Sunday, August 23, 2015

A Dwelling Place

A drawing my niece Natalie made for me.

August 23, 2015
“A Dwelling Place”

1 Kings 8:1, 10-11, 22-30, 41-43

Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the leaders of the ancestral houses of the Israelites, before King Solomon in Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the city of David, which is Zion.

10 And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, 11 so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.

22 Then Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, and spread out his hands to heaven. 23 He said, “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and steadfast love for your servants who walk before you with all their heart, 24 the covenant that you kept for your servant my father David as you declared to him; you promised with your mouth and have this day fulfilled with your hand. 25 Therefore, O Lord, God of Israel, keep for your servant my father David that which you promised him, saying, ‘There shall never fail you a successor before me to sit on the throne of Israel, if only your children look to their way, to walk before me as you have walked before me.’ 26 Therefore, O God of Israel, let your word be confirmed, which you promised to your servant my father David.
27 “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! 28 Regard your servant’s prayer and his plea, O Lord my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your servant prays to you today; 29 that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house, the place of which you said, ‘My name shall be there,’ that you may heed the prayer that your servant prays toward this place. 30 Hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place; O hear in heaven your dwelling place; heed and forgive.
41 “Likewise when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a distant land because of your name 42 —for they shall hear of your great name, your mighty hand, and your outstretched arm—when a foreigner comes and prays toward this house, 43 then hear in heaven your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and so that they may know that your name has been invoked on this house that I have built.


Sermon: “A Dwelling Place”

Where does God live?  I’ve been asking myself this question a lot this week, as I pondered our lectionary reading about Solomon dedicating the Temple.  I decided to consult the best theologians I know: my nieces.

“Where does God live?” I asked them over the phone the other day.  Natalie, the 7-year-old, didn’t miss a beat.  “In heaven.”  “Well, what does that look like?” I inquired.

“God’s house is a gingerbread house!  It’s in heaven because heaven is a pretty place.  It’s made of candy, all sorts of colors, and the flowers out front are made of lollypops.  The windows are see-through chocolate shaped like a balloon!  And there’s a bench made out of a chocolate bar. And God’s house has angel wings, so it can fly anywhere.”

I then asked my 5-year-old niece Gigi if God had any neighbors.  The answer came with the matter-of-fact certainty of a child:  “Yes.  A chocolate teddy bear.”

“But God doesn’t eat the neighbor, right?!” I asked, concerned.
“Noooo,” she giggled.

It’s amusing to laugh at the whimsy of such a vision of God’s house, but my favorite theologians showed great wisdom.  They told me that God lives in a place of nourishment, where you get fed (with candy!).  God’s house isn’t a fixed point, but can be wherever we or God need it to be.  God knows the neighbors.  And finally, God’s house is a not a somber, serious place.  God’s house is a place of fun, delight, color and joy!

How sad for us that we grow up and think we learn otherwise.  When we decide “God’s house” the church, is the place where we set agendas, orchestrate orderly worship services, coordinate meetings, organize programs and implement projects.  Where are the whimsy and delight, the color and creativitity?  Where is the understanding of a wild, wonderful God always on the move?

Solomon, in his foolish wisdom and wise foolishness, seemed to, at least for this moment of dedicating the Temple, grasp the wildness of God.  Perhaps that’s why he pretty-pleased God to hear the prayers of people gathered in that temple not once, not twice, but 6 times in the 8th chapter of 1 Kings.  “When your people who have sinned pray, when they plead with you in this house, when they stretch their hands towards this house, when a foreigner comes here doing the same, then hear in heaven your dwelling place, and forgive.”

If God dwells in heaven, then what is this Temple Solomon and thousands of laborers put so much work into?  Is it a pit-stop for the God of all creation, to come and refuel those gathered there?  Is it a timeshare for God to get away to when heaven grows monotonous?  Is it a place where the holiness of God is contained completely in the prayers, the smells and the bells? 

If God dwells in heaven, then what is the Temple, or the church for that matter?

Guided by my favorite theologians my nieces, I would say this: the church is a place for the whimsical wildness of God to dwell in the weariness of the world.  The church as God’s house is a dwelling place, constantly in motion.  A place of vibrant color and life in a world grown weary with black-and-white harsh realities.

God comes – with joy, not coercion -- and dwells with us here, inclining a listening ear to the prayers of this place.  Maybe that’s why you’re here today, hoping for a glimpse of that divine joy.  Hoping to be heard by your Creator.  Or maybe you’re here today because you need a dwelling place.

