“Finishing Well: A Sermon On How A Follower of Jesus
Faces Living and Dying”
By John Eaves
December, 2003
Life is not about us. Life is about Jesus and our witness for Him in this world. It has taken me a lifetime to embrace this fundamental truth in all of its implications. It has also taken the same amount of time to recognize that our witness for Jesus is frequently manifested in our absolute weakest moments rather than when we are at full strength. My weakest moment began this past April. I guess I did find it somewhat strange to wake up from what was to be a routine colonoscopy to remove a polyp to find my family doctor standing there. His office was in another building. Why would he want to meet me when I awoke from my procedure to remove a simple colon polyp? I was soon to learn why he was there. “John, we found a tumor. It looks like cancer.” The GI doctor standing next to him sounded a bit more optimistic. Speaking in a unique Tennessee cowboy dialect, he said, “Not to worry son. We’ll lasso that thang and yank it outta there lickity split. Your gunna be just fine.” That phrase “you will be fine” was never spoken again after that day. Further tests revealed Stage 4 metastatic cancer originating in the colon and simmering undetected for 8 or 9 years. Only recently had it apparently spread to other vital organs. There was never any mention of “cure” either. Rather, I was assigned to a category called “palliative care patient”, which is a nice way of saying that we can try to keep you comfortable and extend your days through chemo treatments.
In some ways, my diagnosis stands against all who thought that life was fair when it came to health. So many of us, believer and non-believer alike, have bought into the unconscious assumption that if we ate right and lived right and took good care of ourselves, we would be rewarded with long life. In some ways, it continues to amaze me how many people think this way. It sounds so plausible, but in reality it is a lie. Why? Because this belief is based on our thinking we have the capacity to control our destiny, and the truth is we have no such control.
All of us have come face to face with death or suffering at one time or another. If you are like most people, you get stumped on an incredibly simple question – “Why?” Such an innocent word, only three letters, yet filled with unresolved anger, bitterness, and confusion. We all want to ask it, and none of us gets the answer we are looking for. I am thankful that I never asked that question, but it is not because I am so spiritual or mature. It is because of a simple sermon I read over 25 years ago by a German pastor named Helmut Thielecke. While pastoring a church in Stuttgart, Germany in 1944, an allied bombing one Saturday night wiped out almost half of his congregation, and heavily damaged the sanctuary in which the church members gathered each week. The next day, a remnant of the congregation met in the bombed out sanctuary. Pushing back the rubble to make a place to sit, the congregation listened to pastor Thielecke deliver one of the most significant sermons in their entire lives. I am paraphrasing here, but I think you will get the message he was trying to convey:
“I know the question many of you are wanting to ask this morning. But I want to remind you that if you ask the wrong question, you will inevitably receive the wrong answer. Today, “Why” is the wrong question to ask. The reason is that at the core of this simple three letter word is an attitude of self-centeredness. The focus is on ourselves, not on God. Life did not go as we anticipated, and we insist on knowing why it did not. The better question to ask in such a situation is “To What End?” That is a question God can answer and can work with, because we are focusing on God rather than ourselves. This is a question He longs to answer for us this morning.”
Some of you this morning are still stuck on the “why” question. You have become embittered, angry, and refuse God’s repeated attempts to lead you through the valley of trial to a place of rest and provision. You have created your own hell of self-pity, and you insist in keeping yourself in this self-imposed state of mind. Come out. Come out, now. Simply ask the right question, and see what God will do by shifting your focus from yourself to Him.
God is so amazing in preparing us for trials and hardships in life. In my case, weeks before I knew anything about cancer, my quiet times were filled with words of admonition and encouragement to stand firm, to allow the Lord to fight our battles, and to trust Him in all things. After my diagnosis, Kay and I were praying together one night. I was shocked by my prayer, because it was like someone else was praying it. I said, “Lord, I know there are a lot of ways we can be a witness for you. We can be a witness in your miracles you perform in our lives; we can be a witness in walking through trials and hardship; we can even be a witness in the way we die.” The next morning, I returned to a favorite passage of mine – Heb. 11:32-12:3. As you know, this chapter is known by biblical scholars as the roll call of faith. It is an attempt by the writer to look over our shoulders and remember all that God has done through his people over the centuries, and His faithfulness to us as His people. What I find fascinating about this passage is that in many ways it is the most realistic view of the Christian life in the Bible. Why? Because it presents life as it really is for a follower of Jesus rather than how we would want it to be – full of ease, prosperity, and blessing.
