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The Bucket List

Sermon by Rev. Doug Pratt—November 2, 2008
 

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At the beginning of the 2007 film The Bucket List, two strangers find themselves thrown together as hospital roommates. Jack Nicholson is a white billionaire real estate developer; Morgan Freeman is a blue-collar auto mechanic. They have nothing in common, except that they’re both battling deadly cancer. As we get to know them, we see how different their lives have been. Nicholson is loved by no one—he has alienated his ex-wives, his kids, and all his business associates. Freeman is deeply loved by his wife, children and many friends—who are already beginning to grieve his impending death. Nicholson is an atheist and cynic; Freeman is a man of quiet faith in God.

As both are nearing their discharge from the hospital, each having been told by their doctor that they have a year or less to live, they get to talking about how to spend their final days. And Nicholson presses Freeman to develop their “bucket list”—the things they want to do before they “kick the bucket.” The list is wild: filled with skydiving and exotic travel and insane risk-taking. Nicholson has more money than he can possibly spend, so he foots the whole bill. Freeman goes along for the ride to provide companionship (probably because he has discovered a camaraderie with his new friend and senses that he is the only person Nicholson wants to be with). The underlying desperate attitude of Jack Nicholson’s character: If I’m going to die soon, I want to go out by grabbing for every last moment of experience I can have, before it’s all snatched from me. But Morgan Freeman’s attitude of faith, and his acceptance of death, begins to bring a change inside of Jack Nicholson. And when Freeman’s final moment comes, we can see that Nicholson is re-thinking everything. It’s a thought-provoking film that causes us to reflect on how we would each handle it, if we were told we had a terminal illness and a limited time left on earth.

The Bible faces the reality of death with greater clarity and insight than any other book ever written or movie ever made. And it offers to us a powerful perspective on facing the end of life. When we come to the moment of our final breath, Scripture tells us, what will matter most to us is not (1) how many toys we’ve accumulated, or (2) how much is in our mutual funds, or (3) how many lines of reference we have about ourselves on Google, or (4) how many experiences we’ve crossed off our “Bucket List.”

The only thing that will matter, at that moment and for the rest of eternity, is whether or not we have opened our hearts to receive the grace of God and claimed Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord. I am not the judge of any man or woman, and I don’t profess to know the inner condition of anyone else’s heart. That’s why I could never say for certain if someone has gone into eternity without the Lord. But there are enough hints and indications in scripture that whatever the condition is of those who have shut God out of their lives, it’s not worth the risk to experience it. When John 3:16 tells us that “whoever believes in [Christ] will not perish,” we don’t want to find out personally what “perish” might mean. That’s why we unapologetically appeal to all to be sure to not refuse the mercy of God offered to you today.

But my focus this morning is to speak clearly to those here who have made that wisest and most prudent of all decisions. If your Bucket List included “Receive Jesus Christ as my Savior” and you’ve already checked it off, then listen as I share what your Lord has said about what awaits you. Our Scripture text for this morning is from chapter 8 of the Gospel of John, one of the biographies of Christ. In the midst of one of the most heated debates and arguments ever recorded—a public stare-down crackling with so much tension it makes the political debates held this fall between McCain and Obama look like afternoon tea parties—Jesus makes one of the most stunning, shocking and outrageous claims ever heard:

I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. (John 8:51)

And if that weren’t enough to make your jaw drop open in surprise, listen to these words from John chapter 11, which were spoken by Jesus at the funeral of a prominent citizen named Lazarus:

I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. (John 11:25-26)

How can Jesus say this? Is He insane? The biggest lunatic who ever walked around? Or is He lying to us? What does He mean in promising us that if we trust in Him we “will never die”?

This was such an outrageous thing to say that the reaction of the enemies of Jesus, the religious and political establishment of His day, was to immediately set in motion the conspiracy that resulted in His murder on the cross not long afterwards. They were furious with Him, offended by Him, and also scared out of their sandals by Him! Because if what He said was true, then their only hope lay in humbling themselves before Him. And their pride and their egos would never allow them to do that.

There are people to this day who can’t bring themselves to the point of humility and acceptance and faith. Like Jack Nicholson in the movie, they’re trying to fill their days with a frantic chasing after successes and things and pleasures that will ultimately let them down. But there are also many today, including a large number of you in this room, who have already made that step of faith. You have placed your soul and your eternal destiny in the hands of the Man who made this dramatic promise. You are trusting that He can deliver on His promise that you will “never see death.”

So what does it mean to you and to me? Christian author and philosopher Dallas Willard has offered a profound idea to us. One day, because of your faith in Jesus, you will step through from this world to the next. It will be like passing through a membrane, an invisible barrier, from this existence to a different and greater one. When Jesus says in John 8, “If anyone keeps my word, he will never see death,” it means we will not really experience it. It may even take us awhile to realize that we’re actually dead in our bodies, because our spirits—our true selves—will still be functioning. The sensation of pain will be instantly gone.

This is a profound mystery. The smartest scientists in the world can’t reveal to us what lies on the other side of death, because we have no human instruments to measure it. But one day we will all discover it for ourselves, and then we’ll know. Jesus, the only person who has gone into death and then come back again, stakes His honor and trustworthiness and credibility on this statement: “If anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”

So what is it like for those we love who have already passed through that barrier? Can they see what we’re doing, and are they aware of us here on earth? Do they worry about us here? Dallas Willard says:

I do believe that people who have gone on know what is happening with us. In fact, they know so much more than we do about everything. And they don’t worry about us, because they can see it all from God’s eternal perspective, and they already know how things will work out for us.

We have all spent every moment of our earthly lives locked into this limited world of three dimensions, of materiality and matter, of time and the sequence of hours and minutes and seconds. It’s impossible for us to really grasp what the life of an eternal, invisible, unlimited spiritual being like God might be. The images of poets and artists don’t really help, because they’re just guessing—the same as we are.

I prefer to not spend my time worrying and puzzling over what eternity is like. It’ll all be clear some day soon. Instead, I want to focus on my one-item Bucket List. I may or may not be able to acquire all the things I’d like to have; I may or may not achieve all the career success I desire; I may or may not experience all the travel and adventures and thrills that I could imagine. But it won’t matter then! As long as I’ve checked off that one thing, my life will have been complete. Listen again to the Bucket List Jesus gives us: “Whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”

As we celebrate the Sacrament of Holy Communion on this All Saints Day, we are given a small spiritual taste of the wonderful meal, the endless buffet of blessing and love and grace, that awaits us in the presence of the Lord. There are people we have loved very deeply in this life who are already there. May we rededicate ourselves during this Communion to our faith in Christ, that we may join them.