April 27, 2011 – This Is the Life

This Easter, I preached on the topic, “This Is the Life.” While, for many, it’s a phrase that conjures visions of shady cabanas on tropical beaches, shrimp cocktail and umbrella drinks close at hand, I was thinking about something different.

And no, I wasn’t thinking about what this guy means by the phrase, either:



“This is the life” is Jesus’ promise to his disciples in John 10:10, as he proclaims, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” It’s a promise they wouldn’t begin to understand until after the resurrection.

This whole matter of abundant life takes on a different cast when that life includes cancer. What does it mean to “have life abundantly” when that life, for a cancer survivor, includes a low-level sense of foreboding that’s always lurking somewhere?

I think Matthew’s account of the resurrection supplies an answer. It employs a curious turn of phrase, describing Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” (probably Jesus’ mother), as they rush from the tomb, having heard the angel tell them Jesus has been raised from the dead. Matthew says, “they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy...”

Whuzzat? With fear? And great joy? Sounds like an oxymoron.

No, it’s no oxymoron. Our emotions are seldom simple and elemental. They’re often mixed.

Actually, there are times in life when fear and joy do coexist. Try to imagine the first time you fell in love, and realized that person you loved felt the same way about you. Did you ever feel more alive than in that moment?

And wasn’t it also true that, having asked that special person (or having been asked) to go out on a date, and having heard that person say yes (or having said yes yourself), the thought suddenly occurred to you that you would have to actually participate in said date, and you would somehow have to avoid making an idiot of yourself? Fear and great joy!

Or, think about the most significant graduation ceremony of your life, that highest level of education you’ve completed. If you were able to attend such a ceremony, recall the joy of accomplishment you felt that day, in cap and gown, looking around at the grinning faces of all your classmates. Remember, too, the other thought that came to you at that moment: “What am I going to do tomorrow?” Fear and great joy!

Brides and grooms on their wedding day, first-time parents driving that baby home from the hospital – on these and many other occasions in life, fear and joy coexist. Not without some tension between them, perhaps, but there it is. This is the life.

The two Marys were likely feeling something similar, because the first thing the risen Jesus says to them is “Do not be afraid.”

This has nothing to do with whether or not they may happen to disbelieve what they’re seeing, or whether or not they suspect it may be some sort of ghostly apparition, some wraith vomited up from dark places to bedevil them. No, I think they realize who it is, and can at least grasp the bare outlines of the paradigm-busting wonder that’s taken place. I think the two Marys are afraid because they realize what the resurrection is going to mean for their lives.

Surely these wise women realize that, if they continue on as Jesus’ followers, and go tell the other disciples the good news they’ve just heard and seen, they’re going to unleash into the world a powerful force that there will be no stopping. From this day onward, they’re going to be riding a mighty wave that will propel them onward with terrific force – and at times that position on the crest of the wave will be a dangerous place to be.

Yes, of course they’re going to do it, of course they’re going to bring the good news to their companions. But their fear and their joy are intermingled.

This is the life. This is the new life God has given them. Yes, perhaps they recalled hearing Jesus say he’d come that they might have life, and have it abundantly, but until this moment those had been nothing more than inspiring words, a rhetorical flourish. How could they possibly have known that new life would come to them through the nail-pierced hands that now rest on each of their heads, and through the nail-scarred feet they are even now washing with their tears?

The Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard once described this aspect of the Christian life using a very vivid image. He said that sharing the Christian faith with others is like handing them an extremely sharp knife.

A sharp knife is a useful tool. The greatest chefs, in fact, take meticulous care of their knives, sometimes even packing them into special carrying cases and bringing them home at night, so no damage will come to them. No one, Kierkegaard goes on, would think of handing a sharp knife to another person as one would hand over a bouquet of flowers. It’s just not done.

One of the first things we teach kids, in our church’s Cub Scout Pack and Boy Scout Troop, is how to safely hand a knife to another person. The boys don’t earn their “Totin’ Chip” – the special wallet card that allows them to carry a pocketknife – until they learn how to hand an open knife to a fellow Scout handle-first, and not let go of it until the other person says, “Thank you” – indicating he’s got it safely in hand. That’s because a knife is a useful implement, but it’s also dangerous. You’ve got to have a healthy fear of knives before you can use them safely.

Faith is just that sort of tool for living life as a cancer survivor. Most of us aren’t going to be cured, physically, by our faith. For whatever reason, God doles out complete spiritual healing only rarely, and according to no logic we can understand. Yet, if we’ve learned how to take this elegant tool in hand and use it safely - preventing it from slipping and causing further injury - we’ll find ourselves much better-equipped for living through days and years of remission and relapse, of tests and treatments.

Christian faith doesn’t put an end to fear. It does, however, take the natural, human fears we all have and puts them in perspective. Without the inner peace that comes of faith – which we Christians describe as knowing the risen Christ – the ordinary fears of human life can rage out of control, wreaking havoc in our lives, and in the lives of those we love.

The crucial difference comes from the other part of the equation: the “great joy” that counterbalances our very human fears. We can still seek it, even in the midst of cancer. Even a cancer-burdened life is still life, and Christ has promised that, in him, we can live abundantly.

June 3, 2010 - Touched By an Angel

“During my illness, I had the presence of an angel that came and visited me...” This is a remarkable video, from the Livestrong website. The speaker is Matthews Brown, a leukemia survivor. It’s just under 4 minutes long, so it won’t take too much time away from whatever else you’re doing.



In the course of my ministry, I’ve heard some remarkable stories of spiritual experiences. I’ve never seen an angel, myself (at least, not the supernatural variety). Based on what I’ve heard from others, though, I’d say Matthews’ experience is unusual, but not as unusual as all that. Things like this happen to people more often than you may think.

We’ve all heard the truism, “God never gives us more than we can handle.” I found that to be true of my own cancer experience. From the square marked “Go,” it looks like it's a long way around the spiritual Monopoly board, but you do find yourself “passing Go” from time to time and collecting $200.

