Sermon
Life After Death
The Rev. Jack D. Bryant
Hope Unitarian Church
May 28, 2006
First Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:1-5
1For we know that if the
earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
2For in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our
heavenly dwelling—3if indeed, when we have taken it off* we will not be found naked. 4For while we are still in this
tent, we groan under our burden, because we wish not to be unclothed but to be
further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5He who has prepared us for this
very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
Second Reading: Sightings 5/25/06. Julia Sweeney
Says 'Ha!' -- Matthew Baldwin (Matthew
Baldwin is Assistant Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Mars Hill College
in North Carolina.) (Abridged)
Many people remember Julia Sweeney as a performer on
"Saturday Night Live," where she became famous playing an ambiguously
gendered office dweeb named "Pat."
But, burned out on improv, in 1994 Sweeney quit SNL and moved from New
York back to Los Angeles, with high hopes for the future and for her forthcoming
movie, It's Pat! Unfortunately,
1994 turned out to be, as she later put it, "the year that I became
Job." First, It's Pat!
failed even before it opened. Then her
younger brother was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. . ..
. . .
[S]weeney found a therapeutic outlet in stand-up
comedy. With charm and eloquence, she
told personal stories of suffering, transforming pathos into deep comedy. Then, in early 1995, Sweeney was diagnosed
with cervical cancer, and began chemotherapy and a series of invasive surgeries. Three weeks later, her brother died, but not
before joking that she must have had "cancer envy." He was 31 years old, she was 35.
. . .
Through the worst of times . . . Sweeney, a lifelong
Catholic and regular churchgoer, remained true to her religious roots. In 1997, she told a reporter that she found
comfort in prayer, and as late as 1999 she was still attending Mass every
Sunday -- although she expressed "rage" about aspects of Catholic
dogma encountered in sermons. But then
Sweeney lost her faith. She explains
this transformation in her latest monologue, Letting Go of God. . .
.. With characteristic wit, Sweeney's
monologue plays with the absurdity of religious stories. [Where others find answers in the bible] . .
. Sweeney finds only questions and doubts.
. . .
Furthermore, she finds that the Bible contains no satisfactory response to her personal tragedies. In a manner at once poignant and comical, she recalls her brother's months of "unspeakable suffering," comparing them bitterly to Jesus' relatively quick death and resurrection: "Someone once said: 'Jesus had a really bad weekend for our sins.'" . . . Finally, she accedes to a little voice inside that has been whispering, to her horror, "There is no God." Some believers and scholars might be tempted to dismiss Sweeney as theologically unsophisticated -- and perhaps she is. But it can't be denied that she speaks to her audience. Many people have experienced the absence of God in the face of human suffering, or have felt profoundly alienated from the biblical narratives they grew up with. Her work directly challenges a theological tradition that has apparently failed to develop either a persuasive theodicy, or a sound hermeneutic strategy that really works for today's Bible readers. Will the church and people of faith find a way to respond seriously to the challenges of this comedian?
Death
is a serious business. I believe that’s
why Julia Sweeny has been able to create a successful stand-up comedy routine
out of it. I suspect it isn’t possible
to be genuinely funny about something unless it’s serious and nothing is more
serious than death. That may be why
Woody Allen has visited the subject so frequently. A couple of my favorite
Woody Allenisms on death are, “I am not afraid of death, I
just don't want to be there when it happens” and “There are worse things in
life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?”
Now because I don’t want to be seen as picking on insurance salesman, how about this one. A lawyer named Strange died, and his friend asked the tombstone maker to inscribe on his tombstone, "Here lies Strange, an honest man, and a lawyer." The stone mason said such an inscription would be confusing, for passersby would tend to think that three men were buried under the stone. He suggested an alternative: "Here lies a man who was both honest and a lawyer.” "That way,” he said, “whenever anyone walks by and reads it, they will be certain to say, "That's Strange!"
But as I said, we tell jokes about death because it is serious business. It was serious business for the Apostle Paul. It was important for him to write a letter explaining his confidence in a life after death. And it is serious business that has driven Julia Sweeny to speak as she has about death. It is serious business that has driven some of our wealthy contemporaries to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars building private mausoleums so people will know how important they are - or were. Drive through Memorial Cemetery at 51st and Memorial and you can see some examples firsthand. The practice reminds me of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s observation that religions that say the primary question is “What will happen after I die” are encouraging a posthumous egoism. Expensive private mausoleums suggest those inside are all dressed up with someplace to go - in contrast to the epitaph, on a presumably modest tombstone in Thurmont, Maryland, that reads, “Here lies an atheist. All dressed up and no place to go.”
But the question I’m wrestling with this morning isn’t really about life after death, notwithstanding the title of my sermon. That’s just the example. Personally, I believe there is not a life after death. It just doesn’t make sense to me. But perhaps you believe - and that’s okay. You may be right. I may be wrong. I am more concerned this morning with how it affects us to say there is life after death. My concern is because I think many people have anxiety, even fear about death. For some people it is comforting to think there is something beyond the edge of life. I’ve seen it in the faces of people. It seems to bring a quiet kind of contentment. And that is good - whether I agree or not. But it’s not true for everyone.
