The Gospel according to Peter Pan
Sunday, January 18th, 2004
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Revelation 21:1-5, Philippians 1:21-25
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; 4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away." 5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new."
Captain Hook pushes his face an inch closer to Peter Pan’s, wiggles his sword, which is crossed with Peter’s, and sneering, says,
“Pan, prepare to die”
In response, Peter gently smiles,
“To die would be a wonderful adventure.”
Of course, the movie doesn’t end there. In fact, it’s barely begun; it seems to be only about 15 minutes into it at that point. The pace of children’s movies has definitely increased. If you are familiar with the story by James Michael Barrie, the movie follows it’s general storyline: Peter escapes Hook’s attempt on his life in the first go-around, flies off to introduce Wendy to the lost boys, where she becomes their mother (based solely on her ability to tell stories), saves John and Michael from the pirates, and generally makes the movie nonstop action. Like I said, the pace of children’s movies has definitely increased. I was struck by the pause in that scene. The pace seemed to momentarily slow to a crawl to allow for the thought to sink in: “to die would be a wonderful adventure”
Most of you know by now that we laid Mary Jane Headley to rest this past Thursday after she passed away on Monday evening. I visited with her Monday afternoon, and at that point, all I could do was read from Psalms and pray with and for her. When we were last able to actually speak, a week ago Thursday, she let me know then that she wanted me to do her funeral. I can’t tell you how humbling it is to hear that from someone, and it was both an honor and a privilege to be able to fulfill her request. At one point in that visit she told me that sometimes she prayed “just to go to sleep and wake up in heaven”.
I think it is safe to say for any of us who’ve lived through extreme hardship, especially the loss of health, that that is not a thought that is foreign to us. We find Mary Jane’s thoughts echoing Paul in his letter to the Church in Philippi.
Traditionally, the setting for Paul’s writing the letter to the church at Philippi has been while in prison in Rome, awaiting an audience with Caesar. The date of the letter: between 61 and 63 AD, give or take. Since the traditional date for Paul’s martyrdom is between 64 and 67 AD, during Nero’s persecution of the Roman Christians, and first century prisons anywhere, even in Rome, were notorious for bringing about their own death sentence on the inmates, regardless of the sentence which they had received, death was probably very present in Paul’s thought, if not his daily life. He had just nursed the man who brought him news from the Philippians, Epaphroditus, back to health.
We are more familiar with the passage as it begins in one of the more traditional versions, and in each of them it reads virtually the same:
“For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
I’d like to read that verse, 21 of the 1st chapter, and the next 4 verses from Eugene Petersen’s ‘The Message’ – In which Petersen is going for a thought-for-thought correspondence rather than word-for-word, he writes:
21 Alive, I'm Christ's messenger; dead, I'm his bounty. Life versus even more life! I can't lose. 22 As long as I'm alive in this body, there is good work for me to do. If I had to choose right now, I hardly know which I'd choose. 23 Hard choice! The desire to break camp here and be with Christ is powerful. Some days I can think of nothing better. 24 But most days, because of what you are going through, I am sure that it's better for me to stick it out here. 25 So I plan to be around awhile, companion to you as your growth and joy in this life of trusting God continues.
Picture if you will, Paul is in prison, clothes, if he had any, were the ones he wore in or which someone brought him. Food, if any, is what has been brought in specifically for him, since meals were not provided by management. Unheated, unventilated, and probably overcrowded, with no medical attention, such as it was. Paul would have every reason to expect death to be more of a release from his present circumstance than anything else. He admits that he longs to be able to ‘break camp’ and be with Christ, but in the same breath realizes that there is more to do before that happens – and I really like the way the thought is conveyed by Petersen in verse 25: “So I plan to be around awhile, companion to you as your growth and joy in this life of trusting God continues.” How many of us could truthfully say that what is keeping us here is to be in community and to watch God move, and to watch our trust in him increase, what the New Revised Standard Version translates “for your progress and joy in faith”?
I imagine the passage from Revelation is familiar to most of us. It is, of course, most often used at funerals and at the graveside, and appropriately so. The image of a place where God will wipe every tear from our eyes, where death will be no more, where there will be no more mourning and crying and pain does, as Paul said, create a powerful desire to be there rather than here. How can it not?? But let’s stop on the next phrase: “for the first things have passed away.”
What are the first things the loud voice from the throne is talking about? Let’s back up a little further and read again beginning with verse 3, the second part –
"See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them;”
Is the speaker talking about the future, or about a possible present?
We have just finished celebrating Christmas, the coming of the Christ Child, and during the Christmas season we repeatedly made reference to what Christ’s coming meant: it meant that God came to earth to live among us, that Emmanuel; “God with us” was in the person of Jesus Christ.
Perhaps we need to really take a close look at what Jesus meant when he spoke of the Kingdom of God.
Yes, there is a brokeness to the world as we know it. It manifests itself every day: in a car bomb going off in Baghdad, sending the death toll of US citizens in Iraq to over 500, and an untold number of Iraqi citizens, rampant HIV in Africa, earthquakes in Iran, a plane crash in Egypt, it can all be overwhelming, making you want to run screaming from the room and be done with it.
And yet …
Hook seems to be winning. He actually succeeds in flying, with the necessary aid of some pixy dust and ‘happy thoughts’, though in this instance, happy has become a relative term. While he and Peter are engaged in their last battle, he is constantly stabbing – not only with his sword, but with his words as well … it brings to mind ‘the accuser’, ‘the father of lies’, his insinuations and barbs are tearing at Peter’s spirit to the point where he ends up on his back on the deck of the Jolly Roger, with no will left to fight, much less to live. Wendy pleads with Hook to let her give Peter a ‘thimble’. He scoffs at her “silly girl”, and shrugs her off, letting her near. She lays down beside Peter, and tells him she is sorry she has to leave and grow up, but she says that he will always be welcomed to listen to her stories, and that she will always hold him in her heart, and gives Peter her ‘thimble’, which turns out to be a kiss, and he bursts back to life and wins the day. Hmmm … sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
At the end of the movie, Peter is saying goodbye to Wendy as she leans out her window, and he looks at her, smiles, and says,
“To live, yes, to live would be a wonderful adventure!”
First things first: the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount:
"But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Mt 6:33)
How does that translate for Jerusalem Baptist Church?
Like this:
1. Unity in diversity: This coming Wednesday, we will hold our regularly scheduled business meeting, an event that can run smoothly or otherwise. Let it not be a meeting of cliques or special interest groups, but a meeting of brothers and sisters, sharing in love the purpose of furthering the Kingdom.
2. Visiting the sick, bereaved and lonely. It is what builds us up that will build others up – being in community. This afternoon we have an opportunity to carry this out, by visiting the residents at Farnham Manor at 2 PM. Anyone is welcome to join us.
3. Letting Love be our rule, and Christ be our head and our heart.
Let’s pray.
Your invitation is similar – to come and live in the Kingdom – in what is to be and what can be even in the midst of all the madness and stabbing and tearing that the world can throw at us. We are about living life as it should be lived – in the glory of the love found only in Jesus Christ.
Our hymn of invitation is number 426 – O Master Let Me Walk with Thee
Benediction:
May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord make his face to shine upon you
And be gracious unto you.
May God give you
Grace
Never to sell yourself short;
Grace
To risk something big for something good;
Grace
To remember that the world is now
Too dangerous
For anything but truth
And
Too small for anything but Love.
So may God take your minds
And think through them;
May God take your lips
And speak through them;
May God take your hearts
And set them on fire
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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