A place not to run away, but to actively face the things you’d rather not dwell on, the things we so constantly distract ourselves from.  Perhaps you’re here dwelling on despair for someone you love.  Perhaps you’re here dwelling on the worry that God has left the building (and your life).  Perhaps you’re here dwelling on a long-ago mistake you can’t let go of.  Perhaps you’re here dwelling on your inability to change, no matter how hard you try.  Perhaps you’re here dwelling on the loss of your childlike joy and wonder.  This is the place for that.

This is also the place for another sort of dwelling.  This is where we come to dwell on those things we need to survive this life: to dwell on our imaginations, like my nieces do so naturally.  To dwell on the promises of a wild God, given flesh in Jesus Christ.  Like Solomon the day they dedicated the Temple, we dwell on the power of prayer.  Prayer that does not necessarily change God, but certainly changes our way of perceiving God and the world.  We dwell on the needs of our neighbors near and far, daring to dream that things will change for the better.   We dwell on childlike joy, especially when it seems most ridiculous to do so.  This is the place for that.

The church – like that Temple of Solomon – is meant to be a dwelling place, where God is not contained but is pleased to visit us with grace.   I wonder if we grown-ups have lost touch with that reality.

I mean, what do we tell people “church” – God’s house -- is?

I don’t think we describe it in candy, nor do I think we talk of a teddy bear neighbor. 

We often speak in terms of what happens here, telling people they “should” come here because of this person or that program, this study or that activity.  We think in terms of some sort of spiritual training program for heaven, or a ritual woven into our Sunday morning practices from infancy.  Or we articulate that this is the place to learn the answers, to be told how and what to think and believe, or to really “get” what the Bible is all about.

None of these definitions of church are inherently bad.  But they do have something in common, something this lifelong Presbyterian begrudgingly confesses is often our greatest shortfall when thinking of church:  none of these ideas mention who lives in this house.  God! 

Think about it – how often have you invited someone to church, or spoken about this place, or shared about your faith background, without even mentioning God at all?

We Presbyterians do not, one the whole, mention God very much.  That’s just a fact.  We’ll talk about programs and events, plans and hopes, but you just won’t hear the word “God” thrown in much.  I think we’re afraid of scaring people off with too much God talk.  Or I think we’re afraid that we don’t know what to say about God, because we have some mental picture of perfect faith and we don’t fit it.

And that’s perhaps why people come here expecting a lot of people, a little politics, plenty of committees and meetings.  Or perhaps that’s why people don’t come at all.                 
                                                                                
God is here.  That should be our primary narrative when we share this place with others.  Not the programs.  Not our friends here.  Certainly not the preacher.  Not even the wonderful music.  But God.  God is here!  And that makes all the difference.

Of course God isn’t only here.  God is everywhere.  But this might just be the only place we are open to God in the way we need to be.  The place where we dwell on our difficult moments together in community, praying for joy.   The place where we dream a little – like children, imagining color and sweetness and fun.


God is here.  The rest all matters – the wonderful activities, worship services, Bible studies, music shared, fellowship and care we give one another.  But let’s never forget that this is God’s house, not ours.  And if God lives here, even a little, that means anything is possible.  Maybe even lollypop flowers.  Amen.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

A King's Tale

Many thanks to Debie Thomas for allowing me
to share her powerful words on Solomon with my congregation.
August 16, 2015
1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14
10Then David slept with his ancestors, and was buried in the city of David. 11The time that David reigned over Israel was forty years; he reigned seven years in Hebron, and thirty-three years in Jerusalem. 12So Solomon sat on the throne of his father David; and his kingdom was firmly established.
3:3Solomon loved the LORD, walking in the statutes of his father David; only, he sacrificed and offered incense at the high places.
4The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the principal high place; Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. 5At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, "Ask what I should give you." 6And Solomon said, "You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you; and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne today. 7And now, O LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. 8And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted.
9Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?" 10It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. 11God said to him, "Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, 12I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you.
13I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor all your life; no other king shall compare with you. 14If you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your life."

Sermon: “A King’s Tale”

I enjoy writing sermons each week.  (I might be in the wrong line of work if I didn’t!)  I usually pick a text in advance, let is sort of marinate for a few days, and then Thursday is The Day to Write.  I sit in a coffee shop and begin the fun task of looking closely at the language, and of jotting down my first impressions and ideas.  Then I put those ideas about a text in conversation with all sorts of people: writers, theologians, poets who all have something to say about that same passage.  Often, you’ll notice, when something really connects with where I feel led to go, I’ll include someone else’s words (with credit) in my own. 

