The Sacraments of Life (1)

 

I’ve been thinking about the sacraments of life.  I’ll be going to see Jesus soon, now whether that is today or ten or twenty years from now, I have no idea, but for sure I am closer to being in His Presence today than I was yesterday.

This is an exciting thought to me, because you see He is truly my Friend and I trust Him with my life…and with my death. What a fool I would be not to trust Him. 

When I pastored the First Congregational Church of Becket, MA, I used to walk through the cemetery on the church grounds and ponder the tombstones. I would read the names and look at the dash between the dates and wonder what the dash represented. If I could see into the “-” what would I see? If the dash were a movie, how would it unfold? 

We live in a community (to use the world loosely) of mostly retired people, and I am puzzled that they haven’t yet figured out that they are going to die soon and that many of the things they have thought so important all of their lives are not only not really important, but that in many cases are inimical to their welfare. If you were at an airport preparing to board a plane, wouldn’t you want to know the plane’s destination? 

Jesus has given me, has given Vickie and me, many sacraments over the years. Certainly our gravitational sacrament is marriage. Peter writes that husbands and wives are “heirs together of the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7). This concept of being “heirs together” or “joint heirs” is a legal concept we have to this day in English common law. We find the same language in Romans 8:17 where we see that we are “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” This idea of being “coheirs” or “fellow heirs” or “joint heirs” (all the same Greek word) means that we share fully and jointly, that what we receive cannot be divided. 

If you are married and have ever purchased real estate, depending on the state you are in you likely took title either as “tenants by the entirety” or as “joint tenants with the right of survivorship,” these are legal terms which in essence mean that you are joint heirs. Interestingly, the term “tenants by the entirety,” which can only be used of a husband and wife, carries with it the doctrine that a husband and wife are one person…certainly a Biblical understanding.

The recognition that we are joint heirs has been integral to our marriage, for we’ve realized that we cannot let “stuff” pollute our relationship. Yes, of course we’ve had our stupid and not-so-stupid disagreements; yes, we’ve gotten angry; but when these things have happened we haven’t excused them and we’ve realized the danger. In the days before cell phones, if we had a tiff before leaving for work, we couldn’t wait to get to our respective jobs so we could call and say, “I’m sorry.” 

Peter tells us that if husbands and wives have a messed-up relationship that their “prayers will be hindered.” That is, if I can’t talk to my wife then I can’t talk to Jesus – pretty serious, don’t you think? If we wouldn’t put rat poison into our water and then drink it, why do we poison our marriages and then wonder what happened? 

When Vickie and I talk about our lives, our marriage, a sacrament we always talk about is friendship. We have been blessed to have wonderful friends, some have gone before us, some we’ve lost touch with, some are still with us. Some of our friends are family, an especially sacred sacrament, which is to say that some of our family are friends. 

Our jobs have been sacramental. Our Lord Jesus has placed us both in jobs in which we’ve had wonderful relationships and have been able to serve others, and we’ve had the blessing of working together. An especially wonderful time is when she was CFO and I was COO of a firm; we worked for a wonderful man and had a wonderful team around us. 

Our vacations have been sacramental. Over the decades we have spent many weeks in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and often that has included friends and family whom we’ve invited to spend time with us. We’ve had folks from Massachusetts, Virginia, North Carolina, Iowa, and Maryland vacation with us over the years, from Corolla to Waves, from the north to the south in the Outer Banks. One year we had three groups in one week; one from Iowa, another from North Carolina, and another from Virginia. It was perhaps the worst weather we’d ever had, but it was one of our best weeks.

Our Thanksgivings have been sacramental. O my, where to begin? We’ve had men and women from Australia, Belize, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Germany, Greece, Spain, England, and other parts of the world come together around turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, and so much more. One year we had people in and out of our home from Thursday through Sunday, some were sleeping on the floor. When the last one left Sunday afternoon I turned the kitchen faucet on and found that the well had finally run temporarily dry – but it didn’t happen until our last guest had left! 

One Thanksgiving in Virginia, a West Pont cadet from Belize played his bagpipes in our front yard (he was in the West Point pipe corps). On another Thanksgiving in Massachusetts, north of Boston, after the last guest had left Vickie and I discovered that we’d given all the leftover turkey away without knowing it – no turkey sandwiches that year!

That was also the year that when cleaning the oven, it got so smokey that Darby, our Lab-Shepherd mix, ran out of the house and refused to come back in until the air inside was clear. 

And speaking of Darby, our dogs have been sacramental to us, they’ve shared our ups and downs, our joys and some tragedies. Chris Ann (Cocker Spaniel), Mitzi (likely a Border Collie mix, but since a rescue from the streets of Richmond we don’t really know), Darby (another rescue, “Mommy’s dog”), Lina (a Basset mix), and dear Lily, our Boder Collie, dear sweet Lily. 

Well, these are some of the sacraments in my life…what about you?

What are you thankful for? Who are you thankful for?