Let us give thanks for unsolicited, grace-filled experiences, through which we learn what remarkable spiritual resources are available to us, and how deeply we are loved!

If you’re a cancer survivor, how has the spiritual side of the experience been for you?

April 20, 2010 - Hope IS a Miracle

This past Sunday, I preached on the story from the Acts of the Apostles about the raising of Tabitha. It’s one of a small number of biblical passages that recount not merely a healing, but the raising of a person from the dead. Although the Apostle Peter performs the miracle, it’s clear he sees it as the work of the risen Christ.

Preparing my sermon, I was struck by a rather unusual detail. Before performing his miracle, Peter cleared the room. Why was that?

I figure it was because Peter was none too sure of his ability to do anything helpful. This isn’t a sick woman, he thought to himself. It’s a dead woman. Dead is dead (unless, of course, you’re talking about Jesus’ resurrection, but that’s a story for another day).

You’d think, had Peter been more confident, he’d have practiced a little showmanship. You know, given the miracle some pizzazz. Wow the crowd.

But, no. Peter will have none of that.

When in doubt, pray. Having no other option, that’s what Peter decides to do. Falling to his knees, he offers fervent prayers to God: to get him out of this situation, to do something to help this grieving community – and, yes, even this poor, deceased woman, wherever in heaven or earth her soul may be.

After praying, Peter turns to Tabitha and simply says, “Tabitha, get up.” She does! The crowd outside is astounded when they see their beloved Tabitha, alive again. It just may be, though, that the most befuddled person in the village that day is Peter himself.

Many of us have been there before, in situations that seemed hopeless. It’s a story repeated time and again, in hospital corridors and family waiting rooms, as a doctor says to an anxious family, ”I’m sorry, there’s nothing more we can do.”

We’ve all heard of deathbed miracles, of course, but we also know these are few and far between. I told the folks in church on Sunday that the one miracle I have seen, time and time again, is how hope – that most persistent of Christian character traits – has a way of arising out of even the darkest of situations.

Sometimes that hope is as simple as being able to persevere, to get up and face another day without falling apart emotionally. Sometimes it’s the ability to let go and die with dignity. Sometimes it’s reconciliation with a loved one that we never imagined could have happened.

On his knees, alone in that small room except for the corpse stretched out on the bed, Peter may have feared his hope-reservoir had run dry. But then, when he least expects it, God breaks in once again, revealing new possibilities.

Such hope differs from what usually passes for hope in our culture – at least, as the word is used in everyday speech. Eugene Peterson points out that what a lot of people call hope is in reality something different. It’s wishing, not hoping – and wishing and hoping are not the same thing:

“Wishing is something all of us do. It projects what we want or think we need into the future. Just because we wish for something good or holy we think it qualifies as hope. It does not. Wishing extends our egos into the future; hope grows out of our faith. Hope is oriented toward what God is doing; wishing is oriented toward what we are doing.”

Peterson goes on to say that we can picture wishing as though it were a line coming out from us with an arrow on the end, pointing into the future, pointing toward that thing we most want to possess.

Hope is just the opposite. It’s a line that comes from God out of the future, with its arrow pointing towards us:

“Hope means being surprised, because we don’t know what is best for us or how our lives are going to be completed. To cultivate hope is to suppress wishing – to refuse to fantasize about what we want, but live in anticipation of what God is going to do next.” [The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction (Eerdmans, 1993)]

To me, that’s a beautiful and liberating insight. Yes, we all want certain things in this life. Yet, our wishes and God’s intentions for us may not always coincide. At times, God may have an entirely different plan – which means that, for us, the way of freedom and peace lies not in somehow pulling God around to our way of thinking, but rather letting go and trusting God to be in control.

April 5, 2010 - An Idle Tale?

Preparing my Easter sermon based on Luke 24:1-12, I was struck by the reaction of the male disciples to Mary Magdalene and the other women who brought them news of the empty tomb and of the angel’s message: “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”

Their first response was to consider it “an idle tale.”

“Idle tale” translates an uncommon Greek word whose meaning is “nonsense” or “delusional.” If the women’s breathless announcement is in fact the first Christian proclamation, then it means we preachers started out with a score of 0 and 1 from the get-go.

Which is no big surprise – because the resurrection isn’t exactly an easy truth to absorb. In contradicts one of the most foundational of human experiences: that dead is dead, and there’s no coming back.

I thought about that sort of thing a lot when I was feeling ill from my chemo treatments. What if the treatments were unsuccessful and I was soon going to die, I asked myself? What if, someday soon, I was going to shut my eyes not only to this world, but to everything else? What if this life, this consciousness, that is me would suddenly blink out of existence? What would have been the point of it all?

My mind danced with that bleak idea from time to time, but didn’t invite it home. I kept returning to the truths of my faith, and especially this truth that is the resurrection.

I told the folks in our church yesterday that this whole “idle tale” response is actually a sort of backhanded testimony to the truth of the resurrection. If you were to set out to make up a story about a man being raised from the dead, would you be so quick to admit that some of the people who most wanted to believe it to be true rejected it, at first?

Similarly, if you were going to go out and make up a story about a man being raised from the dead, would you include details that made you, yourself look like a clueless doubter – as was the case with Peter? If you were interested in spreading a made-up story in the intensely male-dominated Roman world, would you make women the first witnesses of the resurrection – women, who were considered, back then, to be second-class citizens, whose testimony the male-dominated society considered unreliable?

Of course not. There are an embarrassing number of loose ends connected with the Easter narrative. Four different gospels tell the story, as well as certain passages from the letters of Paul – all of them differing from the others in one detail or another. If your purpose were to make the whole thing up, you would have managed your sources a little better.

The result is that it’s impossible to put the various Gospel accounts together in a single narrative – just as it would be if there had been multiple witnesses recording their impression of a single, dramatic incident, each from a different angle.

