Lester Start’s Works

1ATHENS AND JERUSALEM

04/27/80

L. J. START

First Baptist Kalamazoo

Picture Paul preaching in Athens! To be sure, Paul grew up in Tarsus, a Greek city. He knew Greek and Greek culture, but the preaching of a crucified God who is raised from the dead sounded to men of reason like rank nonsense. As Paul says later to the Corinthians, the preaching of Christ crucified is to the Greeks utter foolishness.

Now it was not the case that his audience was uninterested. The Athenians and the strangers in their gates liked nothing better than to discuss new ideas, even tales about strange gods. After all, this was the Oxford and Cambridge, the Harvard and Yale and Princeton, of the ancient world, where all the good graduate schools were located — Plato’s Academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum where science flourished, the Garden of Epicurus, and the Painted Porch of the Stoics. The Stoics and Epicureans are mentioned in particular as wanting to try to understand, find the reasoning behind Paul’s new ideas.

And Paul’s preaching seemed to be as persuasive as usual. He begins on an inspired note by calling attention to the altar dedicated to the Unknown God. And he says, “What you worship but do not know I now proclaim to you.” A good topical way to begin a sermon, I should think.

Incidentally, the translation is faulty here. Paul was smart enough not to antagonize a group of intellectuals by calling them too superstitious or even very religious. He says, “I observe that in all things pertaining to religion you are uncommonly careful or scrupulous.” And he does not say, “Whom ye ignorantly worship I now proclaim.” The Greeks had a sense of power and order that transcended their popular gods. The logos, the divine reason, was such a power. But to say, as John did, and as Paul preached, that this was made flesh in Jesus Christ, and was then crucified and resurrected, was to stretch the bounds of philosophical reason too far. No rational person could believe that! No reasonable grounds could be presented for such a doctrine as that! And so although a certain few believed, it is said, Paul clearly failed in establishing a church in Athens and we read, “After these things Paul departed from Athens and came to Corinth.” Athens could not believe in the drama of redemption that came out of Jerusalem.

So began a conflict between the ideals of two cities, Athens and Jerusalem, and the intellectual and religious world of Greece and Rome seethed with the conflicts between Christianity and paganism, Christianity and philosophy, Christianity and rival religions, until finally when Christianity had been established, the civil authorities in effect ordered the leaders of the new faith to get their act together, agree on what they believed, by convening a council at Nicea, the result of which was the Nicene creed.

Beneath the struggle lay the conflict between religious faith and philosophical reason, between the promise of liberation and redemption through faith in God’s saving grace in Christ, and the dream of mastering the world through reason and understanding. Some wanted to understand faith as a kind of inferior reason or understanding — some wanted to assert faith and moral discipline as opposed to reason. And some hoped for some kind of reconciliation between faith and reason.

It is the early theologian Tertullian who best reflects the opposition party — opposing faith to reason. It is he that asked the question, “What has Jerusalem to do with Athens?” And in his brilliant, legal mind he made a sharp distinction between faith and reason, arguing that the mystery of the Incarnation is to believe because it seemed impossible, the miracle of the Resurrection because it seemed absurd. There is a fundamental point at issue here: if the mysteries of the faith can be grasped by the understanding, what merit is there in faith? Reason may help us to understand, but faith, like love, is something different from understanding. It is a commitment, an act of will, a decisive act, and has little or nothing to do with reason. But it reaches true reality. The lover like the believer is moved by something different from reason. And the heart has its reasons, as Pascal said, that reason cannot know. And clings to its truth.

So what has Jerusalem to do with Athens? Or, for that matter, Athens to do with Jerusalem? The question is still with us. To many who are oriented toward secular knowledge, the world of religion seems foreign, incomprehensible, unnecessary. To some committed toward Biblical faith, the whole world of modern philosophy and science seems a threat. Another group, oriented toward secular learning, tries to understand religion in psychological, philosophical, sociological terms. Others try to find in the Bible justification for theories opposed to scientific views which seem to run counter to Biblical teaching — evolution, for example. And perhaps the vast majority feels caught in a world that puts on one kind of face on Sunday and a different one the rest of the week. And these groups are all reflected in the church.