Today is a little different.  When I sat down with coffee in hand to go through my little Thursday process, one link caught my eye – it was called “A King’s Tale.”  I read it, expecting some of it to be helpful to my sermon on Solomon.  Instead, the whole thing was, in my book, better than anything I could ever hope to write.  The writer was Debie (with one ‘b’) Thomas and she brought to life the whole story of Solomon, in ways I hadn’t connected with before.  I was so moved and shaken by her words that I told the poor coffee shop owner all about it!  And then, like some sort of fawning fan, I sent Debie Thomas an email.  After some definite gushing over her refreshing and challenging take on the story of Solomon, I asked a question: “Could I share it?  With y’all specifically?” 
She eagerly agreed, honored that the words of a Christian, Californian creative writer might make their way to a little North Carolina church.  So, today, I’m not really preaching to you.  Debie is.  I promise to get back to usual next week, but for now, let’s listen to what she has to say to us about the real King Solomon.

“A King’s Tale”
by: Debie Thomas

Once upon a time, there was a wise prince.   Following his father's death, the prince assumed his divinely appointed throne, married a beautiful princess from a neighboring kingdom, and settled down to govern his people to the glory of God.  Soon afterwards, God appeared to him in a dream, and promised to grant the young royal whatever his heart desired. 
Being a humble man, the king refused to ask for wealth, power, or long life, and instead replied thus: "I am only a child.  Therefore give your servant an understanding mind to govern your people, and to discern between good and evil."

God was so pleased with the king's request, he promised not only to grant it — to make this king the wisest human being in history — but to grant him every other measure of greatness as well.  Untold wealth, matchless honor, and long life.

In time, the king's reputation for brilliance spread across the land.  Nobles traveled from distant shores to hear his pithy sayings and witness his wise judgments.  In accordance with his wisdom and God's blessing, the king's wealth and power grew beyond measure.  He made strategic political and economic alliances; maintained fleets of ships; built gorgeous temples and palaces; traded in luxuries such as gold, silver, and ivory; penned the greatest wisdom literature of his time; presided over the Golden Age of his kingdom; and finally handed over the throne to his son after a peaceable reign of forty years.
By any measure, a "happily ever after" story…

Once upon a time, there was a shrewd prince.  Following the death of the king, the prince ordered the murder of his older brother — the rightful heir — and assumed his father's throne with blood on his hands.  He spent the earliest days of his reign carrying out the vengeance killings his father had requested before his death.  Then, believing himself to have divine wisdom and a divine mandate, he set out to build the kingdom of his dreams — a kingdom of wealth, prestige, and power.

The king's appetites were beyond excessive.  To support his extravagant lifestyle, he levied taxes his subjects could not bear.  To control knowledge, he gathered the surrounding world's wisdom traditions to himself.  To complete his lavish building projects, he conscripted thousands of people into forced labor.  To satisfy his desires, he assembled a harem of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines.  To quell his spiritual restlessness, he constructed pagan shrines and offered worship to gods who demanded child sacrifice.

The results of his choices were dire.  By the end of his reign, his people could no longer bear the crushing burdens of taxation and slavery he had placed upon them. In the wake of his paganism, they could no longer differentiate between idolatry and worship.  Because he had monopolized God to justify his personal brand of wisdom, his subjects had nowhere to turn for divine discernment or reparation.

Soon the king found himself confronted by enemies.  Though he attempted to fight back, God's hand was against him, and he enjoyed little success.  He died shortly thereafter, denied the long life he had dreamed of.  His son then tried to force the disgruntled masses back into servitude, but they resisted, and a civil war that would last for decades broke out across the land.  The kingdom split in two, and the famed king's once-golden dream dissolved into chaos.

By any measure, NOT "a happily ever after" story.

So.  Which story is true?  Who was King Solomon?  A sage or a fool?  A noble or a glutton?  A leader or a tyrant?

That's the first question posed by this week's lectionary reading from 1st Kings.  But here's the second:  What happens if the answer is yes?  What if King Solomon was all of the above?  What then?

I grew up in a church that espoused strict Biblical literalism and inerrancy.  Though I no longer read Scripture through those lenses, I respect the challenge King Solomon poses for those who do.  I have precise memories of sitting in church as a child, watching preachers twist themselves into interpretative pretzels to make sure the famed king emerged from their sermons with his reputation intact. "The wisest man who ever lived."