The first few sentences in the paragraph are predictable. Miracles are performed – the dead raised to life, people delivered from certain death. It is an incredible power encounter with God breaking into human circumstance. Suddenly, the tone changes beginning in the second part of chapter 11, verse 35. God’s people are being openly violated, persecuted, tortured, beaten, and killed for their faith. They are deprived of earthly comforts, disoriented, and destitute. Many die, for no other reason than identifying themselves as servants of God and following His directives. Could it be that we in America have been sold short when it comes to understanding the Christian life in the fullness it represents? Yes, we have. We seek the easy way. We forget that throughout biblical history, trials, hardship, and death are equally a part of our witness to an unbelieving world as healing and deliverance and Divine blessing. This passage unwraps three paths of witness for the follower of Jesus, which we will examine together this morning:
As followers of Jesus, we embrace the miraculous. God loves to work with circumstances with labels like “impossible”, “terminal”, and “hopeless.” In my case, I am very open-handed with God healing me, even this very moment. There is absolutely no question in my mind that He can do it, and I am ready to receive this form of grace. But I don’t demand it. I don’t insist on my way being His way of handling my current circumstance. That is one foolish line of thinking in taking His promises He gave us and forcing His hand to do my bidding. In the same manner, contrary, to a lot of TV teaching on the issue of faith and healing, I also do not think my healing is solely about me and my faith. I do not think Jesus will have a conversation with me in heaven saying, “Gee John, I would have healed you, but your faith quotient was only 48% and you needed a 50 minimum to pass”, or “I would have healed you if you just would have gone to the Benny Henn or Kenneth Hagan healing conference.”
As I read the Scriptures, I notice something striking about Jesus and healing. Roughly half the time, Jesus makes some comment regarding the faith of the person he has healed. But the other times, he just healed people with no pre-condition whatsoever. Today, there is a lot of bad teaching floating around on healing. One particularly devastating teaching is to have a person prayed over, healing claimed, and then nothing more is to be said about the illness. I met such a woman a few months ago. Like me, she had terminal cancer. With tears in her eyes, she recounted how as a mother of five children, she had undergone all kinds of alternate treatments in Mexico, four diets for cancer healing, and a multitude of other advice. “I simply cannot do this anymore”, she said, “because I realize that everything I have tried is all about me. It is about how I am going to take control over my own healing. I just can’t do that anymore. I told God I was at the end of my rope and gave it over to Him.” Do you know what I told her? I said, “That is not the end. It is the beginning. All this time, the Lord has wanted you to place this disease in His hands, not your own.” I also told her that because of the poor teaching she had received on healing that her family was going to be the ones to suffer the most. It will be her kids who say, “Mommy died because we didn’t have enough faith for mommy to be healed.” “Is that the kind of baggage you want to leave on your family?”, I asked. “No”, she said. I thought it was a breakthrough. But several weeks later I learned she was back in Mexico at a clinic for alternate cancer treatments. How simple a transaction it is to put our life in God’s hands, yet how complicated we make it by keeping our hands on the controls.
The right attitude about miracles and God breaking into our lives is simply to trust Him. Too simple for you? Trust is the practical outworking of faith, and Jesus was the first to remind us of this important truth. Do you remember the conversation the disciples had with Jesus about who was the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Jesus drew a child standing close to him in his arms, and said, “Unless you change and become like this child, you will never see the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 18:3). Jesus knew that without a complete reworking of our adult view of faith, we are hopelessly lost. And what is the essence of a child-like faith? Is it not unreserved trust?
