - 00:05:06.480

organ ciphered. It must have been a very small pipe because the sound was very small and very thin, and that sound did not get any louder throughout the entire recital. But the more that was played on that organ, the more persistently you could hear that cipher, until by the time the thing was over, you wanted to go up

00:05:06.480 - 00:05:37.120

there and tear it right out by the roots. Well, death is very much like a cipher. It becomes more and more noticeable. There is no way to avoid it. None of us is going to get out of life alive. And yet it seems to me that that is a far more satisfying truth than it would be

00:05:37.120 - 00:06:05.720

to say that we prefer endless life here upon the earth. Do you remember that scene in Swift's "Gulliver's Travels," when Gulliver comes to the land of the Lugnagians? And amongst the Lugnagians, every one or two generations, a baby was born who had a red spot in the middle of his forehead. And such babies never died.

00:06:05.720 - 00:06:33.600

And Gulliver thought how wonderful that would be, to know that you are never going to die. And so he sought out one of these people, now many years old with their red spot, and he asked them what it was like. And they told him how miserable it was, how feeble they were, how all their friends had long before gone on,

00:06:33.600 - 00:06:57.080

how their property had been taken away from them when they were 80 years of age, so that their children would have something to inherit. They spoke of the ailments which bothered them, and of the great accumulation of grudges which they had collected across the centuries. And they said the worst part of it all is

00:06:57.080 - 00:07:28.920

there will never be any release. Think about that. To start work in the morning and to know that you will never hear the whistle that signals it's time to quit. To go out in the field when the sun rises, but to know that there will never come a moment when the sun sets and you can take your rest. I suggest that it is

00:07:28.920 - 00:07:54.960

better to die than to live here on earth forever. It all reminds me of an ancient Buddhist cone, about a Buddhist priest who was walking through the woods and suddenly was being chased by a bear. And he came to the edge of a cliff, and he fell over the cliff, but there was a twig sticking out of the cliff, and he

00:07:54.960 - 00:08:25.560

clutched onto it. And as he looked down below, he saw a starving tiger walking back and forth. So here is the ravenous bear above him, and the waiting tiger below him. And he looks at this branch that's holding him, and two little gophers come out of a hole and begin to chew on the branch. Now it so happens

00:08:25.560 - 00:09:06.760

that at the end of the branch there is one single luscious red strawberry. And so what did this wise man do? He reached out, took that strawberry, popped it into his mouth, ate it, and said, "How delicious." So we will all die, but if we will get out on the limb far enough, we will encounter the best strawberries. And of

00:09:06.760 - 00:09:35.600

course, after death, there will be strawberry shortcake in heaven. So there comes a time when all of us should move on. That's only fair, so that those who are coming behind us might have their opportunity at the strawberries. The second certainty at which I have arrived is the ultimate victory of cooperation

00:09:35.600 - 00:10:00.320

over competition. We are taught very early how to be competitive, and we accept this quite readily because there is a certain amount of selfishness in all of us. It starts out when we're very young. Who gets to wash the blackboards in the classroom? Who gets to take the note to the principal's office? And then as we get

00:10:00.320 - 00:10:20.400

older, who gets elected to the safety patrol and can wear one of those white belts that says "stop" and controls the traffic where the students cross the street? And then, of course, when we go into junior high and senior high, there is competition as to who will make the team and who will not, who will make the

00:10:20.400 - 00:10:49.960

band and who will not, who will make the marching group of girls that goes with the band and who will not, who will make the pep squad and who will not. And there is, of course, always the competition over grades. And at last, we are graduated. And by that time, we are seasoned competitors. We have a tendency to look

00:10:49.960 - 00:11:20.000

down on those below and to make the colossal mistake of equating being with doing. Scripture never urges such a thing. Scripture says that we are to develop our talents, as for example in the parable of the talents, or it says that we are to develop our gifts, as Paul spells out for us in 1 Corinthians. But

00:11:20.000 - 00:11:48.680

there's really only one place in the scriptures where we are told to try to outdo one another, and that is where the scriptures say, "Outdo one another in showing love." And the essence of love is not competition, it's cooperation. There is no doubt some satisfaction in those who accept Darwin's theory of evolution

00:11:48.680 - 00:12:19.360

and one of its propositions, which is the survival of the fittest. There is no doubt some comfort to those who accept that, to believe that we have in our very genetic structure that which makes us desire to be the fittest, the ones who survive. But the fact is that as you look at life about you, you find that the

00:12:19.360 - 00:12:52.440

higher life forms are not those in which cells are fighting against one another, but rather where they cooperate and make the miracle of life and all that that is. Each and every one of us constitutes a hundred billion cells working together in cooperation to make us what we are, and if any of those cells go crazy and

00:12:52.440 - 00:13:28.760

start to gobble up the cells that surround it, destroying them, we have a name for that. We call it cancer. And just as it is in an individual life, so it is in society. It is when we work together that we really win. I thank God for the fact that more and more people are coming to understand the truth in this.