The resurrection is jarring and unexpected. The great Reformed theologian Karl Barth says somewhere that it’s “not a natural ‘therefore’ but a miraculous ‘nevertheless.’” Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams – a distinguished theologian as well as senior leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion – likens it to the Big Bang. When we celebrate Easter, he writes, “we are really standing in the middle of a second ‘Big Bang,’ a tumultuous surge of divine energy as fiery and intense as the very beginning of the universe.” (Tokens of Trust, p. 95)

These are outrageous claims – but in their very confusion, contradiction and sheer outrageousness, they’re true to life, in an odd way. Such a mind-bending, paradigm-busting event could never be encapsulated in a tight, little spin-controlled story.

With all those lights of inquiry shining upon it from so many different angles, the resurrection is like a person moving across a room, lit up by a strobe light. You know how that looks: a person lit by a strobe seems to move in a series of jerky, disjointed snapshots, rather than the seamless, smooth motion of movie film. Under such lighting, you can get a general sense of what’s happening, what various events are taking place – but not how they flow from one to the next.

There are still significant gaps in our understanding of the resurrection – and always will be, this side of heaven. That doesn’t mean it’s not true. It means it’s a truth too big, too complex, too wonderful for us to fully comprehend.

January 28, 2010 - When Positive Thinking Isn't Enough

One of the hardest things to do, in ministry, is to stand by people who are going through hard times: not trying to change the situation, but just being with them, accepting things as they are.

An invaluable lesson I learned, years ago, in my clinical counseling training in seminary, is that sometimes you can’t fix it. Sure, there are some counseling situations in which an easy answer – be it a scriptural citation or a word of practical advice – can make a world of difference. But, not every situation is like that. Sometimes the only thing you can do is to be there – accompanying people through their difficulties, sometimes even to the edge of the grave.

It’s one of the reasons (among many) why I have such admiration for my wife, Claire - a minister who works as bereavement coordinator for a hospice program. Accompanying people in just this sort of way is what she does all the time. When she was a hospice chaplain, she worked directly with dying patients. Now, she specializes in accompanying family members through their days of mourning.

Claire’s grown used to a certain awed response she gets from people she meets for the first time. They often say something like, “More power to you! I could never do a job like that,” or, “That must be so hard! How do you keep doing it, year after year?”

Frequently, she gets another sort of response: “I think hospice programs are wonderful. The hospice team was such a help to us when my mother was dying!” A person who says something like that has come to appreciate the value of standing by those who are suffering. It’s like the famous first line from Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

In my sermon this past Sunday, I spoke about a certain tendency toward magical thinking that can be a detriment in situations of serious difficulty, medical or otherwise. I was inspired by reading an insightful book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, by Barbara Ehrenreich.

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Ehrenreich has gotten a lot of press because of the forthright way in which she takes on the 200-pound gorilla of the self-help world: positive thinking. Her point is that our culture so unquestioningly considers positive thinking to be a good thing, that in situations – like the final stages of hospice care – in which it’s no longer appropriate, people just don’t know what to do. They feel abandoned, adrift, without the familiar life preserver of positive thinking.

Many of us think that, in a tough situation, we’ve got only two choices: think positively, or give up altogether. My point in Sunday’s sermon is that, while positive thinking is often a good thing, there are some situations in which it crosses the line into magical thinking – which is not. Some things that happen to us in life are simply bad things, and there’s no getting around it. It’s one thing to cultivate a positive outlook generally, but it’s quite another to believe we have an obligation to think positive thoughts all the time – and that, if we don’t, we’re somehow putting ourselves at risk.

Sadly, some cancer patients get precisely that message from those around them. Some feel guilty, beating themselves up because they can’t keep the sunny side up all the time. If their disease progresses, they feel irrationally responsible for failing to stoke the positive-thinking furnace.

A new illustrated article on Beliefnet.com, “In Praise of Thinking Realistically: When Positive Thinking Isn’t Working,” by Lori Hope, speaks to this same theme.

The positive-thinking movement is very often an ally of Christianity, but there’s a point at which the two part ways. Bottom-line, the Christian prescription for spiritual health is not positive thinking, but rather, repentance and the forgiveness of sins. As the Gospel-writer Mark sums up the essence of Jesus’ message:

“Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’” [Mark 1:14-15]

If we’re constantly trying to push everything but positive thoughts out of our minds, we’ll never be able to recognize sin in our lives, because we’re so afraid of the negative thoughts that go with it. Without a recognition of sin, there can be no confession. Without confession, there can be no forgiveness. And, without forgiveness, there can be no experience of grace.

I ended my sermon on Sunday by telling a familiar story from the classic Broadway show, The Music Man. It’s about the con man, “Professor” Harold Hill, who travels around selling band instruments to schools, promising he’ll stick around to teach the children how to play – but he never does. He always hops the first train out of town as soon as the money’s in his pocket. In the Midwestern town of River City, though, he falls in love with Marian the librarian, so he’s got to think of something. Harold’s problem is, he knows nothing about music. He’s not a professor of anything, except shady deals.

What he does is tell the children they can learn to play their new band instruments using what he calls “The Think Method.” All they have to do is think of the melody he tells them to play, recalling it over and over in their minds. When they pick up their instruments, he promises, they’ll be able to play it perfectly.

Well, the day of the first band concert comes, and Harold’s ready for his slippery scheme to fall apart. The children pick up their instruments and start to play. The sound that emerges is one of the most awful things you’ve ever heard – everything you’d expect from a teaching strategy so ill-conceived as “The Think Method.”

Wonder of wonders, a miracle occurs. The parents of River City are so pleased to see their children tooting away on the band instruments, they completely ignore the fact that there’s no discernible melody. Professor Hill’s reputation is saved, and he settles down in River City to marry his beloved Marian.