Faith has two distinct expressions for the follower of Jesus. The first we can call an “active faith.” This is the one we are most accustomed to, and to which most teaching on healing tends to camp out. It is a tenacious faith, holding on and holding out until God responds. The persistent widow is the poster child of this kind of faith, and Jesus himself uses her in a parable to teach us to persevere in our prayers and to not give up (Lk. 18:1-8).
However, the second biblical expression of faith is equally viable and necessary. It is a “resting faith”; a faith that knows that it knows that it knows. It is the faith we see expressed in Dan 3:17, 18 when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendnego said to the king of Babylon, “God can deliver us from you. But even if He doesn’t, we will not serve your gods.” It is the faith credited as righteousness to Abraham when he believed God for a son in his old age (Gen. 15:6). This is the faith God has imparted into my life. I am resting in His daily provision, never insisting on things going my way, but His. It is a yielded life, a surrendered life, which ultimately becomes a transformed life (Rm. 8:28, 29).
To those here this morning who are not sick or suffering, how does God intend to use you as a member of the Body of Christ to minister to those in need? To the terminally ill, words like, “If there is anything I can do …” have absolutely zero effect … Nada …Zippo. An offer to do anything is an offer to do nothing, and we who are sick know it better than you who are well. Fortunately, there is a biblical alternative. Do you remember the story of the paralytic in Mark 2:1-5? His friends had brought him to Jesus to be healed, but the crowd was simply too large to get him close. Instead of giving up, they hoisted him up on the roof, tore a big hole in it, and lowered their friend in front of Jesus. Do you know what Jesus did? He commended the faith of the paralytic’s friends! These stretcher-bearers made sure their friend was kept in front of Jesus through their persevering efforts. It reminds me of the time I was in Uganda in the most remote part of that country. On a mountain opposite us, I saw a line of people, perhaps twenty-five or thirty. In front of them was a stretcher, and every few minutes, the procession would stop, and the stretcher-bearers would rotate to the back of the line and a fresh set of bodies would take up the burden. They were taking their friend to the clinic 20 miles away, but they were only able to do so when the village came together to help.
God wants us to be stretcher-bearers for one another. I think this is exactly what Paul had in mind when he said, “Bear one another’s burdens, and fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2). I don’t have to worry about my healing, because God has given me wonderful stretcher-bearers in the Body of Christ to carry my needs before Him every day. This is how the Body of Christ works. Anything less is counterfeit community. It is a costly service, but genuine through and through. As Arthur McGill states in his book Suffering: A Test of Theological Method:
“ A man only begins to love as Jesus commands when he gives out of what is essential to him, out of what he cannot afford. For Jesus, it is the deliberate and uninhibited willingness to expend oneself for another that constitutes love. ”
The second witness we have in this world is through trials and hardship. God delivers His people in two ways: He delivers us from our trials, and He delivers us through our trials. The interesting thing is we do not have a choice as to which path we travel. Have you ever noticed that when you get sick, or face hardships of one kind or another, the focal point of attention seems to rest on yourself? One of the great lessons I learned through my illness is that if we are listening closely, God frequently calls us to come alongside others who are facing the same circumstance we are. I call it “incarnational illness.” God deliberately intersects our lives with the hurting when we hurt. Why does He do this? Because He knows that weakness is the perfect soil for growing dependence in Him. Stripped of our own gifts and resources, we are perfectly positioned to trust Him.
You might be surprised to hear this, but I did not take chemotherapy because I thought it would help me. I had resolved in my heart to never suffer twice for the same disease. When chemo treatments became more painful than the cancer that was to be my signal to stop. The day before my first treatment, I was walking and praying, and I distinctly sensed the Lord saying in my conscience, “This chemo is not about you. I want to get you closer to other cancer patients I want you to meet.” The next day, my chemo nurse turned out to be a wonderful believer. She introduced me to three other men who had the exact diagnosis as I did. Chemo treatment centers can be unusual places. Some people want to hide. Others just want to get it over with and get home. For me, the treatment center became my new congregation. Rather than hide behind curtains, we circled our chairs and began to talk. When I learned to unhook my infusion pump and let it run on batteries, I was able to meet new friends every time I went in for treatment.
