Sermon

Sunday, March 20, 2005

By Rev. Dr. G. Penny Nixon

Right about now, the President is arriving back in Washington. He left his Texas ranch so that he can sign legislation he hopes will be handed to him to restore the feeding tube to a woman named Terri Schiavo. Terri has been in what the doctors have determined as a persistent vegetative state for a number of years now. It seems that her husband and guardian, Michael, wants to have the feeding tube removed because he believes that Terri would want it that way. And it seems that her parents have a very different idea, and have appealed to the government; they think that she would want to live.

I don’t know about you but every time I read about this story, besides all the political implications of our government being involved in something like this, it prompts questions about death and about life. When I talk about it with friends or my partner, immediately it comes up—“Now if that ever happens to me, this is what I want…” Have you had those similar conversations? Conversations about the meaning and quality of life; questions of when is one ready to die?

It’s Palm Sunday—the "triumphal" entry of Jesus on a colt of a donkey. We sing “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of God!” And really this is a ride to death. It’s a ride to Jerusalem, and in some of the Gospels it says, “Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem and went on.” He knew that going to Jerusalem would most likely mean his subsequent death. He’d been kicked out of there before; he knew people were out to get him. And he also knew what kind of death he would die. The Romans were notorious for displaying political dissidents on crosses along the main thoroughfares of the empire. There were many crucifixions in those days, not just one.

Jesus was well aquatinted with the type of death he must die. And often on Palm Sunday, I’ve talked about this entry of Jesus not on a powerful horse but on the colt of a donkey. This Jesus who rejected imperialism and triumphalism, and said, “No, there is another path…” That is the path of humility and peace.

But this Palm Sunday I’m interested in thinking about what actually was going on in the internal landscape of Jesus. He was only 33 years old. What prepared him to be ready for death? How did he get there? You might imagine there were those saying to him, “Are you crazy? You’re on the path to execution. Don’t do it! You’re young; you have a lot more years to live and to teach. What are you doing?” And others, who said, “You must do this. You must fulfill your call, your mission. Go back to the heart of where it’s all happening.”

Apparently somehow Jesus was ready for this. You know, Terri Schiavo is incapable of indicating her own readiness; other people seem to be gauging that for her. In fact, she has no capacity to even participate in her own dying. But this young prophet was somehow ready to step across the threshold from life into death.

A number of months ago I bought a CD called “Graceful Passages”. It’s a CD particularly made for people on the journey to death; played in many hospices around the country, given by friends to people who are in the last stages of a terminal illness. I have given it to members of this congregation as they made their last journey. It’s a CD full of meditations from all traditions. As I was listening to it myself—because I thought actually this was more about life, living, being, even than death—I heard the Dean of Grace Cathedral Alan Jones. His voice came on, and the first time I heard it I kept hearing these first words that he said, “In my tradition we try to practice dying daily so that we might be more fully alive. What I understand in my prayer life is to place myself on the threshold of death, to participate in my own dying so that each day and each moment can be a gift.”

And I started to think about what does it mean to “die daily” as part of a spiritual practice? I knew about this practice, this concept for many years, but this was not a place for me to preach about dying daily; we were face to face with death week after week for so many years. We already knew that. But I think somehow in the midst of that dying daily that was happening to us, there was a quality of life that had a verve and vibration about it that was quite something. We lived fully because death was all around us. And I think at some level—while I wouldn’t want to revisit that—we have forgotten that.

So I began to think about “what does it mean to die daily?” And I knew that when Palm Sunday came along, I wanted to talk about it. Dying daily. But to make sure I was grounded in what I was going to say, this week I went to visit somebody in this congregation who is making the last leg of their journey. To make sure that nothing I would say would be glib, or a platitude or cliché about death (like “well, none of us know how many days we have on this earth.” You don’t say that to somebody who is counting down) I wanted to be able to talk about it with somebody I knew was staring death right in the face. And we had a beautiful conversation.

And she said, “I just don’t know if I’m done.” And I asked, “Well, is that 'you don’t know if you’re done' or is it that 'you’re afraid?'” And with that honesty that often surrounds one’s last days she said, “I really don’t know.” And we began to talk about dying daily. And I invited her each day to die daily so that she might live fully, even as her body wasted away. And to let go each day because then at that final day as you practice letting go you have more ease and grace and peace.

In my meditation this week, I’ve been thinking, “What does it mean to participate in my own dying?” We mistakenly believe that if we accept our own death we begin to die, but actually the contrary is true. If we face or accept that we are already dying, we are set free to live fully. The Hindu scriptures, the Bhagavad Gita, says this, “Of all the world’s wonders, what is the most wonderful?” And the simple answer comes back—"That no man, though he sees others dying all around him, believes that he himself will die. That no woman, though she sees others dying all around her, believes that she herself will die."

