Rev. Alan J. Meenan
Let us pause to give thanks as a grateful nation to the many people who have fallen for love of their home and love of their country. We remember those who have given of themselves to make life, as we understand it, as pleasurable and as wonderful as it is. One could not pay greater tribute than exemplified in the tribute paid by Lawrence Binyon in his poem for the fallen, written on the 21st of September 1914:
They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not worry them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
Even today, we hear daily of our fellow countrymen—most of them incredibly young men and women—who continue to give their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. I invite you to enter into a moment of silence—to pray for those who are serving this country in distant places and at home. Let us pause to give thanks and to remember.
I’m prompted on this very special weekend of the year to speak on an incredibly popular topic: death. It seems appropriate to do that.
Turn in your Bible to Psalm 39. Here the Psalmist is raising deep questions of faith. He is face to face with death and the questions he asks go beyond the realm of rational answers. These questions raise the specter of the human quest for meaning of the brevity and uncertainty of human life. Frankly, these are subjects that most of us do not like to talk about too seriously or for too long.
David was possibly an old man now. I find it fascinating right from the outset that he bites his tongue. He refuses to give vent to his frustrations. He wants to know a lot of answers, but as a believer and follower of God he doesn’t, in any way, want to raise the consciousness of unbelievers who doubt the God whom we love. Still, he longs to ask the questions. It will do us well to realize the great harm that words can do, as the Psalmist does. David doesn’t simply say he is going to bridle his tongue; he’s going to muzzle it and not speak at all, for fear he might say or do something that will be misunderstood.
However, by the time we get to verse 2, David’s determination to be silent is too much for him. David admits “the fire burned” within him and he could not control himself. He could not contain the questions about death and life and living and dying. The questions that often we fear to ask, these questions burn within him and cannot be contained.
Verse 3 states: “My heart grew hot within me as I meditated, as I deliberated.”
To use the old King James Version, “as I mused, the fire burns.”
It’s a good thing to muse. It’s a good thing to think. It’s a good thing to deliberate. It’s a good thing. The prodigal, you remember, never took a step towards home until he sat down and thought.
However, we seem to live in a society that discourages thinking. Television is a wonderful sleep inducer before going to bed. It enables the mind to kind of switch off to a kind of lull period that enables you to go to sleep. Many are preoccupied with amusement today—amusement arcades, amusement parks.
Consider the word amused. If “muse” means to think, then “amuse” means not to think. God wants us to think. God wants us to wrestle with these deep questions of life and death. As we send soldiers into war, it’s a good thing to ask some of these fundamental questions.
David articulates his question in verse 4. “Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life.”
He desires to know how long he has left to live. He recognizes that life is fleeting perhaps, but certainly brief. That comes through as he repeats the idea in verses 4 through 6. David speaks of “…my life’s end”, “…the number of my days”, “…how fleeting is my life”, “…my days [are] a mere hand breath; the span of years is as nothing” “man’s life is but a breath…a mere phantom”.
Human history is less than one click of a clock. It was Shakespeare’s Sparrow in The Tempest who simply said it this way: “We are such stuff as dreams are made of and our little life is rounded with sleep.”
Even if we take it at its very best, the Psalmist tells us that humankind is a mere “breath”, as insubstantial as the wind. Everything about humanity is, in fact, fleeting. There is no permanence. We live in a land of shadows in such a way that we tend to think that the mocking images are substantial, when in fact they are insubstantial. We live in a world of phantoms in this passing scene.
If we could grasp what the Psalmist is attempting to tell us, it would give us a new dimension, perspective, and viewpoint on how to look at life and how to look at death. If what the Psalmist is saying is true, and unquestionably it is, it is more difficult for younger folk to fathom than older folk who understand this all too well. We fret, we fume, and we worry—all for nothing. We pursue shadows while all the time death is pursuing us.
Growing up in Ireland, there was always an unhealthy fascination with death. That’s why wakes are such a big part of Irish society. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle penned it well for Irishmen when he wrote the words:
There’s a keen and grim old huntsman on a horse as white as snow.
Sometimes he’s very swift and sometimes very slow.
But he never is at fault for he always hunts on view,
And he rides without a halt, after you.
The huntsman’s name is Death; his horse’s name is Time.
He is coming
He is coming, as I sit and write this rhyme.
Hark! The evening chime is playing
O’ver the long grey dawn it peals.
Don’t you hear the death-hound baying
at your heels?