Contrary to popular belief, God does not place us on the sidelines of life when we walk through hardship. Rather, he takes us to the center of the playing field, so the world can watch and observe His faithfulness in our lives. This has been true throughout biblical history. Whenever God called his people into the wilderness, He always met them with His full provision. Think back to Abraham, Moses, the people of Israel, the prophets, and Jesus. They all had wilderness experiences. What is the wilderness? It is a literal place of danger and vulnerability. Where in the wilderness will we find food and water? Where will we find shelter? What about the wild animals, the bandits, and the specter of being lost? The wilderness is a real place and genuinely life-threatening. Yet over and over again, God provides for His people in our wilderness experience, without exception. What strength and confidence this gives us. We never enter the wilderness without His full provision of grace. This is precisely why Paul was able to say:
“I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or want. I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.” (Phil. 4:11-13)
Godly contentment is birthed out of unreserved trust. God’s track record in the wilderness not only should encourage us, but also empower us to walk through the trials we face, because we are assured that God is indeed bigger than the trials we face.
The third witness for a follower of Jesus from our test in Hebrews is the way we die. Whether we talk about cancer or dying, the real issue for Christians and non-Christians is FEAR. Recently, I was speaking in a church and asked the congregation to say the word “cancer” out loud. I then asked them to say “death.” You would not believe it, but less than 40% of the congregation could even speak out the words. You would think there was some kind of bad ju-ju by just saying it out loud, like we were drawing attention to it and we would somehow get sucked into the consequences of these words. In reflecting on the issue of fear, Rebecca Pippert says in her recent book A Heart For God:
“The silver lining in the dark cloud of fear is that fear pushes us to decide our view of reality. What do I truly believe about the universe? Am I alone in this battle, or is there a God who overrules human affairs? Does my deliverance depend upon human prowess and things I can see, or does the final outcome depend upon a massive resource beyond my own – the powerful, faithful, living God?” (p.28)
All things die, and there is not a human being alive who does not face the issue of death and dying at some point in his or her life. Some face it early on, while others find diversions that will take them into their final hours in trying to avoid the issue entirely. For the follower of Jesus, fear of death should be a non-issue. That bears repeating – our fear of death should be a non-issue. This may sound totally unrealistic for you as you struggle with the idea of dying. But when you boil it down, we are simply aligning what we claim to believe as a Christian with how we behave in daily life. How are we supposed to believe and behave regarding the issue of dying? The writer of Hebrews says it best:
“Since we as God’s children have flesh and blood, he (Jesus) shared in our humanity so that by His death He might destroy the one who holds the power of death—that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held hostage by their fear of death.” (Heb. 2:14, 15)
Why should we not fear death? Because Jesus has freed us from that fear! Having been held hostage to this fear all of our lives, we forget that through Jesus’ death, we are, among other things, freed from the fear of dying. We see Jesus affirm this truth when He looked straight into Martha’s eyes, and said in Jn. 11:25, “ Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies …” Will you allow Jesus to look you in the eyes through your imagination and receive this promised freedom? I want nothing more than for Him to free you from this curse. Once you are freed, believe me, you will know it! You feel like Mel Gibson in the movie “Braveheart.” Gibson, playing the character of William Wallace, had just defeated the English in an impossible, against-all odds battle. With blood-spattered body, Gibson thrust his sword into the air and gave what I consider to be the most piercing, gut-busting, deep soul yells of victory I have ever witnessed. The scene is so powerful; it brings tears to my eyes every time I watch that film. This is the true power of the Gospel. It is something already given, but needs to be claimed.
Freedom from the fear of dying does interesting things to you. When I returned from New York City to Nashville after receiving my terminal cancer diagnosis, I spent the first three weeks preparing to die. As weird as this sounds, I think it is one of the greatest gifts we can give to our family in preparing for our own death. Why stick them with second guessing and arranging the details at the most tender and vulnerable time of grieving? Kay and I reviewed our financial situation and made adjustments to our wills with our financial planner and attorney. We signed over car titles and property. I contacted the funeral director and filled out all of the necessary paperwork ahead of time. I even wrote my own memorial service ad distributed it to those participating in the service. Once I completed the task of preparing to die, I was totally freed up to live and to focus on the ministry God had given to me.