There’s a wonderful Buddhist story about at a woman who lost a child, and she brings this child in her arms to the Buddha. And she begins to ask him all these questions; she wants his help. And the Buddha says to her, “Bring me back a mustard seed from a house that has not experienced death, and we will have a long conversation” And so she frantically begins to run from house to house through the village, knocking on every door. And at every door that’s opened she asks, “Have you experienced death in this family, in this home?” And exhausted at the end of the day she comes back to the Buddha open-handed and empty handed because every household had experienced one death or another. And she began to learn the nature of the impermanence of life, and began to let go so that she could fully live.

Knowing we will die, how is it that we shall live? Perhaps some of you read the Mary Oliver poem in the reflection this week, which ends with “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” Isn’t that beautiful? What will you do with your one wild and precious life? For me, dying daily means to step onto the threshold and to look at my own mortality. Not in a morbid way, but in a way that is full of life. For when I participate in that I begin to see that each day is a tremendous gift to be lived. For me it means letting go of some of those ways that I do not want to live in this world. And perhaps I lived that way the day before, and I die to it the next morning. For me it means leaving behind some of my learned behavior from my family. I’m sure none of you have this. [Laughter]

Some of us are at the age where we find ourselves doing something and we think, “That was just like my mother.” And for some of us, that’s a wonderful thing. [Laughter continues] And then there are the rest of us in the world. [More laughter] Mary Oliver writes about burying her parents on the country farm. And she says, “My mother was the blue wisteria. My mother was the mossy stream out behind the house. My mother, alas alas, did not always love her life. Heavier than iron it was, as she carried it in her arms from room to room. Oh, unforgettable! I bury her in a box in the earth and turn away. My father was a demon of frustrated dreams, was a breaker of trust, was a poor thin boy with bad luck. He followed God, there being no one else he could talk to; he swaggered before God, there being no one else who would listen. I mention them now; I will not mention them again. It is not for lack of love nor lack of sorrow, but the iron thing they carried I will not carry. I give them one, two, three, four…a kiss of courtesy, of sweet thanks, of anger, of good luck in the earth. May they sleep well, may they soften. But I will not give them a kiss of complicity; I will not give them responsibility for my life.”

For me, dying daily is putting down that iron that I will not carry, that I might be free to live fully the gift that is only today. For me standing on the threshold of death means that, like the Navaho, the sun comes up for one day and I must not waste its precious light on that day.

You know when I was visiting this person this week…she lives very close to the ocean. In fact as we sat there as we talked together, in the lulls of our silence—a simple presence with each other, that presence that has no words because sometimes there’s not a lot to say—I could hear the waves lapping up against the retaining wall near her home. It was like a siren call. In my meditation as I would picture myself and place myself on the threshold of my own death, I could hear that ocean again. Releasing and letting go so that I might live fully. Have you ever had a close encounter with death? Have you ever had something happen where you thought—“Ten seconds earlier, and I wouldn’t be here”? Whether it was a fast car as you were about to step off the sidewalk…whether it was about a near miss…we look back on those times and think “I am alive!” The gratefulness of life. Or when we lose someone too young, we think about our own mortality, grateful for life.

The great gift of prayer, I believe, is the gift not only of asking for things, not only of communication, but sometimes we forget about prayer as surrender. Those little deaths that we need to die so that we might live. When Muslims prayer together, if you’ve ever seen them in a mosque, the men stand with their feet lined up side by side and shoulder to shoulder. And they wait until they are in complete alignment with each other, because they place themselves in this great wave of prayer that has gone before them. In that wave of prayer they bow down and they prostrate themselves in complete and total immersion of surrender to God. Knowing that this prayer moves behind them and that as they rise, this prayer will go on.

When we have the courage to die daily, to be well aquatinted with our own mortality and our own life, then we do see our own numbered days. Not in some dramatic way—“This may be the only day I have so let me live it fully.” But in perhaps the unique and subtle way that simply says, “This day is a gift. And once again as I breathe in, I’ve been given the gift of life. And I will cherish it, in all its beauty.

And Jesus turned his face towards Jerusalem. He was ready. Because he practiced letting go. Letting go. And letting go. And so today I invite you, for just a moment, to close your eyes as I end with this meditation that has touched me. I simply give it as a gift to you. Let this be your prayer.

"In my tradition we try to practice dying every day so that we may be fully alive. What I understand of my prayer life is to place myself on the thresh-hold of death, to participate in my dying, so that I may live each day and each moment as a gift. What I cultivate is a grateful heart; each moment then becomes a new thing. My gratitude comes from the sheer gift of life itself.

Who you are cannot be contained in what is happening to you just now.
You are part of a love story. You are desired and longed for.
There are thousands of witnesses before you who would claim that you are held in the arms of love.

And I’d like to leave you with the prayer that one
of the Franciscans left with me-

O my God, you are here. O my God, I am here.
O my God, we are here.
And always, always you love us. Always, always you love us.
May the angels of God watch over you;
May Mary and all the Saints pray for you,
and all those whose lives you touch,
Now and forevermore, amen."