The problem, of course, is that we inherit two cultures, two worlds, two cities, Jerusalem and Athens, and we do not always know how to put them together. What has Jerusalem to do with Athens? For example, Athens taught how wisdom in conduct could lead to happiness. Jerusalem’s teaching is to follow righteousness, the will of God. As a result, we don’t know whether we should be good or try to be happy. It is not immediately convincing that we become happy by being good. What has Jerusalem to do with Athens? A Greek dogma is that all men seek good. It is said the Greeks had a word for everything. But they did not have a word for sin. The New Testament word was borrowed from sports, archery — it means to miss the bull’s eye, the target. It is an error in judgment rather than an evil act of will. There seem to be two words, two cities, two schemes of salvation, one of reason and one of faith. Two truths — the light of reason and the light of faith. And we need both.

Surely the spirit of Greek science has inspired through history man’s progressive conquest of nature. Knowledge about nature’s laws has given man freedom; technology has freed him from back-breaking toil. Medical knowledge has freed man from old plagues and diseases — of course, it is to face the challenge of new disorders peculiar to modern civilization. Man through knowledge has freed himself from old terrors and superstitions — yet he must still face a new kind of atomic terror by night and the fallout which wasteth at noon-day.

Our conquest of nature is not complete; and it hasn’t helped us to conquer human nature. We are still beset by fears, doubts, divisions — alienation, loneliness, and despair because of man’s inhumanity to man. This is why it is so hard to try to relate Jerusalem and Athens — to identify the redemptive truth of Christ with knowledge of the world of nature. It does not do the job. Jesus was not a spokesman for the new science or a public relations man pushing progressive social reforms in the light of new knowledge. Unlocking the secrets of nature reveals power, but sheer power without direction or purpose. And we still don’t know whether by unlocking the secrets of the atom we have begun a great new era of peace and plenty or prepared the way for an apocalyptic holocaust. Power without reconciling purpose is destructive — power without ideals and vision is blind. Of itself, it cannot save man. The truth of faith is needed, too.

This is what we inherit from the Bible. It is the teaching that the world is not so much a system of nature to be understood, as a history of events that are to be interpreted as the purposes of God. Man’s salvation lies not in understanding the laws of nature but in following the purposes of God by obedience to His commandments. This is the truth of Biblical faith — God is in the world, in history, redeeming man. This is the theme that develops from the Exodus through the prophets and culminates in the teaching of God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.

There are two kinds of truth suggested by Athens and Jerusalem, a Greek one and a Biblical one — and we cannot ignore either. Their very words for truth suggest a compressed philosophy we might well examine. The Greek word for truth is that which is unhidden — the clear, the evident, that which can be seen as real being. For the Hebrew truth is that which is faithful, certain, or sure, that which can be relied upon, as God. For the Greek, truth was a matter of seeing the true order of being — a theoria. The sun was the symbol of the light of truth. For the Bible, truth is a matter of hearing the commandments of God, to discover His purposes — a hearing and faithful obedience. The still small voice within was the symbol of truth. The Greek truth is spatially oriented — the true is that which eternally is, the abiding real. For the Bible, truth is temporally oriented — the true is the revealed pattern of the purposes of God in history. The Greek mind turns to objects; the Biblical to events. The Greek view is static; the Biblical dynamic. The Greek view thinks in terms of world cycles; the Biblical view thinks in terms of progress toward the Kingdom of God.

It is the distinction between seeing and hearing that gives us the clue to the distinction between reason and faith. For the Greek, scientific truth consists in seeing an order of nature, understanding its operations, so that we may have the power of dominion. Biblical faith consists in hearing the word of God, believing in God’s presence, obeying His commandments of righteousness, and singlemindedly devoting oneself to His purposes.

It is precisely this Biblical faith or truth which corrects the one-sidedness of Greek reason. And in a general sense if we are to appreciate anything truly we must do more than see it — we must be sensitive to it, respond to it, listen to it, hear it. Buber used to say, “Speak to me so that I can really see you.” And religious truth involves that same attentive responsiveness.

Faith, then, is not a kind of seeing darkly a truth which we hope to see more clearly by a higher theoria or knowledge. Faith is hearing and responding to the word of the Lord, trusting in His purposes, being faithful to His commandments, standing firmly by His spirit of righteousness. It is precisely this kind of faith, this commitment to God’s purposes as revealed in history, that we mean when we speak of faith in the love of Christ. Those who have faith in Christ do not have a higher knowledge — in the Greek sense.