00:13:28.760 - 00:13:51.600

It's encouraging to see the emphasis on cooperation, which is becoming part and parcel of almost every dimension of our lives. A few years ago you will remember that book, The Pursuit of Excellence, which was on the bestseller list for so many weeks, and one of the central theses of that book is that excellence is a

00:13:51.600 - 00:14:13.120

accomplished by cooperation. And no one knows how many corporations there are now in America that have quality circles that are made up of individuals who work on the shop floor and supervisors and superintendent and white-collar workers, even up to the executive level, and they get together and solve the problems of

00:14:13.120 - 00:14:41.280

the product which they're producing as one. That kind of cooperation is good. When a college or university is sufficiently far-sighted to invite some of the faculty and some of the students to sit on the board of directors so that the direction of the college becomes something in which all are engaged, when

00:14:41.280 - 00:15:08.040

a corporation elects some consumers to its board of directors, the same principle is at work. There is an attempt, you see, between the consumer and the creator to make something that will be better for both of them. I think that the principal reason why we in America have come to some recognition of this is that

00:15:08.040 - 00:15:34.800

very important book, one of the most important books of the last half of our century, which appeared about ten years ago, Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism. He points out that at that time the basic attitudes of Americans toward one another was selfishness and arrogance. But many people read that book

00:15:34.800 - 00:16:00.120

and they recognized the truth of what was being said, and so they began to move in another direction. The tide turned, if you will, and Alvin Toffler, the futurologist, wrote a book which he called The Third Wave, meaning an understanding that is coming into the society that it is as we bear one

00:16:00.120 - 00:16:38.200

another's burdens that we are going to find greatest success. So as I look back across my ministry from the perspective of the Big Six O, it is very clear to me that the children of men who are bound together by the towel of service are far more richly blessed than those poor souls who are bound together by the hard

00:16:38.200 - 00:17:14.480

chains of competition. And then I have one other certainty to share with you, and that is my certainty of the immeasurable nature of God's being. You know, there are 550,000 words in Webster's unabridged dictionary, and no one of those words, and no group of those words, and not all of those words put

00:17:14.480 - 00:17:49.400

into any conceivable order, can define God. He is indefinable, beyond our best comprehension. It seems to me that we need to have some room for O in our theology. Just that letter, O, a primitive explanatory remark which says that our minds fall flat and our words are useless, we contemplate God and all we

00:17:49.400 - 00:18:16.320

can do is say, "Oh." It's interesting that the mystics, those who across the centuries of the faith have walked most closely with God, often speak of God in terms of the sea. The Bible does that too, and that is because in the ways in which the scriptures were written, the sea was seen as a place of great mystery

00:18:16.320 - 00:18:50.120

and awe, and God is referred to as the master of the waters. He is, you see, unfathomable. We cannot get to the bottom of him even in terms of his depth, let alone in terms of his mood. And here we are in the last years of the 20th century, and we still know much less about the sea and what transpires within

00:18:50.120 - 00:19:26.000

it and at its bottom than we know about what transpires on the land. This leads me to the conclusion that we should understand the folly of trying to grasp God. Our noblest thoughts of God, whatever they might be, are inevitably smudged by our own prejudices. It is as if we take a lump of clay and we

00:19:26.000 - 00:19:56.840

fashion that lump of clay into what we desire. But no matter what it is that we create, we leave on that lump of clay our fingerprints. Just so, when we begin to think about God, we lead into that consideration thoughts that are part of our past, the marks of our minds, if you will. It's like when a sun's rays hit a

00:19:56.840 - 00:20:24.320

prism and are broken into the colors of the spectrum. Whenever we think of God, the ideas that are in here, the sins that we have committed, the family history which is ours, all of the experiences which constitute the days of our lives, the educational opportunities which are ours, all of these things are going to

