Grace and peace to you from God…
One of my all time favorite movie is Groundhog Day. It is a comedy that raises lots of questions. Bill Murray is the star and he is in Punxsutawney, PA for the big Groundhog Day events. He is a reporter. The funny thing is that he gets stuck in time. He lives and relives and relives this same day hundreds of time. The day is exactly the same day too and he is the only one in the town who is aware that it is the same day. Before long he can predict everything that is going to happen but he and he alone is the only person in the show who has the freedom to change events.
For a while, he starts to enjoy his being stuck in time. Life is predictable, relaxing, no surprises. He decides to take piano lessons and acquires concert master skills. But then his mood changes, he gets angry and decides that he’d rather be dead – so he crashes his car to kill himself only to wake up the next morning in the same day.
The story raises some interesting questions about what eternity means. If eternity means timelessness – being in an eternal now – will being eternal drive us crazy like it did Bill Murray?
What if being eternal – as in what we will be like in the resurrection from death – means that we have the same body we now have – with backaches, arthritis and the wrinkles that the years have brought? One of my favorite theologians Joseph Sittler once wrote “If being eternal means that I have to haul my present carcass round endlessly, then please let me simply be dead. That idea has no appeal at all.”
But we get a bit of a glimpse into God’s intention for us and our bodies at the tail end of tonight’s lesson. St Paul writes: “So we do no lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day – for this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” Those are worlds to pin your hopes on, beautiful words.
God is never finished with you. You are always a work in progress. When you feel despair because your body is caving in, or you are not making progress on your body re-shaping campaign, or old, nasty bad habits still direct your behavior even though you work hard to change – don’t give up. “Do not lose heart,” St Paul says. Our sense of time can not be compared to the eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison that God is preparing for us.
When we were in Africa we had an orange tree that bore fruit all year. When you walked by it, it always smelled wonderful - either from the orange blossoms or the ripening citrus. That is what God means by eternal – constantly producing fruit, perpetually giving life, always blossoming and flourishing.
To be eternal like God means to be able to transcend limits. You’ll master the guitar or classical Italian, take up Gaelic, or learn to play the piano like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. You will have an ocean of time, a galaxy of time to frolic and to play in because that is what God invites us into in the resurrection to eternal life.
In the book of Revelations, St. John gives us a hint, a glimpse of the wonder that we will see. In chapter 21, he writes. “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine in it, for the Glory of God is its light and its lamp is the lamb.” “What is glory like?” How can you explain glory? A young confirmand once asked me. I fumbled around for a while but always came back to nature. I said. Well Jesus said once “Consider the lilies of field. They neither sow nor reap, yet not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these.” Whatever else glory might be – it is going to be shiny!
In this passage, just quoted from Revelation, heaven is not a garden like the Garden of Eden, it is a city like Jerusalem – the biggest city known to the Jews. There is no temple in it because there will be no special place of worship because worship will be going on in every corner of heaven – day and night. In fact threw ill be no day and night because Christ’s glory, God’s glory will illuminate every shadow.
In Alaska, they have the shortest growing season on earth. Yet because they are so far north, the summer sun shines 22 hours a day – so in effect they get two days for one. Plants, vegetable and flowers grow to enormous sizes. The prizewinning cabbage at the State Fair in Fairbanks weighed nearly 100lbs. When the glory of the Lord shines on you, you will produce fruits of the Spirit in gigantic proportions too.
So, as Paul says, “Do not lose heart…”. Your inner nature is being reviewed every day, so relax. Enjoy your ride through life - God in Christ accompanies you every step of the way.
In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Who We Are