You should. It’s sad news for those who build their treasures upon the earth. If one sets their heart to achieve fame or fortune, they will inevitably be disappointed. Even if one is able to accomplish one’s goal, it’s with a sense of ultimate futility.
“He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it,” says verse 6. According to Shakespeare, life is an “insubstantial pageant of a dream… [it is] but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing!”
Matthew Arnold writes in “Rugby Chapel”: Most men eddy about here and there—eat and drink, chatter and love and hate, gather and squander, are raised aloft, are hurl’d in the dust, striving blindly, achieving nothing; and then they die—perish—and no one asks who or what they have been, more than he asks what waves, in the moonlit solitudes mild of the midmost ocean, have swell’d; foam’d for a moment, and gone.
This alone is sure: nothing is sure but that we will die!
Life at best is very brief,
Like the falling of a leaf,
Like the binding of a sheath,
Be in time.
Fairest flowers soon decay,
Youth and beauty pass away,
Oh you have not long to stay,
Be in time.
(Author unknown)
All the things that we believe to be of substance—income, desires, enemies, friends, homes—become the stuff of our lives. We yearn for the sense of security that they may bring us—as if it somehow is going to continue forever. But the Psalmist reminds us that life is limited. It’s not going to last for long. He refers to it as a handbreath. A handbreath is one of the tiniest measurements in ancient Israel. It simply is the breath of a hand. Life is no longer than this.
As to our desires, if we pursue money, verse 6 says that we have no idea who will enjoy that money. Who will enjoy that wealth we’ve heaped up and for which we may have worked so hard for all of our lives? We know not our heirs, for our children die, estates change hands, and strangers -forgetting earlier occupants—call what is ours their own. Now this is deliberately depressing!
I was trained in seminary many years ago to never leave your congregation with bad news. Indeed, the Psalmist comes to our rescue. He tells us simply in these first 6 verses that life is empty without God, but there is a change from verse 6 to 7.
One cannot fully understand the good news unless one understands the bad news. I hope you have gotten the bad news, so that you can fully appreciate what is coming. The transition was made from verse 6 to verse 7. It is only when the Psalmist rises to the mountaintop that he regains a true perspective. Life is short, extremely short—however, what matters above everything else is our relationship with God. If you are to find meaning, purpose, in this morass that we call life it will be found in Him. Life is over before you hardly know it’s begun. Philosophically, logically, one would expect that if there is meaning to be found, it will be found in the purpose of the One who gave life in the first instance.
The first 6 verses, which as I say are depressing, were summed up well by the old hymnist when he wrote: I tried the broken cistern, Lord; But, Ah! The waters failed. E’en as I stooped to drink they fled and mocked me as I wailed. It’s a good summary of the first 6 verses. But the difference now is the life and fellowship with God. The things of the world have left him bankrupt. No philosophy can rise to the challenge of what is the meaning of life and death. Why do we live and die and all the rest of it? Why are there wars and rumors of wars? Why do young men die on the battlefield? He puts his hope and confidence in God alone. The hymnist that I quoted a moment ago continues with another verse: Now none but Christ can satisfy. None other name for me! There’s love and life and lasting joy, Lord Jesus, found in Thee.
The quest for the meaning of life, to understand the uncertainty of it and the brevity of it leads to the important question: what do I look for in life? That’s the question of verse 7, “But now Lord, what do I look for?”
He’s already answered it to some measure. Do I look for wealth or wisdom? Success or victory? No, I look for it in none of those things. He answers the question in terms of renewed commitment.
“My hope is in you.”
Nothing in life is important or reliable unless one’s hope is anchored, to use an old evangelist terminology, “anchored in the innermost sanctuary where God is”. When the Psalmist begins to realize that there is no hope apart from God himself, no answer to the riddle of the enigma of human existence, when he casts his anchor within the veil, he understands—and this is always the way. He understands himself and his own shortcomings, he recognizes that he is a sinner, he longs for healing and forgiveness. So in verse 8, he cries, “Save me from all my transgressions, do not make me the scorn of fools.”
Now while David does not have complete understanding of all the questions in his life—he does know that in the midst of life’s uncertainties, that there is a personal God who is in charge over his life.
He understands this in his repentance, characterized by tears (verse 12). He perceives he is a transient sojourner of the earth. “Hear my prayer, O Lord, listen to my cry for help; be not deaf to my weeping. For I dwell with you as an alien, a stranger, as all my fathers were.”