Those preachers had no choice.  If the Bible literally claims that God made Solomon wiser than all the billions of human beings who ever have (or ever will) inhabit planet Earth, then the rest of Solomon's story — however sordid — must be packaged to substantiate the claim.
One way to manage the problem is to leave out huge chunks of the story, as I did at the beginning of this essay.  Growing up, I didn't hear about the slaves who toiled in the king's copper mines and stone yards.  Or about the excesses of Solomon's daily menu — a thousand measures of flour and meal, ten oxen, twenty cattle, one hundred sheep, and ample sides of deer, gazelle, roebuck, and fatted fowl.  Or about the forbidden gods — Chemosh, Molech, Astarte, Milcom — he honored with dubious and possibly sinister sacrifices at shrines on the outskirts of the city.

Another way to revise Solomon's story is to make the time-honored, "Let's blame Eve" move.  This allows Solomon to remain a wise and good king, a witty and enterprising man whose only fatal mistake is that he falls into the arms of the wrong women — foreign, idolatrous women who lead his otherwise pure heart astray.
Needless to say, this misogynistic reading depends on a pretty narrow definition of sin.  Sin as sexual mishap.  Not sin as greed, ostentation, fratricide, gluttony, idolatry, exploitation, or cruel indifference.

I started this essay dividing Solomon's story into two parts.  The good and the bad, the noble and the shameful.  But the wonderful thing about the Bible — if we're willing to liberate it from the bondage of literalism — is that it refuses to distort reality in such an unhelpful way.
The Solomon of the Bible is a human being.  Which is to say, he is a paradox.  Blessed with wisdom and cursed with foolishness.  Devoted to God and attracted to idols.   Committed to his intellect and shackled to his appetites.    
We can neither whitewash nor dismiss this king — his story is too familiar.  Too much like our own.

But we can learn from it.  If we refuse to redeem Solomon by revision, if we're willing to look at his life in its full complexity, we can hear warnings worth heeding.  They're painful and pointed warnings, but they might save us:

1. It's possible to lose God's dream in ours.  Solomon may very well have received a vision from God; in the end, it doesn't matter.  What matters is that Solomon's own dreams very quickly left God's in the dust.  Walter Brueggemann puts it this way: "The wisdom that Solomon does not learn is attentiveness to those for whom God has special attentiveness.  There are all kinds of dreams — of power and money and prestige and control.  But the dream of justice for widows, orphans, and immigrants is the deep wisdom of Torah obedience."  And that's the dream — God's dream for the least and most vulnerable of his children — that Solomon never fulfills.

2. It's possible to hog God.  A mandate is a tricky thing.  Solomon believed that his wisdom and his legitimacy as Israel's ruler came from God himself.  But how often, in the years that followed, did he return to that original mandate, and ask himself if his reign was still worthy of God's stamp of approval?  Using God to legitimize one's own decisions and satisfy one's own lusts is dangerous, especially if it denies other people the right to appeal to God, too.  I wonder, for example, how the parents of those young girls Solomon kidnapped for his harem felt about their king's "holy" mandate.  Solomon monopolized God for the sake of his ambitions and appetites.  He did this long after his personal devotion to God had run cold.

3. Wealth is not blessing.  I feel like I need to repeat that.  Wealth is not blessing.  If it is, then Jesus (just to cite the obvious example) must be regarded as one of the most un-blessed people ever to walk the earth; he lived and died dirt poor.  But if there's one false teaching that haunts the American church most, this is it.  That money is an unambiguous sign of God's approval.  Hence, prosperity theology.  Hence, our willingness to turn a blind eye to sin in our politicians, our economic policy makers, our religious leaders, and our cultural icons when their sins come packaged in enormous wealth.  Too often, money creates a moral vaccuum.  Solomon remained wealthy while he sacrificed babies to Molech.  Wealth is not blessing.

Let's try this again:  Once upon a time there was a king.  He had big dreams, as most of us do.  He had great faults, as most of us do.  He lived a life marked by success and failure, nobility and disgrace.  He loved God and he didn't.  He pleased God and he didn't.  He left a legacy that was neither perfect nor wretched, as most of us will.  But he was loved by God throughout, even when his foolish wisdom shattered God's heart.  As we are. 

Amen.

Sunday, August 9, 2015

The Hunger for Immortality

Image Source
August 9, 2015
“The Hunger for Immortality”

John 6:35, 41-51
35Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."  41Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven." 42They were saying, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?" 43Jesus answered them, "Do not complain among yourselves. 44No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. 45It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. 46Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48I am the bread of life. 49Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."


Sermon: “The Hunger for Immortality”

It’s no secret that living forever is among the most attractive of ideals for humanity.  An entire beauty empire is built upon the idea that time is our enemy, and we should aspire to look younger and younger, sometimes resorting to bizarre methods (like using bee venom on your face!) to get there.  Movies about immortals aren’t just vampire tales anymore…we have that theme running through the box office in films like The Age of Adaline and Lucy.  But the quest for immortality goes beyond beauty and entertainment.

