“The Meaning of Life”
Being and not doing
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, February 1, 2004
Text: Mark 10:17-31
I don't think I have ever heard greater candour than I heard a number of years ago when I was visiting a gentleman in a former congregation who had been retired for about two years. It was evident that the transition from work to retirement had been a difficult and unpleasant one for him and he was very eager to speak to me. He seemed to be riddled with anxiety and clearly he wanted to express his concerns and ask some very important questions.
It became evident that he felt he had been replaced. He had heard that his successor was very popular and was doing excellent work, and it bothered him to the core of his being. Similarly, he was anxious that he had had little or no contact with his former co-workers - within two years all communications seemed to have broken down and he was feeling isolated. Even more than that, when he actually went into work the odd time to pay a visit, he felt that in many ways he was a distraction from the really important things and that everyone wanted simply to get on with their work - to be productive and his presence was a nuisance.
Feeling so down about all of this, he began to question some very important things in his life. He was worried that maybe he didn't have, in his words, “enough hay in the barn” to be able to live out his retirement. He was anxious about that. He was also anxious about the fact that he had lived all his life with one goal in mind: to be productive. But now that he was no longer producing he wondered if he had wasted his life. Deep down in his soul he also questioned whether he was not just retired but redundant. His very existence was something that seemed to have no vitality. Then he asked me the question that sent a chill down my spine, one of the most difficult questions that I have ever been asked: “I wonder if my life has been worth living?”
Here was a man who clearly had not made this life transition well. When I saw in the newspaper this week the discussions about the appropriate age for retirement, I thought back to this man, not so much with regard to the exact timing of his retirement, but in terms of the way he looked at his own life.
Last week I watched a documentary about a person whose writings have had a great impact on my life: Viktor Frankl. He wrote a very famous book many years ago, Man's Search for Meaning. This documentary looked at the many influences in his life that caused him to write about this very issue. For indeed, I believe that is at the heart of this retired gentleman's struggle. Viktor Frankl understood that life is difficult. Here was a man who had lost his mother, his father and his beloved wife in a concentration camp in World War II. Here was a man who wondered whether his life had meaning, in light of the fact that those he loved had been taken away while he lived.
Now, Frankl wrote a complex book. It is deep. It has many layers. But a theme arises out of it to inspire us: The very meaning and purpose of life is found in something greater than ourselves. It is found in love. It is found in knowing that you are loved. It is found in the very act of loving. It is found not just in looking introspectively into oneself, although one must do that, but also in looking outside of oneself, to the world.
So powerful are the teachings of Viktor Frankl that even in our own country, many of his ideas have been used to deal with people who are dying of cancer and other diseases. One of the people in this documentary was someone I know, Dr. Balfourmont in Montreal, who has dedicated his life to palliative care, He takes care of those who are dying, those who have been told that they have cancer and will not survive, and he has found that the terminally ill who have a sense of meaning in their lives are better able to cope with their situation.
Helmut Thieleke, the great theologian, looked at the passage that we read this morning and suggested that in it is an answer to the question of the meaning of life. The young man in the story comes up to Jesus and says, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Now, Thieleke says that all human beings should confront this question at some time in their lives. Many of you are probably thinking: “Do we really have to?” After all, are we not just busy living our lives? Are we not just busy changing diapers? Are we not just busy shovelling snow and making sure that the walkways are clear, something that has consumed us all this last week? Do we not find that we are busy enough trying to decipher the new income tax forms? Are we not busy enough writing our exams at university or making sure that our families are fed? Is it not a luxury to be able to sit back and ask such esoteric questions?
Well, my friends, we may be busy and we may have things that we have to do, but if we do not have a sense of meaning, if we do not have a sense of purpose, how can we give priorities to those things that we do? Do we not also find that when we confront hardships in life, when we confront challenges in life, we need the resource of having asked the question and having found an answer to it. What is the meaning of life?