It certainly hasn’t been true for Julia Sweeny - and she is just an example of the pain felt by many. For her the promise of life after death has turned into betrayal, a denial of the pain that she feels. A devout Catholic for most of her life she now talks to atheist groups, proclaiming her new found skepticism. But again, that’s not what brings me here this morning, just an example. I believe the conventional answers that have dominated western religious thought for centuries continue to speak to millions in our society in a way that is active, deliberate and intentional. But those millions are now a minority. For many others, I think a substantial majority, the conventional answers are accepted without question as a kind of cultural conditioning. They are the sea in which most people swim without thinking about it. They say they believe, but there is no depth to their belief. Others have looked at the answers, the conventional answers, and said - actively, deliberately and intentionally - that the answers no longer work, that the conventional answers make a mockery of what they see before their eyes and what they feel in their hearts. Where once almost everyone looked down and saw solid ground, there is a sizeable minority that looks and sees nothing. And there is a majority that just doesn’t think about it - unless forced to confront the reality of waking up one morning and discovering they have become Job.
But what’s ironic is that this is not a new phenomenon. Read the book of Job and you will discover that Job rejected the traditional answers of his time. He declared them nonsense. He acquiesced in the end, but many scholars think that is an ending added by later editors who couldn’t bear the thought of a story of doubt being spread in the world. But I think that was the reality then and I know it is the reality now. The old answers don’t work and I think the reason they don’t work is because they deny the reality of our feelings. This is at the bottom of the decline in mainline churches across the country. This is at the bottom of the decline in our own churches across the country, although we are doing better than the mainline churches. We’ve only declined about 35% since 1961 as a percentage of the total U.S. population. So what does this mean? Or should I say, is there life after death? Can there be a vital, living religion that follows the death of the old ones? I say yes.
There will always be those who cling to what was. They will do so because - for whatever reason - the old ways will continue to have meaning in their lives. But a living religion for the future will be one that directly addresses our fears, our concerns, the reality we see before our eyes. It will be one that tells the Julia Sweeny’s of the world that death is real, that her pain and sorrow are real and are not to be dismissed with a cosmic never mind that says this life is meaningless because it is only preparation for another life you can’t see or feel or hear. It will be one that confronts both the majesty and the terror of modern medicine. It will be a religion that confronts the reality of a universe twenty billion light years across instead of one bounded by the horizon and topped by the dome of the sky. It will be a religion that confronts the reality of a world of billions of souls instead of a tribal group trying to make enough babies to fill a single valley. It will be a religion that confronts the growing human capacity to manipulate the biological sciences and the possibility that our technology may lead us to create artificial intelligences. And it will be a religion that continues to speak to the feelings one has when holding a new life for the first time. In short, it will be a religion that addresses reality in all its glory, in all its terror, in all its ordinariness. And it will be a religion that embraces much of the old ways, especially the old stories. Not because some of the stories aren’t just as absurd as Julia Sweeny has come to believe, but because in their absurdity they help us to confront the absurdities of reality, the absurdities of a world in which the good die young, the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer.
It’s possible to set aside such questions, to say our religion is not of this world, but of another. Such a religion says don’t question the hurt and pain of loss, know you will see them again in heaven. Such a religion says don’t question injustice, don’t question wrong doing, don’t question slavery, don’t question abuse. All these wrongs will be addressed in a future life. That is a religion that places death at the center of the universe and has an excuse for every wrong. The religion of the future, a living religion, must call us to challenge injustice whenever and wherever it appears; to be stewards of the earth, not exploiters; and to know that the real purpose of religion is transform lives, not sedate them.
But most of all I think a religion of the future must confront the question of God. There is so much nonsense that has been written about God. It is time to set aside God as the ultimate abusive parent. It is time to ask ourselves what is worthy of the name God. It is time to stop worshipping images of power and instead worship what is worthy. It is time to worship kindness and gratitude, love and justice. But that really isn’t that new an idea. I believe Jesus was trying to do that in his own way. I believe that was behind much of what the Jewish prophets said.
We will not a religion worthy of the future by cutting ourselves off from the past. If we cut ourselves off from the past, if we deny our historical roots, we will condemn ourselves to repeat the mistakes of the past. To do nothing more than to deny the existence of God as an abusive father figure is to be in thrall to that image. A religion that just denies the past is itself a dead religion.
That is why I believe in a living religion. A religion not of a God that controls, but a God that represents what ought to be, a God that represents all that lures us to the good, a God that says the great concern is not death or what may happen afterwards, but what will happen in life - including all its pain and sorrow.
The Apostle Paul told us to tough it out and await a new world. I say let us tough it out that we might transform this world, making this world a better place, making this world a place where people are not consumed with an egoism of what people will think of them after they are dead, but a place when a child is born we think of what can be done for the child, a place where the sorrowful are comforted, the injured healed and justice raised up above all. That will be a religion, a living religion, worthy of the future, a religion that will prove there is life after death.
Amen.