Psalm 39 reflects the wisdom of old age, which would be good for us to embrace from time to time. I say that because the very end of the Psalm David says, “Look away from me, that I may rejoice again before I depart and am no more.” Those are words of an old man. In our youthful society, there is much to learn from old age. David would have us learn that we are itinerants, that this world is not our home. The old hymnist got it right when he said, “we’re just passing through”. There is no permanence to it. Because, you see, a sojourner in the Old Testament was a person who lived in the land, but had no permanent stake in the land.
The Apostle Peter reminds us that we are all “aliens and strangers in the world” (1 Peter 2:11). If this world is all you have, then you are above all people, most to be pitied. Humankind was made for eternity—that eternity beats within your breath—that there is a whole other world for which we live.
This is life more abundantly—because it gives us a whole new perspective of how to live out our lives. You see that in Hebrews 11, where the writer is eager to tell us that these are the characteristics of the men and women of faith. “And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouth of lions, quenched the fury of flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground… All these people were still living by faith when they died… And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.” (Hebrews 11:32-8,13,16)
My beloved, I do believe that the true value and appreciation of life must be grasped within the full knowledge that life is transitory at best. This is the kind of prayer one might expect from Koheleth the preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes—one of the most depressing books in all of the Bible, and yet, one of the greatest as well. For eleven chapters he simply reiterates his theme in many ways, expounding upon it. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher—everything is vanity. Or to use our common language, emptiness of emptiness—everything in life is empty. Then as he comes to the end of his book, if you’re able to survive the eleven chapters and get into chapter 12, it begins with these glorious words, his great conclusion: “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’” This is not the most popular topic in the world to preach about. We do not like to be reminded that life is bleak.
I remember, as a youngster I was sitting in a room where someone began a sentence by saying, “If you were to die...”
This other voice corrected him. “I’m surprised,” he said, “that no one has yet informed you that you will die.”
You will die. Nothing is certain but this one thing. But you will die. Albert Camus describes death as life’s bad joke. But David declares this: “I want my life to tell the world of God!”
What a tragic thing it would be to reach the point of death only to find that you have never lived at all. Life is but a shadow. Yet as David—recognizing the truth of what we believe Shakespeare says—we hasten to add the words, “Sir Lord, what should I look for? My hope is in you.” The purpose of life and of death is to live for the praise of the glory of the only one who can give us life in all its fullness!
Let us pause to give thanks as a grateful nation to the many people who have fallen for love of their home and love of their country. We remember those who have given of themselves to make life, as we understand it, as pleasurable and as wonderful as it is. One could not pay greater tribute than exemplified in the tribute paid by Lawrence Binyon in his poem for the fallen, written on the 21st of September 1914:
They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not worry them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
Even today, we hear daily of our fellow countrymen—most of them incredibly young men and women—who continue to give their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. I invite you to enter into a moment of silence—to pray for those who are serving this country in distant places and at home. Let us pause to give thanks and to remember.
I’m prompted on this very special weekend of the year to speak on an incredibly popular topic: death. It seems appropriate to do that.
Turn in your Bible to Psalm 39. Here the Psalmist is raising deep questions of faith. He is face to face with death and the questions he asks go beyond the realm of rational answers. These questions raise the specter of the human quest for meaning of the brevity and uncertainty of human life. Frankly, these are subjects that most of us do not like to talk about too seriously or for too long.
David was possibly an old man now. I find it fascinating right from the outset that he bites his tongue. He refuses to give vent to his frustrations. He wants to know a lot of answers, but as a believer and follower of God he doesn’t, in any way, want to raise the consciousness of unbelievers who doubt the God whom we love. Still, he longs to ask the questions. It will do us well to realize the great harm that words can do, as the Psalmist does. David doesn’t simply say he is going to bridle his tongue; he’s going to muzzle it and not speak at all, for fear he might say or do something that will be misunderstood.
However, by the time we get to verse 2, David’s determination to be silent is too much for him. David admits “the fire burned” within him and he could not control himself. He could not contain the questions about death and life and living and dying. The questions that often we fear to ask, these questions burn within him and cannot be contained.
Verse 3 states: “My heart grew hot within me as I meditated, as I deliberated.”
To use the old King James Version, “as I mused, the fire burns.”
It’s a good thing to muse. It’s a good thing to think. It’s a good thing to deliberate. It’s a good thing. The prodigal, you remember, never took a step towards home until he sat down and thought.
However, we seem to live in a society that discourages thinking. Television is a wonderful sleep inducer before going to bed. It enables the mind to kind of switch off to a kind of lull period that enables you to go to sleep. Many are preoccupied with amusement today—amusement arcades, amusement parks.