What has Jerusalem to do with Athens? We need both Athens and Jerusalem. We need to see the rational structure of our world in the spirit of Athens, Greek Science. But we need to hear the will of God, believe in the purposes of God for our lives. This is the way to combine faith and reason. We cannot substitute a scientific study of religion for the practice of faith. Nor can we simply voice our faith without seeing how it fits into the modern structure of our world. Our church needs to represent more than good lectures on citizenship and culture. And it must do more than blindly repeat, without a prophetic preaching of its modern relevance, the propositions of the Biblical faith. The Quakers tell the story of a friend who was so filled with the spirit of faith, so sure that faith in his heart had nothing to do with his head, that in meeting he stood up and thanked God for his simple faith, his stout belief, his uncomplicated faith, his refusal to doubt, his freedom from the need to think. When in his enthusiasm he finally said, “I thank God for my ignorance”, an elder gently spoke from the facing bench, “Sit thee down, Friend. Thee has much to be thankful for.”

We need faith and reason. We need to hear and also to see. In this way the practice of religion becomes a continuing revelation. This is the tradition of liberal religion.

Scripture: Isaiah 40: 1-11

Acts 17:16-30

1JOY IN RELIGION

04/13/80

L. J. START

First Baptist Kalamazoo

Let us think on the very beginning of our Biblical faith as represented in the Passover celebration, celebrated in that first Easter week. The Jewish Passover is a celebration of liberation, the deliverance of the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt, deliverance by God under the leadership of Moses, a deliverance that led to liberation from the perils of the wilderness to settlement in the promised land flowing with milk and honey. Is not this an occasion for joy? In the tradition of the Passover, religion is a declaration of, a celebration of freedom. And surely freedom from slavery should be celebrated with joy. And so in the ritual of the home celebration of the Seder, the feast, foods symbolic of this great event are eaten and the story is retold. For example, it is asked, “Why is it, on other nights we eat leavened bread, but tonight we eat matzoh, unleavened bread?” And the father responds with the explanation that in the haste of the Exodus, there was no time to prepare leavened bread. Similarly, the symbolic bitter herbs recall the bitterness of the wilderness experience. But through all the celebration it is the quiet but intense joy in the deliverance by God of his people Israel, and the promise of His continued guidance through the covenant God made with His people through Moses. Surely this is an occasion for joy.

And the Christian builds on this old covenant God made with His people. And he shares in the joy of this relationship, a joy expressed in such classic beauty in the tradition we cherish together of the Psalms of David. Hear the spirit of joy in these psalms! “Make a joyful noise to God, all ye lands. Make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation, a joyful noise to Him with psalms. Let the hills be joyful together. In Thy presence is fullness of joy — because of the joy of Thy salvation. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. And joy cometh in the morning.” All nature seems to share in the joy of creative living: “This is my Father’s world and to my listening ears all nature sings and around me rings the music of the spheres.”

But the Christina has a new covenant with God — not through Moses, but through Christ. As Paul pointed out, Moses gave us the law so that people knew what was right and wrong. But increasingly people displayed an inability to follow the laws of righteousness, so that in effect the law simply convicted men of sin. As Paul put it, “The good that I would do I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. I delight in the law of God after the inward man. But I see another law in my bodily members fighting against the law that my reason approves, and making me a prisoner under the law that is in my members, the law of sin. The will to do good is there, the deed is not. Miserable creature that I am, who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? — this body doomed to death.”

Note the theme of deliverance. And it is Christ who delivers us, says Paul, liberates us from the power of sin, by taking on Himself the burden of our sins, and sharing with us the liberating power of God. It is the confidence, the joy in this deliverance that enabled Paul to spread the new spirit of liberation in a world that seemed defeated by the powers of evil. Paul was preaching liberation from the power of sin, the evils of existence, while the Epicurean religious philosophy was preaching retreat, withdrawal from the problems, pains and troubles of the world. Paul was preaching liberation, deliverance, and joy while the Stoic religious philosophy was teaching the ethical nobility of still following duty while one endured the sufferings of the evils of this world, with Stoic endurance. Paul was preaching liberation, deliverance, and joy while neo-Platonic Gnostic religion taught the mystical wonder of a spiritual reality and a God unsullied, far removed from this ugly scene of human life. Paul was preaching deliverance, liberation while a desperate Rome was attempting to turn back the clock to a happier, stronger, freer age by measures of terror and repression. No wonder the people heard the good news of liberation with joy!