Albert Einstein once said cynically that 20th century humanity was “filled with perfect mediocrity and had confused ends.” In many ways I think that carries on into the 21st century. Because we have confused ends, our living seems to be meaningless at times and when we face difficulties we do not have the resources to deal with them. That is why this passage is so powerful, for Jesus is asked the question by this young man, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Now, this is not just about, as some people think, eternal salvation at the end of one's life. On the contrary, if you look at the New Testament and if you understand the Old Testament out of which arose the faith of the young man who asked the question. Eternal life is not just about the end, it's about life itself, in the here and now. It is about how the power of God breaks into the now and causes us to live our lives in the present. It is how our current life is transformed and renewed by the forgiveness of sins and the assurance of grace and by experiencing the love of God - the eternal happens now, because eternal life is nothing more or less than life lived in, with and through God.
What the young man wanted to know, was God. What the young man was deeply seeking, was God. That is why when the young man came to Jesus, He treated the question seriously. How, then, might we find purpose and meaning through this encounter?
I think it rests on three points, the first of which is: Who asked the question? We need to know something about this young man. For indeed, this young man represents all of us in some ways. He comes to Jesus and asks a reasonable and purposeful question. He's not trying to catch Jesus out; he genuinely wants to know the answer. Evidently, he is disillusioned even though we know that he is clearly religious by the fact that he has completed and fulfilled the commandments. But this young man is disillusioned. He wants to have something more, and he is anxious to know the answer to the question that he poses, so anxious that Mark tells us that he actually comes to Him on his knees. He hurries to Jesus. He sees that Jesus is close at hand and he wants an answer here and now.
In asking the question, the young man actually poses it incorrectly. He comes to Jesus, and you will notice in the text, he says, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Is there something that I can do to gain God? Is there something that I can do to earn eternal life? He assumed that he could come to Jesus and receive a series of laws, a series of rules and regulations that he could abide by to fulfil what Jesus had in mind.
Jesus begins by talking about the Ten Commandments, and the young man gets excited about them, but the fact is that when Jesus lays them out the young man says, “All these I have kept since I was a boy.” Now, I always question whether anyone can say they truly fulfil all the commandments all the time. No matter how religious you are, in some way you break them.
One of the things that I like in our culture, although I do not stay up late at night very often to hear them, are David Letterman's Top Ten lists. Some time ago, a friend of mine e-mailed me a variation of a Top Ten list, about the Ten Commandments. It said that when ministers preach on the Ten Commandments, they often hear things from people following the service that they would rather not hear, which illustrates how easily we can break the Ten Commandments without meaning to.
For example, the preacher preaches on: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Immediately afterwards someone says, “Pastor, that was a simply divine sermon.” Or, they preach on: “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image.” Someone comes to the pastor afterwards and says, “You illustrated perfectly what God really looks like.” Or the preacher preaches on: “Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain,” and someone says, “Pastor, as God is my witness, that was the best sermon ever.” Or the preacher preaches on: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” Afterwards, someone says, “An excellent bit of work, pastor.” Or the preacher preaches on: “Honour thy father and mother.” And a person at the door says, “I wish my Dad could hear you preach, he could sure use it.” Or the preacher preaches boldly on: “Thou shalt not kill.” One of the elders says, “Anyone who slept through that one ought to be shot.” (I'm sure you don't sleep through mine.) Or, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and someone comes up to the preacher and says, “Glad you don't intrude into other people's affairs.” Or, “Thou shalt not steal.” “That was a good sermon, Reverend. You preach it better than Robert Shiller did on TV last week.” And the last two: “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” Someone says, “I'm literally in heaven when I hear you preach, pastor.” And finally: “Thou shalt not covet.” A person at the door says, “I really envy your ability to speak so well in public.”
Oh, how easy it is to break any of the Ten Commandments even unknowingly. Jesus knew that this was not about the Ten Commandments but the young man thought it was. He thought it was about something he must do. Eternal life was in his hands and he had to do something to gain it. But Jesus also realized that the young man was wealthy. He had many possessions and later on Jesus comes back to that, so keep that in your mind.
And so, we have a young man here who asks serious questions, who's disillusioned, who wants answers but thinks that the answer is found in his doing something to earn eternal life.
Which brings us to the second point: Who responded to him? It was Jesus. Jesus' response was: “Why do you call me good?” (For the young man had said, “Good teacher, what must I do...”) Now, Jesus is not questioning His own divinity. Rather, He is pointing out to this young man that he really doesn't know whom he's talking to. This young man is coming to Jesus as if He is no more than Dear Abby.