Positive thinking won’t teach us how to play the trombone, any more than it will guarantee we’ll beat cancer. The lesson of The Music Man, though, goes beyond the concrete task of producing the right musical notes at the proper tempo. It’s a lesson about grace and love and unconditional acceptance of children by their parents. Professor Hill’s brand of magical thinking was a complete dud, but the magic of love proved far stronger.

There is no greater magic in the world than this. It’s the love of God, that Christians believe is experienced uniquely in Jesus Christ. We believe that love was demonstrated for us on the cross of Calvary, and is given to us as an unconditional gift. It comes to us in good times and in bad, in sunshine and in storm.

“Thanks be to God for this indescribable gift!”
– 2 Corinthians 9:15

December 17, 2009 - I Wonder As I Wander

On of the beloved songs of the upcoming Christmas season is “I Wonder As I Wander.” The song was written by a musicologist named John Jacob Niles, based on a fragment of folk music he discovered.

According to the Wikipedia article on the carol, in 1933 Niles was traveling through the Appalachian region of North Carolina, looking for traditional tunes. He was attending a fund-raising meeting held by an evangelistic group who’d been run out of town by the police (I’m sure there must be an interesting back-story behind that!). In his unpublished autobiography, Niles tells of how he first heard the song:

“A girl had stepped out to the edge of the little platform attached to the automobile. She began to sing. Her clothes were unbelievable dirty and ragged, and she, too, was unwashed. Her ash-blond hair hung down in long skeins.... But, best of all, she was beautiful, and in her untutored way, she could sing. She smiled as she sang, smiled rather sadly, and sang only a single line of a song.”

Niles was enchanted, and asked the girl to sing the line again. He offered her a quarter to do so, and she gladly complied (this was 1933, the midst of the Great Depression: folks earned money any way they could). Seven times he asked the girl to sing it, giving her a quarter each time. Seven quarters later – a dollar seventy-five, not a bad price in the 1930s – he had enough of a sense of where he was going with his composition. What he had was, in his own words, “three lines of verse, a garbled fragment of melodic material – and a magnificent idea.”

I think you’ll agree: a dollar seventy-five (in 1933 dollars) was not a bad price to pay for a hauntingly beautiful melody that’s become a Christmas standard.

“I Wonder As I Wander” is in a minor key. More often than not, hymns are written in a major key. Those hymns are bright, joyful, triumphant. The minor-key hymns, by contrast, are quieter, more introspective, more reflective. Some are even somber.

We need them both. One of life’s great lessons, for cancer survivors or for anyone else, is that not all of life is lived in a major key. “Into each life some rain must fall,” goes the hoary old cliché. When we discover joy amidst even the rain, when we can learn to sing praise even in a minor key, we’ve got it made.

“I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die
For poor orn'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.”

September 8, 2009 - Turned Toward Blessing

Today I come across a blog entry from last April by Dana Jennings, a New York Times reporter being treated for aggressive prostate cancer. Dana is Jewish, and writes eloquently on the intersection of faith and cancer. Here’s an excerpt:

“One of our cultural verities about serious illness is that it often challenges our faith. But for me, if anything, having cancer has only deepened it, heightened it.

I have spent the past year in the dark ark of cancer, and there is no question that I have become a new man. I’ve been granted a wisdom that only arrives at the rugged confluence of middle age and mortality. And I know, soul deep, that I have not been cut open, radiated, and tried physically and spiritually so that I can merely survive, become a cancer wraith. Since my diagnosis – after shaking off the initial shock – I have kept asking myself, in the context of my belief: What can this cancer teach me?

The most surprising thing I’ve learned is that cancer can be turned toward blessing. Through the simple fact of me telling my cancer stories on this blog, many of you readers, in turn, have told your own stories. And that mutual sharing of our tales has changed my life for the good. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, 'Life is not meaningful, unless it is serving an end beyond itself, unless it is of value to someone else.'”

I like Dana's concept of cancer being “turned toward blessing.” I won’t ever be able to consider cancer a good thing, but our miraculous God can wring blessings out of even the darkest episodes of life.

In a remarkable way we, too, can be turned toward blessing. When we are able at last to make the move from cursing our fate to blessing others by our actions, we know the seeds of healing are taking root in our lives.

August 18, 2009 - The Breadth of God

Rabbi David Wolpe recalls how, when he was laid low by chemotherapy, a verse from the Psalms kept coming to his mind:

“From out of the depths I called unto God;
He answered me and set me free.” (Psalm 118:5)

“Out of the depths” is a classic expression of lament. Wolpe brings added perspective as a scholar of the original Hebrew:

“But ‘the depths’ can be translated as ‘narrowness’ and ‘free’ as ‘expansively.’ A literal translation is – ‘from my narrowness I called to God and I was answered by breadth, O God.’ My world grew through pain and the increasing recognition of the ways in which it both opened my heart and helped me draw closer to others in pain. A single verse opened a world and a way of seeing that gave me strength and the breadth promised by the verse itself.

My spirit opened to an infinitely larger Spirit. When in pain, we tighten up like a fist. It is easy to push others away – after all, they are not feeling the pain – and to turn increasingly inward. Only I matter; only my pain is real. The Psalm urged me to expand, allowing me to embrace others, to understand that pain need not always be private, unshared. Open up, the Psalmist taught; both in heaven and on earth you are not alone.”

- Why Faith Matters (HarperOne, 2008), pp. 159-160.

Paradoxically, the experience of serious illness can deepen the life of the spirit. That was Rabbi Wolpe’s experience, and in the long run, it's been mine as well.

There were no epiphanies – no memorable, soul-stirring moments of encounter with God. Just a broadening of life, at a time when all the wisdom of the world could predict nothing but a narrowing.

I’m not sure how often this is true of people who approach an experience like cancer without the resources of faith to draw upon. I’d be curious to hear some personal testimony from atheists or agnostics on that subject. It seems to me that, without faith, cancer therapy can only be a narrowing experience. So many limitations, so many life-changes, arise in the form of side-effects. Fatigue alone – probably the most common and pervasive of side-effects – is a significant narrowing experience.