And this is still the experience of religion. When one’s life is touched by God, a new spirit is born; the light of Christ dispels the darkness of sin. The power of God’s liberation frees us from bondage to fear, bondage to a sense of inadequacy, to a sense of worthlessness, of bondage to dependencies of the many unworthy kinds that we label bondage to sin. And what a joy it is to be liberated, released from bondage of any kind, from the bondage of ignorance that makes us live in fear to the bondage of a compulsive behavior that makes us want to destroy ourselves or those we love. No one enjoys such slavish existence. No one enjoys drug dependency. No one want to be an alcoholic — an alcoholic gets to hate the very taste of alcohol. We might wonder at the enduring effect, but we should certainly be able to understand the euphoric sense of joy of the reformed addict turned Charismatic Christian who proclaims he is high on, turned on to Christ. Freedom, liberation, deliverance is a wonderful thing — a joyous experience. And this is what Christian salvation promises.

But deliverance has a dual direction. It is liberation from a lower life of bondage; it is also liberation for a higher life of creative and constructive freedom. And without this sense of a forward-looking goal of commitment, the sense of liberation becomes at best the indulgence of a shallow sentimental feeling — and at worst, a smug and narrow sense of religiosity, that through its own self-satisfaction and judgment of others becomes the occasion of stumbling and sin. This is why the liberally oriented Christian may question the experience of those born-again Christians who never tire of telling how wonderful they feel in being saved. They’re rarely as clear about what they are saved for. On the other hand, the vision of the kingdom of God on earth, which the liberal cherishes, the promise of a world in which wrongs are righted, specific ones, where as Micah said, “They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid”, such a vision of a future liberation cannot be actualized with the experience of God’s liberating power here and now — in the joy of religion. The two aspects of deliverance go together: deliverance from bondage and deliverance for creative activity toward the building of the promised land.

It is this spirit which is captured so beautifully by Isaiah in that magnificent sixty-first chapter read in the scripture lesson. Note how it begins — how it must begin — if there be deliverance. “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because He has anointed me, to bring good news to the humble, bind up the broken hearted, proclaim liberty to the captives, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord; to comfort all that mourn; to give them garlands instead of ashes, oil of joy in place of mourner’s tears. Ancient ruins shall be rebuilt, ruined cities restored.” And so on. What a magnificent program is set down for the exercise of our creative freedom! But we need the spirit of God upon us to liberate us from bondage, and for creative and joyous activity in building the promised land, the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

The promise of this spirit is made actual in the good news of the gospel. John points to immediate sorrows, struggles — but the world shall rejoice — and the sorrow be turned to joy. Liberation here is likened to a woman’s labor in child-birth: when she is delivered, there is joy in the birth of a new creature. “So it is with you,” says Jesus. “Now you are sad at heart, but I shall see you again, and then you will be joyful, and no one can rob you of your joy.” No one can take away the joy of the sense of the creative love of God in Christ. It is this which saves us from the troubles we find in the world; it is this which saves us for the vision of peace of God. “Be of good cheer,” says Jesus. “I have overcome the world.” Rejoice, says our faith, for the love of God is at work in our lives. You must be born again.

Is not this indeed joy, the joy of creative activity? See the wonder and joy of children’s activity. It is joy to develop one’s God-given talents, to develop our potentiality into actual activity. It is joy to be creative, to achieve. How important it is to like one’s job if one is to be happy in one’s achievement. How much more important it is to like, nay rather to love, the vision we have of the values we want to achieve in life if we are to be happy. And this positive goal-setting pattern of creative love is the vision of the power of God liberating us to serve and to achieve the highest we know. To live creatively is to live joyously, and this is the spirit of joy in religion. To sense the spirit of God, the love of God in Christ, is to experience the joy in religion. The real response God wants from His love is not the stern sense of duty, but Jesus’ ethics of love. So argued Hegel against Kant. For love is the desire to do what duty demands and love reconciles the conflict between desire and duty. Thus duty is transformed in love.

Joy, you see, is the experience of love. Joy is love and love is joy. And we know when we are really caught up in God’s love what creative, joyful activity is. We sense it in the work of the church when it is working well in the spirit of Christ. When we have a sense of doing God’s will, we have an energizing, not an enervating, sense of life — a zest for living — and this is the power of the Spirit — the love of God. To sense it, to live it, is joy. May each of us find that joy.