00:20:24.320 - 00:20:59.920

color how we think of God. That's the reason it is so sad that so many people look upon theology as an arrival, when in point of fact it is only a beginning. Theologies come and go, for they are all fashioned in earthen vessels. I've come to the place where I wonder if there is any theology which is not in the end a

00:20:59.920 - 00:21:34.120

heresy. Every theology is incomplete and inadequate, and to precisely the degree that it is incomplete and inadequate, it is dangerous. We prophesy in part, for we only see through the glass dimly. "But when the perfect is come," Paul writes, "then we shall understand what is the truth." So I don't take theological

00:21:34.120 - 00:22:09.000

dispute very seriously anymore. I've lived too long to be entertained by its glib and shallow exercises. I'm bored to death with these tests of orthodoxy which one person gives to another. Who did Cain marry? Where will you be five minutes after you die? Do you believe in predestination? Are the scriptures

00:22:09.000 - 00:22:31.520

inspired? And if they are inspired, what does the word "inspired" mean? How is Christ present in the Last Supper? That led me to a rather interesting thought last night. You know, there are some groups of Christians, small groups admittedly, but there are some groups of Christians who sincerely believe that in

00:22:31.520 - 00:22:58.040

the upper room there were two sacraments given to the children of God. One was the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which we celebrate in this place, but the second is the sacrament of the washing of one another's feet. What would happen if we were to suddenly take up that consideration as a sacrament within our

00:22:58.040 - 00:23:27.560

church? Can't you hear the questions? Which foot do you wash first, the right or the left? Do you immerse the foot or just sprinkle the foot, or do you put it into free-flowing water? Who is worthy to have his feet washed? Who is worthy to wash another's feet? Should we wear towels while we are about this sacrament?

00:23:27.560 - 00:24:00.960

And of course the most profound question that can be asked in the last half of the 20th century, "Is it all right for a woman to wash someone's feet?" Please, I've had enough of all of that. It takes a husband and wife years to get to know one another. How then can we expect to understand God before our parking meters

00:24:00.960 - 00:24:31.720

expire? Lifetime questions require a lifetime to answer. I'm very much touched by the story of the old gentleman who came into a veterinarian's office and he had in his arms his old much-beloved dog, and the dog had a severe rash. And the veterinarian said, "Would you like to leave the dog with me so that I can

00:24:31.720 - 00:25:00.480

spray the dog and take care of that rash for you?" And the old man said, "Well, perhaps, but first I must ask you a question." And the veterinarian said, "All right, what is the question?" And the old man said, "Do you love animals more than anything else?" And the veterinarian drew himself up to his full height and said,

00:25:00.480 - 00:25:20.200

"In the Gospel according to Mark, the twelfth chapter of the thirtieth verse, we are told that we are first of all to love God, then we are to love our neighbor, and we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. After that come lower levels of love, and somewhere in that spectrum, yes, I love animals. Now

00:25:20.200 - 00:26:05.520

would you like to leave the dog?" And the old man said, "No, I will have to take the dog elsewhere, because you see, I promised myself that I would not leave him in the hands of any veterinarian who was not a Christian. Let those who have ears to hear, hear." A few weeks ago, a young woman, a member of our congregation, put to me

00:26:05.520 - 00:26:43.360

this question, "How would you like to be remembered 30 years from now?" Well, that is a difficult question, and I have taken some days to think about it, but this morning I am ready to give my answer. The young lady is here, but I shall not look at her as I speak, lest someone seek to identify her. If it may chance that 30

00:26:43.360 - 00:27:26.560

years from now, in the rosy dawn of a new millennium, for the year would be 2023, if at such a time you should think of me in some brief moment of whimsy, it would be my hope that your thought would be something like this. He was not a great man, though he did know some great people. He lived at a time when mighty

00:27:26.560 - 00:28:08.080

movements were afloat. It was a Mid-Sea kind of time, when the old was passing away and the sunrise of newness was on every hand. He told me many things, most of which I have forgotten, but that which he told me most often and which he said was the greatest lesson he'd learned in life was the same lesson that John

00:28:08.080 - 00:28:56.880

learned when he leaned on the bosom of Jesus and heard the Master say, "The world passes away and the loss thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abides forever." And with that, I conclude my preaching ministry in this place.

00:28:56.880 - 00:29:08.920

Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]