The gift many people of faith are fortunate enough to receive, out of cancer treatment, is an unexpected experience of spiritual breadth.

It’s the breadth of God.

July 31, 2009 - Praying in the Tube

Finishing out my vacation, I’ve been enjoying some quiet time up at our Adirondacks place, near Jay, New York. One of the good books I’ve been reading is Why Faith Matters, by Rabbi David J. Wolpe. David thoughtfully sent me a copy of his book, after reading my May 9, 2009 blog entry about him.

The book has a lot to recommend it. It’s a thoughtful, honest answer to recent critics from the scientific world, like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, who have ridiculed faith and elevated scientific insights in its place. (It’s also a quick read, very accessible to people without extensive training in either theology or science.)

David is in the same place I am on that question, maintaining that religion and science need not be in conflict with one another. There’s no reason why a scientist cannot also be a religious believer, nor a believer someone who also accepts the insights of evolutionary biology or physics.

One part of the book that speaks personally to me is when David shares his personal experience as a cancer survivor. Like me, he has non-Hodgkin lymphoma, in an incurable form. Some years previously, he had surgery to remove a brain tumor. Here, he writes of his experience of prayer, as he’s undergone various medical tests:

“Throughout my various illnesses, I prayed. My prayer was not answered because I lived; my prayer was answered because I felt better able to cope with my sickness. Each time I go for my regular tests, the CT or PET scans or an MRI, each time I am moved into the metal tube that will give an image of sickness or health, I pray. I do not pray because I believe God will give me a clear scan. I pray because I am not alone, and from gratitude that having been near death I am still in life. I pray not for magic but for closeness, not for miracles but for love.

The novelist George Meredith wrote, ‘Who rises from his prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.’”

– Why Faith Matters (HarperOne, 2008), p. 25.

Some of the most heartfelt prayers any of us pray are those uttered “in the tube.” When we find ourselves in the tube, what do we pray for? Miracles?

I’ve wondered, on similar occasions, what the point is of praying for a negative test result (“negative” is, of course, a positive or good result in medical parlance). The machine, be it CT scanner or PET scanner or whatever, is simply taking a picture of whatever is there. I’m not praying for the result to come out skewed, of course – it’s in my best interest that the test be accurate, that my doctors fully understand whatever’s going on inside my body. When we offer prayers in the tube, are we praying that, if there’s a malignancy there, God will vaporize it then and there, in the few seconds before the picture is taken?

No, as David indicates, I think prayer is a good bit more complex than that. When we pray, we often do have specific results in mind, but more importantly, we’re seeking to be in communion with God, and perhaps also to feel a sense of solidarity with others who form the community of prayer. Indeed, we pray “not for magic but for closeness, not for miracles but for love.”

Of miracles, C.S. Lewis once wrote: “Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”

The point is, to catch that larger vision.

Prayer changes things. Prayer changes us.

June 25, 2009 - Farrah, Jane and "Let It Be"

News has just come through, today, of the death of actor and model Farrah Fawcett. I wrote about her cancer struggle in my May 16th blog entry. Her television documentary, Farrah’s Story, was a graphic account of the last months of her life.

While the film attracted some negative comments from critics, who branded it as reality-show exploitation, I saw it differently. It seemed to me a courageous (although rough-around-the-edges) statement from a dying woman whose deepest desire was to “not go gentle into that good night.”

Sure, Farrah’s story was hardly typical. She was an enormously wealthy woman with the means to jet all over the world seeking alternative cancer treatments. She was also more vocal than some about the problem of how cancer was affecting her physical beauty (hardly surprising in a woman who, in her prime, was a fashion icon). Yet, whose cancer story is ever typical, anyway? We’re all individuals, and in our respective responses to this disease we each display our own interior beauty.

This morning I walked across the street to St. Mary’s By-the-Sea Episcopal Church to attend the funeral of a neighbor, Jane, who died at mid-life after having been diagnosed about a year ago with a pretty-much untreatable form of cancer. She left behind two teenage daughters and a whole churchful of friends.

Jane designed the funeral service herself, down to every last detail. While it wove in and out of the Book of Common Prayer liturgy, the musical selections and personal testimonies were hardly typical funeral fare. We sang along with the choir to Pete Seeger’s “Turn, Turn, Turn” and listened to a talented guitarist sing the jaunty medley of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (as styled by the by the late Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo’ole) and “What a Wonderful World” that’s been making the rounds of indie singers.



We finished by singing the Beatles’ “Let It Be” – a baby boomer anthem if ever there was one. I’ve always heard the song’s mention of “mother Mary” was inspired by a dream Paul McCartney had of his own mother, whose name was Mary. After checking it out on Wikipedia, I learned his mother died when he was 14, of cancer. As she came to Paul in the dream, he was blessed with an overwhelming feeling of comfort and peace. According to Wikipedia, he later told an interviewer: “It was great to visit with her again. I felt very blessed to have that dream. So that got me writing ‘Let It Be’.” Speaking to another interviewer, he shared how in the dream his mother had comforted him: “It will be all right, just let it be.”

Some have assumed, I know, that “mother Mary” in the song must surely be Mary, the mother of Jesus, but of course that’s not the case. So, it doesn’t make sense, as some have done, to sing it in church as a celebration of that Mary. It turns out, though, in this context, “Let It Be” has a compelling personal (if not exactly liturgical) rightness.

From what I know of Jane – a deep-thinking, highly organized person – it’s likely she knew this story, and included it in the service for that reason. It’s the message she would have wanted her own daughters to take away from the experience of losing their mother:

“And when the night is cloudy,
there is still a light, that shines on me,
shine until tomorrow, let it be.
I wake up to the sound of music, mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.”