He is approaching Jesus just like people who write to Dear Abby. Dear Abby, how can I find a soulmate? Dear Abby, how can I make my life at home happy? Dear Abby, how can I win friends and influence people? That's what this young man was doing. He was treating Jesus as Dear Abby and Jesus said to him, “No one is good - except God.” In other words, don't you understand who you're talking to? I'm not just going to give you a bit of advice to help you on your way, I'm going to do something more. What Jesus did challenge was what was in this young man's heart. He went right to the core of his being, for Jesus understood that this young man was wealthy and so he challenged him: “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
In other words, Jesus goes right to the very centre of this young man's belief system. And we all know the story: When Jesus asked that of this young man, it was too great - he could not do it.
Well, my friends, Jesus Christ often does that with us. He goes right to the very core of our lives. Now, it is not necessarily wealth that stands between us and God. It might be something entirely different but everyone has something, some idol that they hold onto that they see as more precious than eternal life - than God. When they hold onto those things at the expense of God and in rejection of God, they question the meaning of life. Because, my friends, if you've lived for that thing how will you find meaning? But if you've lived for God, then everything else finds meaning.
The disciples listened to this word of Jesus and they were terrified. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus' answer is the great clarion call: “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”
No one earns eternal life. It's not about what you do. It's about who you are and what you believe. That's what it's about. For what is impossible with man, what we are unable to do, God can do for us. So, my friends, if we are living under the misapprehension that we can find meaning and purpose in life, apart from our faith in God, we will lose it.
Which brings me to the third point: Why is this story there at all? If the young man fails the test, if the young man cannot take what Jesus says to him as gospel, what is the transforming message in all of this?
Well, the answer I think is very clear. In answering this young man, Jesus was not giving him a universal ethic He was calling this young man to look inside his heart and mind for those things that he holds more dear than God. But He is also showing (and this is something that Viktor Frankl would agree with, I'm sure) that you must look also to the needs outside of yourself to be able to find the meaning and the purpose of life. In this young man's case, Jesus' command was to sell what he had and give it to the poor. But it might not necessarily be that we sell what we have, it might be that we give of ourselves. It might be that we share what we have.
This is where we find the power and meaning of life: not just in what we are doing, but in who we are for others and the world - which raises the question: Is there meaning and purpose in the life of a quadriplegic for example, who cannot move, who is stranded in a wheelchair and dependent on everybody else? If the purpose of life is simply to be productive, to be able to create things, and this person is unable to, does that mean that his or her life has no meaning? Does it mean that his or her existence has no purpose? No!
No matter who we are, no matter what we are, our purpose is found in being loved by God. Our purpose is in revealing that love of God in our relationships with others. It is found even intrinsically within our very own existence as a child of God who knows and experiences and can feel the power of love. It is not what we do. It is not in doing. It is in being. And in being in the knowledge that we are loved by God.
This young man sought in every corner all the different ways and means of having what God wanted for him, but he realized that he loved something else more and therefore could not accept what Jesus had to say.
Ronald Meredith tells a lovely story about looking out of his bedroom window one evening when there was a full moon. Across the night sky are Canada geese flying, their wings expanded, a glorious sight, making the moon look mystical and the birds magnificent. He looks down from his window at a pond and sees a bunch of mallards. The mallards are looking up to the sky and seeing these magnificent birds above. They begin to flap their wings, remembering what God had originally given them, but they can't move, for the mallards have become fat. They had decided that the corn in the barn was more important than the ability to fly, and so they can't fly any more.
Looking at these fat mallards and contrasting them with the flying Canada geese, this is what Meredith concluded: “Temptation is always enjoyed at the price of losing the capability for flight.”
My friends, we are often very much like fat mallards. We are weighted down by all manner of things in life that we think are more important than God or the needs of others. We are weighed down by things and attitudes and possessions and ideas that we place ahead of God. And then we wonder why, when we face crises, we find no meaning. The meaning is never, ever in those things that weigh us down. The meaning always is in God, and in God we can have flight and our lives can have purpose and we can live for others. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.