The Good Life
I Timothy 6:17-19
October 27, 2019
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
“Take hold of the true life,” this letter says. A few verses earlier, it said “take hold of the eternal life to which you were called.” This passage is not about a futuristic goal. It is not about a heavenly existence after we die. This passage is about how people who follow Jesus are to relate to other people and to money and possessions in the here and now.
The Greek word that is translated “take hold” means “take hold of, grasp, catch, sometimes with violence.”[1] This passage is about seizing the true life, the best life here on earth.
The Harper Collins Dictionary describes the good life as “living in comfort and luxury with few problems or worries.” The good life as the world understands it, the pursuit of ease and pleasure, is not the true life, the best life understood by the author of this letter. As one scholar reflects, “Living the good life and living a good life pull in opposite directions. One cannot serve both God and wealth.”[2]
Living a good life seems to begin with putting one’s trust in God and allowing that trust to shape everything else, including our attitudes towards money and possessions. Many of those in the early church were materially poor. Those who were rich were strongly encouraged to share. Sharing is at the heart of our faith. It is the demonstration of the self-denial Jesus described when he said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up the cross and follow me.” The mission and ministry that Jesus left in the hands of his disciples depends on the financial resources of those willing to share them. So, we read that those who have wealth “are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous and ready to share.”
Every once in a while there is a human experience or interaction that captures my imagination. Every once in a while, we humans get it right and the kingdom of God among us becomes bold and visible, and the rest of us bear witness to the life that is really life.
I’m thinking today of what happened in Gander, Newfoundland in September 2001. Many of you know this story. I’ve been talking about it recently with some of you.[3] Whether you hear it today for the first time or it is already very familiar, I invite you to listen to it as a parable, a real-life application of the instructions in this letter, about grasping the life that is truly life.
On September 11, 2001, after three commercial airlines had been turned into weapons of mass destruction, American air space was abruptly closed. Flights were cancelled all over the world. But hundreds of planes were still in the air bound for airports across the nation. Those flights had to be diverted. Many planes landed in unanticipated places. They landed in several Canadian cities. Thirty-eight planes were making routine flights from places like London and Paris, Dublin and Stuttgart to places like Houston, New York, Charlotte and Nashville when they were ordered to land in Gander, Newfoundland. There was so much fear and anguish that day. Fear could have driven everything that came next, but it didn’t.
The planes landed and parked on the tarmac with some 6700 passengers on board. That’s almost as many people as live in Gander. At first, they thought that US airspace would re-open soon, so no one was allowed to get off. Everyone stayed on the planes on the runways. Imagine that reality. You’ve already been on the plane for hours flying over the ocean and now you’ve landed in an unknown place for reasons that no one is telling you and they won’t let you off the plane. For hours. When they finally did let people off, each plane deboarded in order. Some folks were trapped on their planes for almost a day. For claustrophobic people, that’s your worst nightmare come true. And for people addicted to nicotine too. One of the first things ways that Gander cared for the passengers was by emptying the pharmacies of all the nicotine gum and ferrying it out to the planes.
The fear must have been palpable. People feeling trapped on the planes. People at the airport wondering just exactly who was out there on the runway. No one knew how many more terrorists might still be part of the plot for the day. What if they were on these planes? After they landed, at first five of the 38 planes didn’t respond to hails from the control tower. What if they weren’t responding because something terrible was happening on those planes? Fear could have ruled the day, but it didn’t.
What happened instead is that the people of Gander and several other towns recognized that the people on the planes were going to need lots and lots of help. By the time the passengers were allowed off the planes, Gander had mobilized to provide for them. They closed all high schools, meeting halls, lodges, and any other large gathering places. They converted all these facilities to mass lodging areas for all the stranded travelers. The local radio station ran public service announcements asking for donation of food, spare bedding, extra clothes, anything the passengers might need. At the community center, the line of cars stretched for two miles as people brought sheets and blankets and pillows from this homes. Nothing was labelled with the owner’s names. Later a passenger asked a local woman how people would ever get their own sheets and towels back. The woman said, “It doesn’t matter.”