1THE EASTER HOPE AND THE BELIEF IN MORTALITY

04/06/80

L. J.Start

First Baptist Kalamazoo

Imagine that first Easter morning the Scriptures describe! Imagine the astonishment, wonder, and joy as the word spread! He is risen! Our Lord is risen indeed! He is not dead! He has been seen again! The tomb is empty! He is with us — alive forever!

And after nineteen and a half centuries, for the Christian the wonder is still there, the excitement, the promise and hope of God’s victory over sin and death, a victory in which we share. Easter morn is indeed a time for rejoicing. It means the resurrection of the springtime, the promise of new life. It is reflected in the burgeoning buds of the forsythia which graces our chancel, and the beautiful lilies look like trumpets spreading the good news in the scented air. And on such a glorious day as this, we can appreciate Browning’s lines: “The year’s at the spring, and day’s at the morn, morning’s at seven, the hill-side’s dew-pearled, the lark’s on the wing, the snail’s on the thorn. God’s in His heaven. All’s right with the world.”

And the wonder, the miracle, of Easter is that earth’s darkest day, Good Friday, and earth’s brightest day, Easter, are just one day apart. However we understand the Easter story in detail, we see that something happened, something happened to change the disciples from a defeated, despairing, dejected group of mourners on that dark Friday, whose candidate for the Messiah had been ignominiously hanged on the cross, into a stout band of fearless, forceful missionaries convinced by Easter that their Lord was alive and at hand. And for the Christian whose celebration of Lent and Holy Week culminates in Easter, there is a rebirth, a renewal of a sense of God’s creative love poured out to redeem man, saving him from sin and for that life abundant which we can share in Christ. As the darkness of Friday turned to the dawning of Easter, as the death of winter changes to the life of spring, as the stone is rolled away from the tomb, we see the Easter hope bright and clear — as Whittier expressed it — “that life is ever lord of death, and love can never lose its own”.

This is the Easter hope — this belief in immortality. Then why is the sermon title “Belief in Mortality”? This could be an error — what I like to call a typical graphical error (we’re capable of them). But the title is as I intended it. And I propose to point up the Easter message by contrasting it with a rival philosophy of salvation or religion which is committed to the doctrine that the soul is mortal. This is to better understand what is involved. And to discuss the doctrine of the mortality of the soul is to face the criticism of those who feel that in an age of science we can no longer believe in immortality — that it is in effect a dream held by those afraid to die, afraid to face death.

About half a century before Christ, the Roman poet Lucretius wrote an important book called De Rerum Natura — On The Nature of Things. In it he describes and defends the views of an earlier philosopher, Epicurus, who founded the philosophy of Epicureanism. This philosophy adopted the atomic theory and taught that everything, including the mind and vital spirit of man, was made up of configurations of material atoms; that when you died, the particular arrangement of atoms that identified you is destroyed; that when you’re dead, you’re dead; and that the whole purpose of life was to try intelligently to maximize pleasure by seeking freedom from pain in the body and freedom from trouble in the soul. Their rational materialism enabled them to reject all belief in an afterlife, all fears about the future, and thus contributed to their goal of peace of mind, and freedom from trouble in the soul.

It is clear that Lucretius saw Epicurus as a kind of savior and adopted the philosophy as a kind of religious way of life. This philosophy was a way of life for many Romans in the time of Jesus. Lucretius writes, “When human life lay groveling in men’s sight, crushed to earth by the dead weight of superstition, a man of Greece was first to raise mortal eyes in defiance, first to stand erect and brave the challenge. Fables of the gods did not crush him. He longed to loose the locks of nature. He ventured far out beyond the flaming ramparts of the world and voyaged in mind throughout infinity. Returning victorious he proclaimed what can be and what cannot, and by his triumph we are lifted level with the skies.” The revelation of Epicurus is that all events have mechanical causes so man can be freed from fears about the actions of the gods and saved from fears of death.

Lucretius argues stoutly for the mortality of the soul — argument is piled upon argument — there are twenty-one proofs in all. One might think one solid argument would suffice for a rational scientific point of view, but he wants to be sure everyone is convinced. His conclusion is that death is nothing to us, and no concern of ours. When we are, death is not; when death is, we are not. Even if the matter that composes us should be reassembled some time after our death, and the light of life given anew, this would be of no concern of ours once the chain of identity is snapped. So just as the sufferings of early ages do not touch us today, we will have no part in the sufferings of the future after our death. We shall be nothing and nothing can happen to us.