June 12, 2009 - Beside the Lake

It’s nearing the end of a remarkable day, for me. After breakfast and a time of worship, our retreat leaders sent us off to find a place to spend two and a half hours in quiet discernment, seeking hints to the leading of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Four days’ work have led up to this point. I have been much occupied in reflecting on various things that have led me to feel spiritually and vocationally stuck. Many of them derive, directly or indirectly, from the way lymphoma has interrupted my life.

Reflecting back, now, on that time of discernment...

I make my way along the path to a large, lakeside picnic pavilion on the conference center grounds. The place, which is evidently where they hold cookouts as well as some wedding receptions, is deserted. Walking across the wooden deck to the railing by the water’s edge, I notice something at my feet. It’s a bird’s nest, with a yellow-and white smear on the planks beside it. Evidently, some prowling carnivore swept the nest down from a rafter overhead, then devoured the frail eggs that had been nestled in it.

Saddened by nature’s carnage, I pull a folding chair to the edge of the dance floor and sit there, looking across the lake.

Skirted by rolling mist, the dark water reflects the tall trees on the opposite shore. Occasionally, a fish breaks the opaque surface. The calling of circling birds reminds me this place is teeming with life.

Taking out my journal, I begin to write a poem that records the way this scene speaks to me, in a way I can only conclude is the leading of the Spirit:

CONSIDER THE BIRDS

“Look at the birds of the air...” – Matthew 6:26

Bird’s nest
cast on the wooden planks of a picnic pavilion:
empty,
bereft.
Beside it,
a spattered mess of yolk and white:
life’s potential
spilled out
by some anonymous predator.
Life is hard,
far harder than we know
through pampered days;
cruel, too,
and unspeakably random.
So many fruits of careful, loving preparation
cast aside
with one sweep of the predator’s paw,
one feathered flurry of raptor-wings.
And what of the wattle-and-daub sanctuary
of my life, my career (if I may use that un-theological word)?
There is sadness:
immense sadness,
mourning,
for all the cancer has swept away.
Sometimes I fear my vaunted call to ministry
has become but a smear of yolk and white
upon the deck.

Whose call is it, anyway,
I hasten to remind myself?

Out on the lake,
a man is rowing backwards,
facing towards the prow.
He wants to see where he is going.
Does he not trust the dread discipline
of rowing towards a destination he cannot see,
eyes fixed on the reference point?

Get up.
Get up and walk a spiral labyrinth
upon the dance floor:
a squared-off spiral,
defined by angular symmetry of faux-wood tiles.
Constriction
on the way in,
tightness.
Options, one by one,
falling away.
At the center,
a swift turn upon the heel:
scarcely room to breathe.
But then,
but then, the turning.
“To turn, turn will be our delight,
till by turning, turning we come out right.”

What of the ravaged nest?
What of it?
Shall my eye continually be drawn
to such a horror?
What of the bird-mother,
whose eye must have,
one time at least,
been drawn to that appalling sight?
There is birdsong in this place,
to be sure,
but no black-winged mourner,
perched disconsolately upon a rafter.

Then
comes the Sweeper,
broom in hand.
His eye falls upon the downed nest
before he stoops down,
pausing scarcely a moment,
and picks it up in two fingers
before walking solemnly to the rail
and tossing it gently into the lake:
burial at sea.
A squeeze-bottle of pink disinfectant
completes the ritual,
soaking the boards:
chemical absolution.
A few passes of this Undertaker’s broom,
and all that remains
is a wet spot upon the planking.
Nature,
like the mother bird,
has a way of moving on,
it would seem.
(Later,
Archangel Janitor paces slowly away,
squeeze-bottle in one hand,
rag in the other.)

Tears wet my eyes
as I recall how many days I have wasted:
days the Lord has made,
intended for rejoicing.
How many pounds of walking burden
have I allowed to gather at my waist?
How many meaningless rectangles of paper –
8½ by 11, and other shapes and sizes –
have I allowed to join the dusty disarray
on my abandoned desktop?
Have I become a bystander to my own, neglected life,
in ways the mother bird
never allowed herself to be?

I sit, davening, upon my folding chair.

“What are you doing here, Elijah?”
“I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts.”
I have fought the helmeted cancer-hordes to a draw.
(So far, they have not returned,
but for the occasional, ominous scout.)
“I, I alone am left” has been my cry.

The Lord, of course,
would not,
does not
let a true prophet get away
with such an easy answer.

My way back
is serenaded
with birdsong.

April 26, 2009 - Libation

Responding to my April 20th entry, a reader named Christine writes:

“My cancer has progressed to the point where I am on my last leg of this journey. I was wondering if you could direct me to what the Bible says about facing death. In essence, what are your thoughts on dealing with grief and sorrow? My journey has been four years and as I approach the end, surprisingly I find that my emotional and spiritual struggle have not diminished but intensified.”

Wow. I had to think about that one for several days, before attempting an answer. It’s not that I’ve never had to supply this sort of counsel before; it’s just that Christine poses her question so bluntly. Most people whom I visit in their final days raise the question obliquely, if at all. Whether they ask the question directly or not, I typically respond by sharing some of the great scripture passages that witness to God’s reliable presence.

For example, there’s Psalm 139, in which the psalmist imagines himself journeying to the very edges of the known world, only to find God still there beside him:

“If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.” (Psalm 139:9-10)

For those who struggle with fatigue, cancer-related or otherwise, there’s always Isaiah 40:28-31, that promises:

“Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)

Those of a philosophical bent may find some comfort in the timeless contemplations of “the Teacher” who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes. In these verses – immortalized for my generation by Pete Seeger’s folk anthem, “Turn, Turn, Turn” – he recalls how, in life, there is a time for everything, even a time to die:

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance...” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-4)

THE BYRDS - Turn ! Turn ! Turn !
by danadi33

Certain psalms, like Psalm 69, pull no punches when it comes to voicing the honest cry of human anguish. Perhaps, Christine, you’ve felt like this in recent days:

“Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.
I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.” (Psalm 69:1-3)

So, what does it mean to speak of God saving us, in a time of serious illness – perhaps even illness unto death? Some may be tempted to blithely drop a pollyanna catch-phrase, like “Expect a miracle!” Yet, this is unrealistic, maybe even deceptive. We all know miraculous reversals like this – the sort that cause doctors to scratch their heads and say, “I don’t know what happened, there’s no medical explanation for the way that tumor just disappeared” – are rare indeed. Besides, even in those fortunate cases where a terminal illness reverses itself, the patient is still going to die of something, eventually. No, that sort of miracle merely buys a little time, that’s all.