Consider the word amused. If “muse” means to think, then “amuse” means not to think. God wants us to think. God wants us to wrestle with these deep questions of life and death. As we send soldiers into war, it’s a good thing to ask some of these fundamental questions.
David articulates his question in verse 4. “Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life.”
He desires to know how long he has left to live. He recognizes that life is fleeting perhaps, but certainly brief. That comes through as he repeats the idea in verses 4 through 6. David speaks of “…my life’s end”, “…the number of my days”, “…how fleeting is my life”, “…my days [are] a mere hand breath; the span of years is as nothing” “man’s life is but a breath…a mere phantom”.
Human history is less than one click of a clock. It was Shakespeare’s Sparrow in The Tempest who simply said it this way: “We are such stuff as dreams are made of and our little life is rounded with sleep.”
Even if we take it at its very best, the Psalmist tells us that humankind is a mere “breath”, as insubstantial as the wind. Everything about humanity is, in fact, fleeting. There is no permanence. We live in a land of shadows in such a way that we tend to think that the mocking images are substantial, when in fact they are insubstantial. We live in a world of phantoms in this passing scene.
If we could grasp what the Psalmist is attempting to tell us, it would give us a new dimension, perspective, and viewpoint on how to look at life and how to look at death. If what the Psalmist is saying is true, and unquestionably it is, it is more difficult for younger folk to fathom than older folk who understand this all too well. We fret, we fume, and we worry—all for nothing. We pursue shadows while all the time death is pursuing us.
Growing up in Ireland, there was always an unhealthy fascination with death. That’s why wakes are such a big part of Irish society. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle penned it well for Irishmen when he wrote the words:
There’s a keen and grim old huntsman on a horse as white as snow.
Sometimes he’s very swift and sometimes very slow.
But he never is at fault for he always hunts on view,
And he rides without a halt, after you.
The huntsman’s name is Death; his horse’s name is Time.
He is coming
He is coming, as I sit and write this rhyme.
Hark! The evening chime is playing
O’ver the long grey dawn it peals.
Don’t you hear the death-hound baying
at your heels?
You should. It’s sad news for those who build their treasures upon the earth. If one sets their heart to achieve fame or fortune, they will inevitably be disappointed. Even if one is able to accomplish one’s goal, it’s with a sense of ultimate futility.
“He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it,” says verse 6. According to Shakespeare, life is an “insubstantial pageant of a dream… [it is] but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing!”
Matthew Arnold writes in “Rugby Chapel”: Most men eddy about here and there—eat and drink, chatter and love and hate, gather and squander, are raised aloft, are hurl’d in the dust, striving blindly, achieving nothing; and then they die—perish—and no one asks who or what they have been, more than he asks what waves, in the moonlit solitudes mild of the midmost ocean, have swell’d; foam’d for a moment, and gone.
This alone is sure: nothing is sure but that we will die!
Life at best is very brief,
Like the falling of a leaf,
Like the binding of a sheath,
Be in time.
Fairest flowers soon decay,
Youth and beauty pass away,
Oh you have not long to stay,
Be in time.
(Author unknown)
All the things that we believe to be of substance—income, desires, enemies, friends, homes—become the stuff of our lives. We yearn for the sense of security that they may bring us—as if it somehow is going to continue forever. But the Psalmist reminds us that life is limited. It’s not going to last for long. He refers to it as a handbreath. A handbreath is one of the tiniest measurements in ancient Israel. It simply is the breath of a hand. Life is no longer than this.
As to our desires, if we pursue money, verse 6 says that we have no idea who will enjoy that money. Who will enjoy that wealth we’ve heaped up and for which we may have worked so hard for all of our lives? We know not our heirs, for our children die, estates change hands, and strangers -forgetting earlier occupants—call what is ours their own. Now this is deliberately depressing!
I was trained in seminary many years ago to never leave your congregation with bad news. Indeed, the Psalmist comes to our rescue. He tells us simply in these first 6 verses that life is empty without God, but there is a change from verse 6 to 7.
One cannot fully understand the good news unless one understands the bad news. I hope you have gotten the bad news, so that you can fully appreciate what is coming. The transition was made from verse 6 to verse 7. It is only when the Psalmist rises to the mountaintop that he regains a true perspective. Life is short, extremely short—however, what matters above everything else is our relationship with God. If you are to find meaning, purpose, in this morass that we call life it will be found in Him. Life is over before you hardly know it’s begun. Philosophically, logically, one would expect that if there is meaning to be found, it will be found in the purpose of the One who gave life in the first instance.
