Mark 13:24-37 Your One Wild and Precious Life (Hoffacker) – Bible study

Sermon Mark 13:24-37 Your One Wild and Precious Life

By The Rev. Charles Hoffacker

He’s known as a master of the legal thriller,
producing books at the rate of one a year,
and they keep becoming best sellers.
John Grisham’s success is due in part
to how he is an attorney himself;
he knows what it’s like to work
inside a courtroom, inside a legal office.
This, and his skill as a writer,
help him produce legal thrillers
that keep his readers fascinated.

The books John Grisham writes are fiction.
Here is a story he tells,
a story about himself,
which is not fiction, but fact.

When he was a student at law school,
a friend–another young man–
called Grisham and invited him to lunch.
At lunch,
he told Grisham that he had cancer
and that he did not have long to live.

Grisham was stunned by this news.
Then he asked,
“What do you do when you realize
that you are about to die?”

His friend replied,
“It’s real simple.
You get things right with God,
and you spend as much time
with those you love as you can.
Then you settle up with everybody else.”

He added,
“You know, really,
you ought to live every day
like you have only a few more days to live.”

“You know, really,
you ought to live every day
like you have only a few more days to live.”
Grisham’s dying friend
gave him good advice,
and he has never forgotten it.

Today is not only
the First Sunday of Advent,
it is also the opening
of a new church year.
But rather than have us deal with beginnings,
today’s liturgy directs our attention
to the end of the world,
to the final coming of Christ.
We are to wait and watch,
for Christ has promised to return.

We are reminded
that this world is drawing to its close.
Whether Christ returns in the distant future
or the near future,
each day that passes
brings his return in glory one day closer.
Then the world as it is will die
in order to be resurrected
in a way that surpasses our capacity to imagine.

Grisham’s friend, a young man,
had only days or weeks,
months at the most,
to live.
Death was staring him in the face.

But in a sense
death stares all of us in the face.
We may have years and decades ahead of us,
but we are mortal.
Sooner or later,
we will be taken from this world,
and this world will be taken from us.

For some people,
this world will end for them when they die.
For others,
if not now then some day,
this world will end when Christ returns.
It becomes a matter of urgency
how we choose to live
whatever time we have left.

That we will not be here forever,
and that this world will not be here forever
combine to produce a sense of urgency,
a recognition of the immense value
of each day and how we spend it.
Whatever is limited
is that much more valuable.
Whatever cannot be claimed once it is past
is infinitely precious and alarmingly urgent.

Advent season exists
to channel and direct this urgency
so that throughout the year
we may remain conscious
of how precious our time is,
so that we put into effect
what John Grisham’s friend told him:
“you ought to live every day
like you have only a few more days to live.”
For “a few more days” is, in reality,
the condition of us all,
no matter how young or healthy we may be.

Grisham’s friend listed some plain priorities.
“It’s real simple,” he said.
“You get things right with God,
and you spend as much time
with those you love as you can.
Then you settle up with everybody else.”

Confession of sins,
love for others,
reconciliation.
These are short-hand terms
for what Grisham’s friend advised him.
Confession, love, reconciliation.
For anybody living a finite life,
there is a sense of urgency
to each of them.

But there can be terrible urgency
to other things as well:
enjoyment, recollection, gratitude,
and much more.
Doing things that are meaningful
even though they seem small,
and recognizing that in smallness
is their beauty.

The impress of urgency can remain
even if we live to be a hundred
and Christ still does not return.
For each of us lives but one entire life
on this beautiful, green earth.
We make choices,
deciding for this rather than that.
We can live but one life here,
yet it is up to us
to make it full and good and holy,
not an offense to its Creator,
but, however imperfect,
an act of gratitude for the gift of existence.

There’s a poem by Mary Oliver
that I sometimes read to couples preparing for marriage.
Yet it is directed to all of us,
regardless of age or marital status,
for it speaks to what it means to be human.
Consider it a touch of grace
on this November morning
that Mary Oliver entitled her poem
“The Summer Day.”

“Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know what exactly what a prayer is.
I don’t know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?” 1

We are here at the Eucharist.

Every Eucharist testifies to death,
Christ’s death on the cross,
the death of people we pray for and who pray for us,
death that awaits us, for we are mortal.

Every Eucharist also testifies to the return of Christ,
anticipates his Advent,
and is offered in the light of that final truth.
Gathered as we are now
to celebrate the Eucharist together,
we participate already in Christ’s return
although it has yet to happen.
That Christ comes to us this morning
through bread and wine
asserts that one day
he will come here in glory
and the world will be no more.

There is an admonition
that tells a priest to celebrate every Eucharist
“as though it were your first Eucharist,
as though it were your last Eucharist,
as though it were your only Eucharist.”

This sense of urgency
belongs not only to the priest,
but to all who assemble for the feast.
Participate in this sacrament
as though it were your first time to do so,
your last time,
your only time.

We offer the Eucharist together
living lives that are short,
that run past like a cascading mountain stream.
Death awaits.
Christ awaits.
The world we know will fold up like a tent
and disappear.
Its splendor and its sorrow
will stop with a crashing halt,
never to be heard from again.

We celebrate the Eucharist together
with little time left on earth,
and in the light of Christ’s return.
May we pay attention to this action
and everything it includes.
Then each of us will discover
what it is we can do
with our “one wild and precious life.”

1. House of Light (Beacon Press, 1990), 60.

Copyright 2014 Charles Hoffacker. Used by permission.