"Postponing Life" - A Reflection from Martin B. Copenhaver

Excerpt from Luke 12:16-21

"Then [the rich man] said, 'I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all of my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.'"

Reflection by Martin B. Copenhaver

In the last decade of my father's life he developed an interest in wine. There is more to this hobby than you might imagine. My father would read about the many varieties and vintages and vineyards. When a wine was purchased, it was carefully stored and catalogued. Occasionally he would even drink the stuff. That was always an elaborate ceremony, beginning with uncorking the bottle, then tasting the wine to make sure it was suitable to serve, accompanied by florid comments about bouquet and body, descriptions that no one else understood fully or, frankly, cared much about.

When friends learned of my father's interest in wine, they would sometimes give him a special gift of a rare and costly bottle. I never remember those wines being served. He always said he was waiting for a special occasion. The occasion never came. When my father died -- "This very night your life is being demanded of you." -- those bottles remained unopened. I believe he intended to drink them and, oh, how he would have enjoyed the ceremony of it all. But special occasions, like tomorrow, seem never to arrive. As Ben Hecht put it, "Time is a circus that is always packing up and moving away."

Of course, the point is not that we should eat, drink, and be merry while we have a chance, even as that is not the point of Jesus' parable. Rather, the point is that if we postpone little pleasures at our peril, how much more perilous is our tendency to put off doing what is truly important in life.

Prayer

Dear God, don't let me use the future as the repository of all that is good and worthy. That is, help me to live fully in the only day in which I can live -- today. Amen.

About the Author

Martin B. Copenhaver is Senior Pastor, Wellesley Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Wellesley, Massachusetts. His new book, This Odd and Wondrous Calling: the Public and Private Lives of Two Ministers, co-authored with Lillian Daniel, has just been published.

"Habitat for Divinity"

2 Samuel 7:5-6
“Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle.”

Matthew 13:1-8
"[Jesus] told them many things in parables, saying: ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty."

In the days of King David there was a need for rootedness, for the house of God to be made more permanent than an ark borne in a tent by a wandering people. Yet what became fixed was mobilized again by Jesus' reminder that the only permanent habitat for Divinity was in the hearts of human beings, putting the work on us to prepare ourselves to house the truth of God.

How will we create a space worthy of Divine abiding? When the "seeds" of God's truth are sown on us, will be protected by good soil or become blanched by the harshness of life? Will they be overgrown by other concerns or find the nourishment they need to bear fruit? God still requires rootedness - how's our soul's soil?