The first 6 verses, which as I say are depressing, were summed up well by the old hymnist when he wrote: I tried the broken cistern, Lord; But, Ah! The waters failed. E’en as I stooped to drink they fled and mocked me as I wailed. It’s a good summary of the first 6 verses. But the difference now is the life and fellowship with God. The things of the world have left him bankrupt. No philosophy can rise to the challenge of what is the meaning of life and death. Why do we live and die and all the rest of it? Why are there wars and rumors of wars? Why do young men die on the battlefield? He puts his hope and confidence in God alone. The hymnist that I quoted a moment ago continues with another verse: Now none but Christ can satisfy. None other name for me! There’s love and life and lasting joy, Lord Jesus, found in Thee.
The quest for the meaning of life, to understand the uncertainty of it and the brevity of it leads to the important question: what do I look for in life? That’s the question of verse 7, “But now Lord, what do I look for?”
He’s already answered it to some measure. Do I look for wealth or wisdom? Success or victory? No, I look for it in none of those things. He answers the question in terms of renewed commitment.
“My hope is in you.”
Nothing in life is important or reliable unless one’s hope is anchored, to use an old evangelist terminology, “anchored in the innermost sanctuary where God is”. When the Psalmist begins to realize that there is no hope apart from God himself, no answer to the riddle of the enigma of human existence, when he casts his anchor within the veil, he understands—and this is always the way. He understands himself and his own shortcomings, he recognizes that he is a sinner, he longs for healing and forgiveness. So in verse 8, he cries, “Save me from all my transgressions, do not make me the scorn of fools.”
Now while David does not have complete understanding of all the questions in his life—he does know that in the midst of life’s uncertainties, that there is a personal God who is in charge over his life.
He understands this in his repentance, characterized by tears (verse 12). He perceives he is a transient sojourner of the earth. “Hear my prayer, O Lord, listen to my cry for help; be not deaf to my weeping. For I dwell with you as an alien, a stranger, as all my fathers were.”
Psalm 39 reflects the wisdom of old age, which would be good for us to embrace from time to time. I say that because the very end of the Psalm David says, “Look away from me, that I may rejoice again before I depart and am no more.” Those are words of an old man. In our youthful society, there is much to learn from old age. David would have us learn that we are itinerants, that this world is not our home. The old hymnist got it right when he said, “we’re just passing through”. There is no permanence to it. Because, you see, a sojourner in the Old Testament was a person who lived in the land, but had no permanent stake in the land.
The Apostle Peter reminds us that we are all “aliens and strangers in the world” (1 Peter 2:11). If this world is all you have, then you are above all people, most to be pitied. Humankind was made for eternity—that eternity beats within your breath—that there is a whole other world for which we live.
This is life more abundantly—because it gives us a whole new perspective of how to live out our lives. You see that in Hebrews 11, where the writer is eager to tell us that these are the characteristics of the men and women of faith. “And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouth of lions, quenched the fury of flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground… All these people were still living by faith when they died… And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.” (Hebrews 11:32-8,13,16)
My beloved, I do believe that the true value and appreciation of life must be grasped within the full knowledge that life is transitory at best. This is the kind of prayer one might expect from Koheleth the preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes—one of the most depressing books in all of the Bible, and yet, one of the greatest as well. For eleven chapters he simply reiterates his theme in many ways, expounding upon it. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher—everything is vanity. Or to use our common language, emptiness of emptiness—everything in life is empty. Then as he comes to the end of his book, if you’re able to survive the eleven chapters and get into chapter 12, it begins with these glorious words, his great conclusion: “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’” This is not the most popular topic in the world to preach about. We do not like to be reminded that life is bleak.
I remember, as a youngster I was sitting in a room where someone began a sentence by saying, “If you were to die...”
This other voice corrected him. “I’m surprised,” he said, “that no one has yet informed you that you will die.”
You will die. Nothing is certain but this one thing. But you will die. Albert Camus describes death as life’s bad joke. But David declares this: “I want my life to tell the world of God!”
What a tragic thing it would be to reach the point of death only to find that you have never lived at all. Life is but a shadow. Yet as David—recognizing the truth of what we believe Shakespeare says—we hasten to add the words, “Sir Lord, what should I look for? My hope is in you.” The purpose of life and of death is to live for the praise of the glory of the only one who can give us life in all its fullness!