What are your plans for dying? Do you have anything formed in your mind yet? Personally, I am a cremation man when it comes to dealing with the remains of my body. I like the idea of a low impact exit – ashes to ashes, and the price is an incredible bargain over traditional burials. Others have strongly disagreed with me. One man came up to me after speaking in a local church one Sunday and said cremation was a pagan ritual and burial was the only biblical option. I responded by saying, “In most states, to get buried you must be embalmed. So where do you think embalming the body came from? Are you telling me the Egyptians have a distinctive Christian view of proper burial techniques?”
Before you launch a counter-defense to that remark, consider this. Why is it that we as Americans are so impatient with every aspect of life except dying? Why are are so insistent on prolonging the death process with embalming, “waterproof” vaults, and steel reinforced caskets, only to come to the same state of decomposition as someone who is cremated? Certainly it cannot be because our bodies are “temples” of the Holy Spirit and we must revere them in death. Just look at someone in a casket for viewing in a funeral home and tell me that the one you are gazing at in death is the same person in life. The spirit of that person is not at home, and what you are looking at is a shell of a once former glory. Another person insisted that God needs a body to resurrect into our new bodies. I figure that if He made me out of the dust of the earth the first time, He can do it a second time. Or is he stumped with such an assignment? Hardly. The real issue for Americans and death is control. We are so presumptuous about our mortality; we actually believe it is within our capacity to remain in control to the very end. As with life, we want death on our terms. Almost unbelievable to comprehend, but nonetheless true.
The purpose of my inquiry into these issues is not to convince you of my point of view. I am perfectly at peace with your own conscience leading you in such matters. What is important is that you not fear the process – any part of it. The only way you know you are free from the fear of death is if you can stare it in the face and not flinch. Jesus calls His followers to live our lives through the eyes of eternity rather than through our mortality.
This brings us to the final verses of our text in Hebrews, found in chapter 12, verses 1 and 2:
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith…”
God is calling us today to remember the race we are running. It is a race that stretches into eternity, and it is only run successfully when we fix our eyes in the right direction – on Jesus. God does not intend for us to face life alone. Whether we experience His miracles of deliverance, endure hardship and trials, or even face death, we remain, now and forevermore, His witnesses. This is the essence of our life in Him.
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Died February 22, 2004 of cancer in Nashville, TN. Born in Ashland, KY, Eaves attended Western Kentucky University, where he received B.A. and M.A. degrees in communication and religious studies. While studying at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, he helped establish and co-pastor a new church in Salem, MA. In 1980, he began a 24 year career serving the physical, social and spiritual needs of international students and scholars. Serving international students at Harvard and MIT, he later moved his family to the Philippines in 1989, to assist returning international students establish an outreach to internationals in that country. Relocating to Nashville, TN in 1990, John and his wife Kay initiated a city-wide outreach among the 3,400 international students and scholars. The program increased in size by 1996 to include 38 Nashville area participating churches, with 560 community volunteers. Outreaches included host family programs, conversational English and a variety of international student/spouse programs. Rev. Eaves has served in local, regional and national leadership positions with NAFSA: Association of International Educators since 1984. He currently sits on the Board of Directors for Franklin House Discipleship Study Center and Residential Research Library, The Uganda Committee of Nashville and Hephzibah House in New York City. He was Executive Director of InterFACE Ministries from 1998 - present, and Director of Hephzibah House from 2001 - 2003. An exceptional trainer in cross-cultural communication skills, Rev. Eaves also published numerous manuals and articles relating to the field of international student ministry, organizing community volunteers and cultural specific study materials for internationals. He is survived by his wife, Kay; sons, Jesse, Joshua and Matthew, and his brother, Willard (Buzz) Eaves, Jr..