April 1, 2018 (Easter) – “30 Days to Live: Living With Purpose” by Rev. Cody Sandahl
Lay Reader = Mark 16:1-8
When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?”4When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 5As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 6But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 7But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” 8So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
Introduction
Well just this last week, I found out some good news and some bad news. The bad news is I found out the exact day I will die. It’s true. The good news is that I have until Sunday, November 19, 2056. Now I have the confidence to go skydiving and run with the bulls in Pamplona. At least I know I won’t die.
How do I know that? The website deathclock.com, of course! You can go put in your birthdate, your height, your weight, and then find out how actuarial tables project your lifespan. Guaranteed to be accurate, right?
If you absolutely KNEW you wouldn’t die for another thirty years, would it change how you live? Would it open up any new doors for you?
Well what if that website had said April 30, 2018? What if you only had thirty DAYS? How would you live?
Today and for the next two weeks we are going to look at people’s near-death experiences and how it changed how they lived. That’s the closest we can come for now to Jesus’ resurrection on Easter two thousand years ago.
But I want to start us off by looking at how Jesus lived…KNOWING when and how he would die. Jesus told his disciples many times that he would be arrested, he would be killed, and he would rise again. They didn’t really understand it at the time, but here’s one of the times he told them that Good Friday and Easter were coming.
Matthew 20:17-19, 25-28
17While Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside by themselves, and said to them on the way, 18“See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; 19then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified; and on the third day he will be raised.”
25But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 26It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, 27and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave;28just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
Near Death Experience
Amanda Cable was asked by her now teenage daughter, “Mom, do you remember my very first day at school?” Amanda replied, “I’ll never forget it, Ruby. You started school on Thursday, September 5, 2003 – and it was the day I died.”
On her daughter Ruby’s first day of school, Amanda was in the hospital with a surprise sickness and severe internal bleeding. She woke briefly in the hospital at 3:30am that day as a doctor slapped her in the face, screaming, “Wake up! Stay with me!” Through her haze she noticed the alarms ringing and the doctors cursing. And after a few moments she realized the alarms were ringing and the doctors were cursing because she was dying. The last thing she remembered was thinking, “By the time my family wakes up this morning, I’ll be gone.”
But instead of pain, she felt light and clear-headed. She felt no fear. With a warm acceptance, she knew it was time to join her loved ones who were already on the other side. But then she noticed someone standing a few feet away from her. But instead of a long-dead relative, it was her daughter Ruby. Wearing her new school uniform and sporting a new hair-do with her hair tied in bunches – a look Ruby had never had before.
Ruby took her mother’s hand and led her quickly down a white tunnel, imploring her mom, “Quick Mummy.” Then they came to a gate. Amanda felt an urge to walk back down the tunnel to find her beloved grandmother and other dearly-departed relatives. But little Ruby shouted, “Mummy, step through the gate NOW!” Amanda rushed through, and as Ruby slammed the gate shut, Amanda awoke to the jolt of the defibrillator bringing her back to life.
Her husband Ray arrived a few hours later unaware of what had happened. He wanted to cheer her up by bringing a picture of their daughter Ruby heading off to school for the first time. In the picture, Ruby was wearing her new school uniform, and she was sporting a new hair-do with her hair tied in bunches – the same one from Amanda’s near-death experience.
And she reports that life has never been the same. She said, “Ironically, my ‘death’ was to prove the turning point in my whole life…I stopped seeing the people I didn’t truly love — and told the ones I did just how much they meant to me…Ray and I had been married for nine years by then, and my experience reminded me that there was nobody else on Earth I wanted to be with. We’d always been devoted to each other but now we both realized just how lost we would be without each other…I will never be able to understand or explain what happened to me on that fateful day nine years ago. But I no longer harbor a fear about death. And at the same time, I have stopped being scared of life. I’ve never looked back since.”
They say that it’s hard to know what you have until you lose it. Amanda almost lost everything, and it put everything else into perspective. Life was never the same again.
That was the same kind of impact Easter had – first on the women at the tomb, then the disciples, and across two thousand years to us as well. If Easter happened, life can never be the same again.
Most of you know I’m a big space nerd, and it’s often said that the discovery that we’re not alone in the universe would be the greatest discovery in history. But I beg to differ. Because that wouldn’t affect everyone. But everyone dies. If we KNEW that there was life after death, that would be the biggest discovery in history. And that discovery took place on Easter in Jerusalem almost two thousand years ago. If Jesus can rise from the DEAD – not rise from the “mostly dead” if you’re a Princess Bride fan – rise from the DEAD…then that means there’s life after death. That means there’s a God with power over death. That should change our lives forever.