No, the only ultimate consolation comes from promises such as Jesus’ words in John 11:25-26:
“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

Seeking to describe the life to come, Paul resorts to a variety of metaphors. In 2 Corinthians 4:16-5:1, he likens this present life of ours to a tent – a temporary dwelling, slated to be replaced by something more permanent:

“So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. For 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.”

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul uses a different, organic metaphor, that of a seed planted in the ground – one I’ve cited just upstream, in my April 14th entry.

At the end of the day, though, all these are just metaphors. Such poetry, lofty as it may be, captures the emotion, but inevitably falls short on details – for, who can chart with certainty lands no human has visited, save on a one-way journey? (Jesus, of course, being the notable exception, and he wasn’t talking – not on that subject, anyway.)

In the course of my pastoral ministry, I’ve spoken with more than a few people who’ve had near-death experiences. There are more of these people around than you may think. Most are pretty quiet about it. They’re hesitant to speak of such experiences, for fear of being misunderstood – but, if you give them a chance, they’ll speak in hushed tones, eyes brimming with tears, of bright visions no words can capture. I feel incredibly privileged to have heard a few of these firsthand testimonies.

We can’t make too much of these subjective experiences, though. They’re elusive, dreamlike – merely the shadow of a suggestion of what the next life may be like. Still, I take some comfort, personally, in observing that, whatever these soul-travelers experienced, there was no terror in it: only a sense of comfort and welcome and peace.

Reflecting on his own impending death, the pseudonymous author of 2 Timothy speaks of his hopes and fears using the common coin of his own culture. He portrays his life as a “libation” – a sacred offering of wine, to be poured out onto the ground, as the Greeks and Roman were wont to do:

“As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” (2 Timothy 4:6-8)

Back in my chemo days – when I was feeling sick as a dog and far from certain Dr. Lerner’s promises of a likely remission would ever come to pass – I wondered if my own life was turning out to be just such a libation.

It’s a powerful image, even though we have to work a bit to translate it into 21st Century terms. Then, as now, it defies reason to upend a perfectly good cup of wine and pour its contents out upon the ground: but sometimes that primitive calculus is the only response that makes sense in face of the absurdity we call “death.”

Surely, we protest, there’s got to be a better way. Surely, God – if the Bible’s descriptions of divine power are true – has the ability to arrange things in some other way for us.

The hard fact is, God chooses not to exercise that ability. Sooner or later, our life-force is bound to run out in rivulets, like that libation-offering, poured upon some unimaginably ancient block of stone.

A libation. That’s what we’ll be, one day.

Poured out. An offering to a God who (we can only hope) is, as the scriptures teach, “gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Psalm 145:8).

If that is so, we will one day be able to affirm, with Paul, that:

“...in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

That’s the sort of thing I’d be inclined to say to you, Christine, by way of summarizing the Christian witness about life and death.

On a more personal note, I’d also like to encourage you to try to step back and get some perspective on the faith-struggles you’re going through right now. A certain amount of angst is to be expected. Strong emotion is understandably part of the experience. Cancer stinks. So does an early death. There’s no way to sugar-coat such hard realities.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you’re feeling angry, as well. Just read through some of those biblical psalms of lament, and you’ll quickly realize you’re not alone in this.

Doubt can be part of the psychic landscape, as well. (Remember, even Jesus went through his own crisis of faith in the Garden of Gethsemane.) You may worry, at times, that you’re losing touch with all the beliefs you once held dear, but that’s simply what dying is like. It’s profoundly disturbing and disorienting (Hollywood cliches about falling gently back on the pillow notwithstanding).

There’s nothing more disturbing nor disorienting in all of life. If - as the Christian faith teaches - death is actually rebirth into a new way of living, then wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect a bit of birth trauma? Just try to keep your eyes upon Jesus, the one whom the letter to the Hebrews calls “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2).

May God be with you.

April 14, 2008 - Encounter with the Gardener

It was a glorious Easter this year. From the spectacular sunrise over the Atlantic at the 6 a.m. Community Sunrise Service, to the festive atmosphere at two well-attended services in our Sanctuary, it was a day to remember.

I decided to preach on a line from John’s Easter story to which I’ve never paid much attention before: “Supposing him to be the gardener, [Mary] said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away’” (John 20:15b).

It’s always struck me as odd that Mary Magdalene, who knew Jesus well, would mistake him for a gardener. Some commentators have speculated that maybe it was still dark enough to make it hard to pick out the details of another’s face. Others have wondered whether Jesus’ resurrection body was sufficiently different from the body he’d walked around in previously that maybe it was hard to make the connection.

And why a gardener, anyway? Sure, it was a garden tomb in which his body had been laid, but that doesn’t explain why John includes this otherwise insignificant detail.

In the sermon, I present the idea that maybe John is subtly trying to make a theological connection between Jesus the gardener and the story of another gardener: God, who set Adam and Eve up in the Garden of Eden, then later barred them from it on account of their disobedience.

From the sermon:

“We’ll never know what was in John’s mind, of course, but it’s certainly worth pondering. Maybe the man Mary looks up and sees, through tear-filled eyes, is the gardener, after all. As our Christian faith teaches, Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity, being – as the Nicene Creed puts it – ‘of one substance with the Father.’ That means it would not be inaccurate to say that the man who calls Mary by name, and whom she embraces, is the very same one who – most reluctantly – expelled Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden. He is also the very same one who, by his death on the cross, has opened the way back to paradise, one day, for those who believe in him, through the forgiveness of sins.