Most obsessive, in my book, is what is termed the “2045 Initiative.”  Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itzkov began the project in 2011 with specialists in the fields of robotics, brain science and artificial organ development.  Their website defines their manifesto as “the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimal conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.”  

But the 2045 Initiative has moved beyond just fancy words.  They hope to have affordable, brain-controlled “avatars” by 2020, self-sufficient life support systems by 2025, what they call “cybernetic immortality” (a person’s consciousness living forever in a machine) by 2035, and finally, people’s minds being made to live in machines that far exceed current human capabilities by 2045. 

Sounds like science fiction, right?  Nearly 40,000 people from around the world have bought into the 2045 Initiative.  They don’t state their underpinning principal in any of their literature the way that I do, but I can spell it out pretty easily.  Why do they do all this?  Why try to extend life through artificial means?

It’s very simple, really.  We don’t want to die.

We may not readily accept the potential of living as a machine.  We may not sent Mr. Itzkov money to support his project.  But we share that same ethos.  It’s the same since the beginning of humanity, a primal instinct for preservation woven into our being.  Those folks who criticized Jesus that day in Capernaum had the same thought on their minds. 

But Jesus’ words didn’t make any more sense to them than the 2045 Initiative makes to some of us.  Jesus spoke of their ancestors, and his own, as it happens.  They ate manna – bread – in the wilderness, and they died.  But Jesus claimed to be the living bread, come down from heaven, and then he made them the promise that connected with their most primal core: if they ate of him, believing in him, they would not die.

It must have sounded like cannibalism to them.  But Jesus wasn’t telling them to nibble on his fingers or toes.  He was trying to describe another reality – the reality of heaven breaking into the earth in such a way that eternity seeps in with it. 

If science fiction was a thing in Jesus’ time, it would have sounded like that to the Jews gathered there.  As it was, they heard his words, not as a promise of immortality that spoke to their greatest hunger for life, but as barbarism.  It didn’t get more offensive than that for a people with rigid holiness codes for eating. 

This misunderstanding is why many early Christians were persecuted for being “flesh-eaters.”  People outside the fold of Christianity genuinely believed Christians to be cannibals who “eat the flesh” of other humans in some bizarre ritual connecting them to their Messiah. 

Jesus was not talking about cannibalism.  But he was talking about his flesh, his human body, being the medium through which eternal life was given to non-eternal beings.  No robot.  No avatar.  Just the flesh of a weary, traveling Jewish Palestinian carpenter, given freely to bring life everlasting.

He gave what doesn’t last for what would last forever.  It wasn’t an easy offering.  Those words uttered from the cross, “Eli, eli, lema, sabachthani” are translated from the Aramaic as, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

But we all know the meaning behind them, that meaning woven into humanity’s dna from our very beginning:  “I don’t want to die.”

But he did, facing our greatest fear for us, so that we might never have to fear it again.  So that we might know eternal life.  Which is not the same thing as immortality. 

Dmitry Itzkov is operating on the assumption that time is our enemy, that disease is our destruction, and that death is our end.  Immortality is the goal.  With all do respect to his great passion and work, I see things differently.  Time is not our enemy, only our inevitability.  Disease might well destroy our bodies – we have very little control over that – but it cannot kill our spirits.  Death is not our end, but instead a passage into something greater, an eternity that, try as we might, we won’t know or understand until then.

But we can get a taste of eternity, here in this life.  Just like Jesus said, we get a taste of it in this bread and this cup.  I think we also glimpse eternity in the golden light through pine trees each evening that warms our weary faces.  In the steam off of a cup of coffee each morning.  In the smile of a friend when their eyes meet ours across a room.  In the feeling that, when we admit that utterly human statement, “I don’t want to die” into the velvet blackness of the middle of the night, someone hears us.  The One who gave his flesh for all.

And here’s the thing about that God who hears what we don’t dare utter to anyone else: that God remembers.  Remembers what it was to be truly human.  Remembers what it was to have a body ache and fail.  Remembers that most primordial of fears. 

And that God answers, in those glimpses of eternity that are so everyday and ordinary we might miss them.  The answer is as simple as the statement uttered into the darkness:  “I am the bread of life.”

We never need to fear what is next.  We never need to bribe God into helping us escape it if we pray the right way or prove our faithfulness.  We don’t even need to live as robots!  We just need to taste eternity everywhere God is breaking into this world, and remember that, though there are things that fade away, though death is a part of life, there is something that remains.  There is something that survives.  And it is holy, wholly delicious life.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.