The town’s bus drivers were on strike, in the middle of negotiations with city officials. But, when they learned that almost 7,000 people had to be transported from the airport to various shelters within a 40-mile area, they put down their picket signs and got behind the wheels of the buses.
On those planes were people from about 100 countries. They included those who didn’t speak English and people who needed a Kosher kitchen and two children who had been on their way to Disney World through the Make-A-Wish foundation. There were parents bringing home a daughter they had just adopted from Kazakhstan, who were also anxious to get home to where the grandparents and older sibling were waiting. There were people of Middle Eastern origins who was as angry and outraged by the attacks as everyone else. The passengers came from all walks of life, spanning the spectrum of religious and political outlooks. They included the frantic parents of a NYC firefighter, whose whereabouts were unknown for the duration of their time in Gander, and a man from London and a woman from Houston who fell in love in Gander and got married the next year, and a gay couple who worried about whether a small town in Canada would welcome them. It did.
The people of Gander cooked. A lot. Grocery store shelves went bare. The town’s hockey ring became the world’s largest refrigerator. Pharmacists worked overtime to fill prescriptions for passengers whose medicines were stuck on the planes in their checked luggage. Elderly passengers and others were offered beds in private homes. Some home owners did laundry all night long and left their doors unlocked with an open invitation to plane people to come in and take showers. A family that lived across from a 24-hour urgent care took in a woman who was 33-weeks pregnant. Everyone who needed it had access to computers for e-mail and telephones to call home and tell loved ones they were safe. The details of how the town responded to meet the physical and emotional and spiritual needs of all these guests go on and on.
I’m sure the people of Gander are like people everywhere. They can be cranky and self-centered, guided by greed or ambition or fear, but when the need arose, they rose above all of that. For a few very intense days, they recognized and attended to what really mattered. They offered compassion and hospitality, generosity and care. For those few intense days, they took hold of the life that really is life. They were, in the words of our letter, “rich in good works, generous and ready to share.”
Every once in a while, we humans get it right and the kingdom of God among us becomes bold and visible. It happens here too. It happened last month when you heard about 3 Karen families who lost their homes and everything else in a fire. You gave $1500 plus clothing and furniture and household goods to help them start again. It happened last week, when together we celebrated the life of Audrey Ford with laughter and tears and wonderful music and a feast shared with friends. It happens in big and small ways in what we do as individuals and what we do as a community.
Hospitality, compassion, generosity—these are words that describe the people of Gander and Emmanuel. It is who we are and who we want to be. The true value of our wealth is not to accumulate possessions so we can live in luxury with no worries. But if we have wealth, it can enable generosity. As we said last week, our hearts and our treasure go together. As we look out at the world, as our hearts go out to the needs of the world, we can direct our treasure to follow.
This community of faith wants what God wants for the world. We want kindness and justice and sharing of resources so that everyone has enough. We seek to embody Christ in this place, among these people. We don’t do it perfectly, not by a long shot. But we are practicing to get it right.
This week you should receive a letter in advance of Pledge Sunday next week. If you think you are not on the mailing list and you want to be, please drop your address into the offering plate or call the church office tomorrow. This is the time of year when we ask ourselves to make a financial commitment for the next year. It’s a commitment we make to God. We don’t give to support the budget. We give to God, through the ministry and mission of this church, because within this congregation, we experience the fullness of the love of God. In this congregation, we find a place to stand, trusting in God more than any of the other trappings of the good life the world supposedly offers. This body of faith helps us to identify a courageous vision fueled by love and not by fear. And so we will become rich in good deeds, generous and ready to share, so that we may take hold of what really matters and seize the life that truly is life. Amen.
[1] Stephanie Mar Smith in Feasting on the Word Year C, Volume 4, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010) p. 110.
[2] Tom Long, Matthew: Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997 ) p. 75.
[3] The summary of the events at Gander related in this sermon are based on my reading of The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede, published by HarperCollins, New York, 2002.