The image of Jesus Christ as the gardener is one that occurs elsewhere in the scriptures. In a famous passage from 1 Corinthians we often read at funerals, the Apostle Paul poses the question, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?”

The answer he gives comes right out of the garden. It’s like a seed planted in the ground, he explains. The seed must crack open and die to its seed-nature, before it takes on the form the gardener truly intends for it:


“So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.” [1 Corinthians 15:42-44]

Paul even goes on, in that passage, to speak of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden:

“The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven. What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.” [15:47-50]

The ‘man of heaven’ – the counterpart to our ‘man of dust’ – is, of course, the Risen Lord, Jesus Christ. When she first glimpsed him, Mary supposed him to be the gardener. She couldn’t have known, in that moment of confusion, how right she was.

If this is true – that Jesus Christ has taken over where God, the planter of the Garden of Eden, left off – then it has something to say to you and me about the sort of impatience we often fall into, as we look around at the mess and incompleteness of the world in which we live. There are weeds among us. There is blight. There are infestations of wriggling insects. From time to time there arises, on the horizon, a dark and seething plague of locusts, that threatens to devour the seedbeds we’ve so carefully tended.

Have faith, says the gardener. Have patience. The seeds are planted. The sun will shine. The soft, spring rains will fall. The growth will come, in the fullness of time.


It’s a sure thing. As sure as the stone rolled away from the doorway of the tomb.”

The Lord is risen. Alleluia!

April 6, 2009 - Looking for Life in All the Wrong Places

Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem is what I preached on yesterday. No surprise there – it was Palm Sunday.

Actually, it’s not a foregone conclusion that a sermon on the Sunday before Easter will be one of the Palm Sunday passages from the Gospels. This past Sunday is also called “Passion Sunday,” so lectionary-minded preachers have the option of expanding their field of vision to include any incident from Jesus’ last week before the crucifixion.

This week I took the traditional approach, looking at John’s version of the triumphal entry (John 12:12-19). Generally, I resist the easy path of harmonizing the various Gospel accounts (by “harmonizing” I mean combining all the details of these different witnesses’ testimony into a single version). Whenever I focus on just one story, treating it as though it were the only account we have, I find it so much richer in meaning.

Examining John’s account, I found myself fixating on verse 17: “So the crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to testify.” Unlike the other Gospel-writers, John sees Jesus’ triumphal entry as the direct outgrowth of Jesus’ greatest miracle, the raising of his friend Lazarus from death. The people waving palms by the roadside were ecstatic because of what Jesus had done for Lazarus. Since waving palms was like waving a national flag, that also says the crowds understood this unprecedented miracle as a sign that Jesus is the hoped-for Messiah.

From the sermon:

“Having heard the good news of the Lazarus miracle, these people are looking for life – but, they’re looking in all the wrong places. The life they’re looking for is very much like the new life of Lazarus: a mere extension of human life. Jesus may have raised Lazarus from the tomb, but he didn’t resurrect him – not in the sense that Jesus himself would soon be resurrected. When Jesus is raised on Easter, he’s raised to life eternal. Lazarus is merely resuscitated: he’s given maybe a decade or two of extended life, after which, he too will die – this time, for good.

By the same token, you know, there are lots of people today putting enormous energy into discovering ways to extend human life. Whether it’s preventing cancer, developing a new open-heart surgery technique or finding a cure for HIV/AIDS, these are all commendable efforts – but, even these pale before the good news of Easter. Easter’s not about resuscitation, such as Lazarus experienced. Easter’s about resurrection: resurrection to a life that’s not merely extended, but eternal!”

As I continue to trek to Dr. Lerner’s office for my monthly port flushes, and less frequently to hospitals for CT or PET scans, I’m very interested in extending my own life. All this, of course, is played out against the backdrop of the Christian promise of eternal life, which is something altogether different.

And that’s what Easter is all about.

April 1, 2009 - A 150th Birthday Party

On Sunday afternoon, I had a small role in the worship service commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Presbytery of Monmouth – the regional governing body of our denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Monmouth Presbytery has administrative responsibility for 47 churches in this part of central New Jersey.

All I did was read a brief scripture lesson, but the Asbury Park Press photographer chose that moment to snap the color photo that graced the front page of our local-news section on Monday. There I was, right in the middle of it.

For those of you blog readers who’ve been wondering what I look like as I’m doing my preacherly thing, here it is:

The church is the Presbyterian Church of Toms River, the largest in the Presbytery. It also happens to be the church in which I grew up, and where I served for a few years in the 1980s as Assistant Pastor.

150 years is a long time. Far longer than any human lifetime. Some of the congregations of the Presbytery are even older. Shrewsbury was founded in 1672. Old Tennent dates back to 1685. The church I serve, Point Pleasant, is a youngster compared to these. It was founded in 1882.

It’s often pointed out that corporations, which the law treats as though they were persons, are immortal. The same can be said, I suppose, of churches.

The preacher for the occasion was Rick Ufford-Chase (a former Moderator of the General Assembly, the highest office in the denomination). He made a lighthearted remark about maybe coming back 50 years from now for the Presbytery’s 200th anniversary. Rick is only 6 or 7 years younger than me, which would put him in his mid-90s on that occasion. I’d be 102.

Chances are, I won’t be around for the bicentennial. I’m not even figuring in the lymphoma as I say that, just the ordinary wear and tear of life (not to mention the actuarial tables for males in our culture). Yet, like a business corporation, the church of Jesus Christ lives on, notwithstanding.

Or, maybe not like a corporation. More like another sort of corpus, or body. The Body of Christ.

Now, that’s immortality.

"Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it."

- 1 Corinthians 12.27