A miracle happened on that first Easter morning. Either the Son of God arose from the dead…or eleven Jewish men concocted a lie they were willing to die for, and that lie eventually convinced a third of the planet of its truth. Which miracle do you believe happened on that first Easter morning?
Getting ready for this series I have read a ton of near death experience stories and a lot of the research that scientists have done investigating them. But one near-constant is that those who experience something like Amanda did as her heart failed – they’re never the same. Some are really intentional like Amanda, but almost all of them see their lives turn in radically new directions. Because once you’re CONVINCED that there’s life after death, everything changes. How you spend your time takes on a different dimension.
Are we living like that? Are we CONVINCED that there’s life after death, as Jesus promised and proved by rising from the dead? Are we LIVING as if we have an eternal perspective? What matters most in your life? If you were fading fast on an operating table, who would you miss most? What would you wish you had done or said?
And what’s stopping you from doing that this week?
Jesus’ Most Important Things
As Jesus approached his own death, he told his disciples what he wanted them to focus on. In our text today, he told them, “whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man [that’s Jesus] came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
It’s always struck me as a bit funny when groups decide they’ve calculated the exact date for the end of the world. And invariably what happens a couple months out is that the ardent followers start selling their houses, liquidating their stocks, and “let’s head to Vegas, baby!” Now, it’s maybe funny to think about what they’re going to do the day after the end of the world since it didn’t happen. But let’s imagine that they were right. Let’s imagine that they had the day figured out. Does “let’s head to Vegas, baby” sound like how Jesus told his disciples to spend their final days?
No! If we did have thirty days to live, Jesus says, “use your final days as I used mine.” He wasn’t in Vegas. He wasn’t lavishing gifts on himself. He wasn’t even hermited away from everyone. He was serving. He was helping others. He was training his followers. He was healing. He did what was important!
What’s stopping us from living like that this week?
Women on a Mission
In the first text we read today, the empty tomb text, the women are doing something special. The text says they brought spices to anoint Jesus’ body. Now, that was a somewhat common but not a universal practice. There was no requirement to put spices on a body. It was done to mark that someone was very special to you. So they wanted to come to the tomb as a kind of last act of devotion to Jesus – even in death, that’s how special he was to them.
Normally this would be done before burial, but Jesus died on Friday just before the Sabbath began. There was just enough time to rush him to the tomb, but not enough time to anoint him because there’s no work on the Sabbath, right?
And such was their devotion that they wanted to do this even though he was already sealed in the tomb – by a rock so large the three of them couldn’t roll it away. They were just doing what they could, and they showed up without a plan. But they had a mission to perform, even if they didn’t know how they would accomplish it.
What’s important enough in your life that you’d be willing to just show up without a plan like that? Rewind to Amanda’s near-death experience. What would you wish you had said or done if you were slipping away in the operating room? And what’s stopping you from doing or saying that this week – even if you don’t have a plan for how it’ll turn out? What would Jesus have you say or do? What’s actually important?
1000 Years
If you’ve ever read the Old Testament – the first big section of the Bible – you might have noticed that the early folks lived a bit longer than us. Noah was the last of the super-duper-centenarians when he died at 950. Methuselah won the prize at 969 years.
So in high school I came up with a half-joking theory that we are all given 1000 years to live. And every time we do something stupid or stress out it takes a little time off the clock. So I used to joke whenever I was eating a cinnamon roll – “Ahh, that was worth the three years off my lifespan.” And while it was mostly a joke, the basic concept was that life was about NOT messing up. That’s the basic premise of most religions. Don’t mess up or you’ll be punished.
But our faith is different.
In our faith, we worship a God who said on the cross, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” We worship a God who went out of his way to restore the faith of Peter, who denied him three times. We worship a God who KNOWS we’re going to mess up, and decided to fix the problem instead of relying on us to be perfect.
That’s the Good News of Easter! Our faith isn’t about NOT messing up – our faith is about the God who saw our bazillions of mistakes and denials and refusals and said, “I love you anyway.” How can we live differently thanks to that Good News?
If deathclock.com gave you thirty days to live, what would God have you do? What would God have you say? What’s stopping you from doing that this week anyway?
Remember what Amanda Cable said about her near death experience: “I no longer harbor a fear about death. And at the same time, I have stopped being scared of life. I’ve never looked back since.”
May that be true of us as well thanks to the Good News of Easter.
Sisters and Brothers, He is risen. He is risen indeed.