This doctrine of mortality, let me stress, is presented as a saving gospel. Believing this sets your mind at rest, gives you peace of mind. Lucretius pulls out all stops in his eagerness to be convincing. Now why this desperate urgency to believe in mortality?

The key is found in the goal of the Epicurean way of life. And this is escape from pain, escape from worry, from trouble, from concerns. Epicurus’ walled garden where he taught is symbolic of the wish to withdraw from the troubles of the world. And instead of fears of the unknown hereafter, Lucretius taught that death meant a term to your troubles. It is Lucretius who said, “What joy it is when out at sea the storm winds are lashing the water, to gaze from the shore at the heavy stress some other is enduring in the sea!” Not that anyone’s afflictions are a source of delight, but to realize from what troubles you yourself are free is joy “indeed”. He goes on to say what a joy it is to watch armed battle when you have no part in the peril. And it is clear that he sees his philosophy as a citadel to save him from the pains of life. He cries, “How dark and dangerous is the life in which this tiny span is lived away.” And counsels that by resolutely avoiding occasions for trouble one can gain a relative peace of mind and look forward to death as marking a term for our troubles.

There is reflected here in Epicureanism — and I would suggest in any way of life that measures value in terms of pleasure and pain — a sense of despair, a tragic sense of life, where momentary pleasure is a rare oasis in the desert of existence, where gratification leads to more anxieties and desires. As Schopenhauer said, “It is like the alms thrown to the beggar, so that he can exist to face another day of suffering.” And even when the life we associate popularly with the term Epicureanism, the life of positive pleasure-seeking, is pursued, and pursued successfully, there is an undercurrent of desperation. One’s happiness is dependent on external conditions one cannot control — and the desperate search for enjoyment leads ultimately to boredom or the sense of weariness which comes when life holds no meaning. The poet Swinburne reflects this sophisticated sense of weariness which, like the Epiucureans, seemed to welcome death. He writes: “I am tired of tears and laughter and men that laugh and weep, of what may come hereafter, and everything but sleep.” And further: “From too much love of living, from hope and fear set free, we thank with brief thanksgiving, whatever gods may be, that no man lives forever, that dead men rise up never; that even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.”

These lines of Swinburne express the very same weariness of mind and spirit that the Epicureans represented. And when we see this weariness, we understand what motivates the belief in mortality. It is a weariness with life itself. The point of the whole matter is this: it is not the case that immortality is a dream of those who are afraid to die; it is truer to say that belief in mortality is the hope of those afraid to live — afraid to face life as an ongoing challenge and opportunity with all the risks and troubles life involves. In contrast, to believe in immortality is to look forward to continuing creative experience, to trust in God’s love and care in the future we cannot see but which we can face in confidence because of the mercies and love we have already received from His providence and care. To believe in mortality as the Epicureans did, as Swinburne did, is to look forward to death as a release from the burdens of life. To believe in immortality, as the early Christians did, is to look forward to the triumph of goodness over the evils of life, to see death as overcome in victory by the power of God’s love, to see that the sufferings, troubles, pains of man, like those caught up in the suffering of the cross, are transformed by the power of God’s creative love into the peace which passes all understanding.

No wonder that Roman world began to hear with eagerness the message of the early Christians of a life more abundant.

What, then, should we conclude as Christians today?

The Christian attitude, I think, is not to be anxious about the nature of the hereafter, but to continue to trust in the creative power of God, to commit ourselves, as did Jesus, in faith to His hands. It is to recognize, too, I think, the way life and death are intertwined, as with the rhythm of the seasons, the wonder of growth, where the death of the seed gives birth to the blade of wheat. It is to see that life itself is a series of little deaths, which are at the same time new beginnings, new births. Birth itself is surely the death of pre-natal life; but a larger life is born. And the whole process of growing is a series of bumps and triumphs. Think of a child’s first steps. And when success comes, the baby is no more, but a more competent self emerges. Think of the embarrassing moments, the minor crises we’ve all had in growing — in living — when we’ve said, “I thought I’d die”; and in a sense something did die - false pride, perhaps - and something better was born. And so it goes, life as a series of little deaths, and each time something dies, something better is born. May not death itself be the last in this series of little deaths in life, and the beginning of a whole new existence? We who believe in life — not death — trust that it is so.