ONE TAKEN AND ONE LEFT

Scripture Readings: Matthew 24:36-44, Romans 13:11-14

Late in my senior year of High School an insurance agent came to our class and told us, “Statistically speaking, odds are that within a year one of you will be dead.” We looked around the room and wondered, “Which one will it be?” In my class, it was Mark Falk who, within a year, died of cancer.

The last time I saw Mark Falk was at Christmas break my freshman year of college. Me and my best from High School met up at one of the popular Eau Claire hang-outs, greeting other friends and acquaintances from High School when Mark Falk came in. I remember he wore a baseball cap that night. I remember that because he took it off good-naturedly and showed us his nearly bald head. A result of the chemotherapy.

I suppose I knew he was dying at the time, or at least had some reason to believe that was the case. But I tried to cover over my discomfort as I talked to him. Unsuccessfully, I'm sure. But Mark by now was an expert at putting folks at ease because he was at ease with his condition. So when he saw me unsuccessfully trying to cover over my discomfort, that's when he took off his baseball cap and showed us his nearly bald head. "There it is," he seemed to say. "I may be dying. But that's okay. Let's still be friends and enjoy this night."

So we did. We talked and laughed, goofed around, you know. We enjoyed the night. But it got later, the crowd got sparser, and the conversation got a bit more serious. Mark Falk and me and my best friend from High School got to talking a little bit about death. And Mark told us about his faith. He was a believer, he told us, and that made all this possible for him. I don’t know if I really understood at the time everything he meant by that, but I do know that his faith was a beautiful thing to behold.

It got later, time to leave. So we said good-bye to Mark - actually, we only said good night, but, as I said before, I wasn't ever going to see him again, so it really was good bye - and my best friend from High School and me drove home.

It was in the car that he said it, my best friend from High School. We were talking about Mark and I was talking about Mark's faith and my best friend from High School told me that religion was invented by the old and the dying. It was just a false hope for those people who were terrified of death, he said.

It wasn't really what he said. I mean, I'd heard that stuff before. But it was the fact that he said it, my best friend from High School. I suppose both of us were rattled that night, seeing someone our own age forced to face death. My friend's reaction to it was similar to Samuel Beckett's, who has his homeless tramps in the play Waiting for Godot talk endlessly about the two thieves on the crosses flanking Jesus. "One of the thieves was saved," they say, "and one of them was damned." No reason for it. No difference between the two. Just one arbitrarily saved and one arbitrarily damned.

Well, that's how my friend saw it. Mark was arbitrarily dying while he and I were arbitrarily going to live. There was no explanation, no reason. Religious faith in the midst of it was only a comforting delusion. That’s what my friend thought.

I wish I had known my Bible better back then, because I might have thought of Jesus’ words: "Then two men will be in the field; one is taken and one is left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one is taken, one is left." If I had known my Bible better I might have thought that it was my best friend from High School who was being left behind and Mark who had be taken with Christ. Because Mark had found his soul, had been filled with peace and joy. Because that kind of soul is never left behind and lost. It always endures.

In the movie Casualties of War we follow a small platoon of American soldiers in Vietnam. They are scared, desperate, almost crazy. At one point in the movie they attack and kill an innocent peasant woman. All of them agree to do it and take part in this atrocity; all of them except one of the soldiers. He would have no part of it. Later on in the movie, one of the other soldiers says to him, "Because we live so close to death we feel like we can do whatever we want." To which the one soldier replies, "No. I think because we live so close to death we must be very, very careful."

I don't know much about our immortal souls, but I do know what I see in others, the peace or the discord, the joy or the despair. I've met people like Mark Falk who have found something within themselves that can never be conquered. And I know that the time of finding this something for all of us is now.

There was an evangelical pastor who served in a street ministry in Chicago. Part of her ministry was to listen to the police scanner for any situations that might call for her services. So she ended up spending a lot of her time comforting the dying. Again and again, she would attend criminals, particularly gang members, as they were dying. She would hold a bleeding young man in her arms and offer him a last chance to accept the peace of Christ, to turn away from the violence that had ruled his life and caused his death. This pastor must have repeated this scene literally dozens of times, offering these young men one last chance. Do you know how many of them accepted it? None. All of them died as they lived.

"For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed," wrote the Apostle Paul; "... for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect," said Jesus. If we don't fill ourselves with the peace that endures now, when will we do it? We give so little thought to that which really can endure through all things; a soul emboldened by faith, strengthened for justice, filled with hope. To that work, the work of the soul, we always seem to say, "Tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow."

Nowhere is that kind of attitude more painfully obvious than when we talk with those enslaved by alcohol or drugs. "I can quit anytime I want to. I'll just do it after" - fill in the event of your choice. It doesn't matter what it is. But it all adds up to every day saying, "I'll do it tomorrow."

A few years ago, I met a man for whom tomorrow had finally come. He had squandered years and years on drinking and finally went into treatment. He had stopped drinking but there was still something missing. "A hole in my soul," he called it. Something that made it impossible for him to ever keep love or hope or serenity in his heart. With a hole in your soul, those things just keep seeping out.

One day in treatment, one of his fellow patients invited him to a spirituality group session. He didn't really want to go but got dragged along anyway. He sat there legs and arms crossed, trying to hold himself cynically aloof from all that was going on. But as the discussion proceeded, somebody said something that he just had to respond to. And, he's not sure how, but at one point he found himself standing up on a table, crying, and saying, "Ever since I was a kid, all I really wanted was for someone to hold me and say, 'It's okay.'"

The session took place around a table. And when the man said this, the minister who was leading the session swept the books and ashtrays off the table and told the man to lay down on the table. And then he had everyone put their hands on him and say, "It's okay. It’s okay. It’s okay."

That's when the hole in his soul was healed, he told me. It's not that he became a radically different person. He still has to take it one day at a time. But now things like love and hope and self-respect have a place to stay inside of him.

This Sunday we enter the season of Advent. The time of waiting, we call it. But this morning I'd like to encourage you to wait no longer. "The Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect," so let's do it now. Let the Christ-child be born anew in you today. Let the Prince of Peace rule in you now. Let the waiting be over because the time is too short.

Yes, there are many, many things we all need to do before Christmas comes - baking and buying, decorating and planning. But the most important preparation is right here, in our hearts, in our souls. So let the loving touch of Christ come upon you. Let him say, "You are mine and I am yours. And this you will know because my peace resides in your soul." Let the touch of Christ heal our wounded souls and fill them with hope and love and joy and peace - those things that endure. Then we'll be ready not only for Christmas but for whatever may come. Amen.

Sermon preached by Reverend Stephen P. Savides at First Congregational United Church of Christ, Appleton, Wisconsin on December 2, 2007.