What Will Last

What Will Last--October 16, 2017

"For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming?  Is it not you?  Yes, you are our glory and joy!" [1 Thessalonians 2:19-20]

A lot more ends up in the garbage pile or the recycle bin than we would like to admit.

Look--at some point, you've got to be honest about what will last, and what is therefore worth putting your life and energy into.  That is probably a pretty widely acceptable bit of advice.  And we should just face it directly here: a lot less endures than we imagine.  And therefore knowing what really lasts is worth it in life.

Now, you don't have to be Christian, or even practice any religious faith, to think it's wise to spend your life doing something meaningful and to leave a lasting legacy.  In one way or another, that's largely what culture is--various people's attempts to do something worthwhile with their lives to leave behind an enduring mark on the world.  The sculptures, statues, and temples of ancient Greece.  The pyramids of Egypt.  The world's canon of great literature.  The innovations and great theorems of science, or the best of philosophy and political science.  They are all the results of people doing their best to contribute something to history and, in one way or another, leave an imprint on the world that will last. 

Everybody wants to be remembered.  Everybody, from the least and the last who are too lowly to speak up, to the most pompous blowhard touting his own supposed greatness, wants to think they have made a difference and left a mark on the world.  So for us Christians today, we should perhaps begin with a little honesty ourselves and admit that we are not the only ones saying in the public square, "Leave a legacy for those who come after you." We are not the only ones teaching our children at home as they grow up, "Do something that will last." 

The Pharaohs left a legacy, too--although they are crumbling in the desert wind in Egypt now.  Alexander and Augustus (and a long line of empire-building would-be "great ones" after them) left an impression on the course of world events--although neither of them, nor any of their successors, could create an empire or an order that would last forever as they had hoped.  No imperial decree, no executive order, no engraved granite monument ultimately holds up--these things are simply not durable enough to last in the big scheme of things. No--if you want to do something that will outlast the crumbling of monuments and the forgetfulness of history toward its mediocre and overrated figures (no matter how "great" they imagined themselves to be in their own time), the thing to do is clear: love. What really does make the perspective of the Gospel stand out among human attempts to be remembered is that we have never been convinced that it had to do with monuments, buildings, endowments, or achievements.  As Paul shows us here in 1 Thessalonians, for us who name the name of Jesus, what will last is loving other human beings. 

When Paul gets nostalgic and starts wondering what his own legacy will be, he skips over his dramatic daring deeds, and he makes no mention of his own writings.  He never asked for a stone to be chiseled with his name on it, and he never had a portrait commissioned so that we could remember his likeness. He had no need to talk about how popular he was, how great a job he was doing, or whether he looked tough to anybody else. When Paul thinks about what he will have that he can hold up before Jesus at the Lord's return, he thinks immediately of the people he has loved with the gracious, self-giving love of Christ, and he is satisfied.  He has pinned his hopes of glory and joy on love, and on loving actual human beings, other real selves with real faces, and Paul is convinced that the love that has held them together in this life, even across miles, will last when he stands on the brink of eternity. 

What we do out of love for others--or, perhaps it is better to say, what Love himself leads us to do for others--will last.  Love, even if given in gestures that are forgotten in an instant or invisible after a moment, will endure.  To hear Jesus tell it, the things that get brought up on the last day will not be the number of monuments left with your name on them or the number of dollars you left behind in a bank account, or even for the the Alexanders and Augustuses and other would-be "great ones" among us, how many years your empire or administration lasted.   By Jesus' reckoning, it is the food given to the hungry, the visits to the lonely and imprisoned, the welcome given to the outsider, the tiny acts of courageous solidarity with those who have been pushed to the margins, and the clothes and tables and dignity shared with the poor--in other words, momentary actions of love--that will be the subject of discussion on the day when everything else is stripped away. 

Love will last, and love can never be in the abstract; it always involves concrete words, actions, and presence for real persons.  But the actions, words, and presence through which we offer love might occupy only fleeting moments of time, or seem like they hardly mattered.

This is part of the peculiar way we who worship the God of Israel and Jesus, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, see things.  Whatever our activities, if they are offered in love to the God who has loved us first, or if they are offered in love of neighbor, stranger, and enemy (because God has taught us to bend our love outward to them as well), they will last, even if they seem completely forgettable to us.  C.S. Lewis writes, "All our merely natural activities will be accepted, if they are offered to God, even the humblest, and all of them, even the noblest, will be sinful if they are not."  In other words, the cup of cold water offered in Jesus' name--or the dishes washed, or trash picked up by the side of the road, done out of love--will last in the end.  But even our proudest accomplishments, tallest towers, brashest imperial decrees, and best works won't even come to mind if they are not offered up in love of God or neighbor.

And now comes the really beautiful, but also really strange, wrinkle in all of this: because it is love that matters, and because Jesus shows us love as a self-forgetting act of putting the other first, we won't be looking to leave a legacy when we are loving others.  We will just be loving others, and discover on that great future day that it is love that has mattered all along.  Paul doesn't think to himself, "How can I be remembered?  I know--I'll make a lot of friends in Thessalonica who can vouch for me in heaven!"  He has already established those relationships.  He has already loved these people before he even considers that they are his "legacy."  Loving them was not merely a means to an end--we don't love people in order to get a crown one day in heaven.  To hear Paul tell it, the people we have loved with Jesus' kind of love are our crown.  We don't love others as a back-door way of loving ourselves or getting our names remembered.  When I love I am able to forget myself, but the God who has fashioned the universe and who is Love still remembers.  But if I am using love as a tool, as a way of getting something for myself or some lasting legacy, then it is a pretty sure sign I don't really have love in in the first place, but a cheap knock-off that will turn my finger green. 

It's almost like the rule of thumb should be, If you are trying to get yourself remembered, you are most likely to be forgotten, along with the rest of the world's dime-a-dozen self-promoters.  But in those moments where you can lose yourself, you are investing in something that will outlast the letterhead of any empire or emperor.

The ones at the judgment seat in the parable who have fed the hungry and visited the sick and loved "the least of these" say they didn't even realize they were doing it for Jesus--they have been blessedly clueless all the while!  That's the beautiful, peculiar paradox of Christian love--we know it is the only thing that will really last, and yet we are not looking to make ourselves last when we offer love to someone else.  You are looking out for the well-being of the other while you are doing it, only to find in the end that the other will be your joy and your crown.  Today, let us do something that matters, something that will last.  Today, let us love.

O Eternal God, give us the vision and wisdom to see moments, even brief instants, when we can love the people whom you have placed in our lives.  We pray it in the name of has shown us what love is, Jesus.