Sermon Riff: Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, but Nobody Wants to Die

I don't write out my sermons, so I can't post them in a blog. And anyway, I often spend a day or so thinking about what I should have said. So instead of posting a weekly sermon, here's a "sermon riff," a posting that's based on the sermon and the sermon text.

This week I was talking about change. We're starting a new "transformation process" (the consultants who run it won't let you call it a program). These fads and buzzwords come and go, so I had to explain to the church why this wasn't a waste of our time and money. So I wanted to say something about change that you can't find in a management book. And here's what I got:

For the most part, people don't like change. Some do better than others, but change is scary--and the older we get, the scarier it seems to become. Why is that?

Maybe because change always equals loss. When we go through a change, we lose something that we have, and that's always scary and uncomfortable. No matter what good a change brings us, there's always a cost. Change is a trade: we lose something old and receive something new. So change always brings loss. And as we get older, we get closer and closer to the biggest, scariest, and most uncomfortable change of all, when we give up everything we know, our lives, our whole world, and pass into a truly unknowable future. Perhaps our fear of change, deep down, is a fear of death.

I hope this is true, because Jesus has an awful lot to say about our fear of death.
He said, "Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." He carried that through his actions too--he gave up his job, his home, his family, and eventually his life to serve God and other people. He was afraid--like the song says:

When Judas had betrayed him, his Father heard him cry,
He was brave until his death but he didn't wanna die.

Even Jesus was afraid of death, but he went through it anyway. And what happened? Jesus overcame death. He won the victory. He entered into a kind of life that we can't even begin to understand. He "emptied himself," as an ancient hymn puts it, and was filled with a new, glorious life that goes totally beyond the life that we understand and live. And he left us the promise that what happened to him would happen to us too...that if we faced our fear, if we accepted change, if we gave up the things that we cling to, that we would receive what God has in store for us.

And so the Gospel, the good news of Jesus, tells us that we never have to be afraid of change. The losses are real, but the promise is real too--that God knows more than we do, and that the more we change--the more we lose--the more God can give us. If we can accept that, we will get more than a seminar or a program...we can allow our whole lives will be changed.