Browning Ware, former long time pastor of First Baptist Church, Austin and brother of our own Weston Ware, lost his battle with cancer this week.  Or, since Browning was walking “by faith, not by sight,” it’s more accurate to say that death lost its battle with Browning and only gave him an opportunity to make a long awaited move.  From his deathbed, he told his daughter Camille, “‘I’ve always wanted a cabin in the high country.  Now I’ve got one (“Browning Ware:  1928-2002,” Austin American-Statesman, October 30, 2002).”

That’s a uniquely Christian way of thinking about death, as nothing less than an opportunity to relocate to a much nicer neighborhood.  A cabin in the high country.  That will be nice.  It reflects the spirit of the words of the apostle Paul.  “For in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling . . .. that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.”

If there is a more beautiful description of the Christian view of death I don’t know what it is, “swallowed up by life.”  Do you ever wonder what your epitaph will read, what few words will sum up the meaning of your life?  I once read the epitaph on the tombstone of a 19^th century cowboy in the Panhandle, “Kicked by a horse.”  That’s all it said.  His whole life summed up in the five words that described how it ended.  Can you imagine living your whole life only to be remembered as being “kicked by a horse”?  If my epitaph is going to describe what got me to the grave then it probably ought to read something like, “He finally quit worrying.”  Or, it could also quite simply read, “La Calle Doce” or “Tejano’s.”  But, even if I’m felled by swallowing too many burritos, I want others to remember that I was “swallowed up by life.”  Because, regardless of how we die, that is what happens when we die.  We’re “swallowed up by life.”

These words of Paul’s sound a lot like ones we’d read at a funeral.  Actually, they have more of a “meanwhile, back at the ranch” quality.  They do focus on hope of life after death.  It sounds like Paul wants out.  The sooner the better.  He speaks longingly of his new home in heaven, “a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”  He speaks, too, of our temporary earthly dwelling, “this tent,” he calls it, as keeping us from being in the full, visible presence of Jesus.  He’s finding the thought of moving on to heaven’s high country more and more appealing.  But, he doesn’t leave us taking a virtual tour of angelic real estate.  He brings us back to the reality of this moment, to life in this tent now and how it ought to be lived until we are “clothed with our heavenly dwelling.”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Paul writes, “we make it our aim to please” our Lord.  With those words, Paul shifts his attention to forging an inseparable bond between what is eternally significant and that which also has a changing-your-life-right-now urgency by calling for a once and for all clarity about whose pleasure we ought to seek.  On family vacations one of the most divisive questions I can ask if we’re on the road at lunchtime is, “Where do ya’ll want to eat?”  The only thing I know after I ask that question is that I’m not going to be able to please everyone.  Because I’m behind the wheel, I get to choose who’ll I’ll please and who I won’t.  Once I decide, I turn the wheel in the direction that will make that happen.  And, that is the way of life.  So many voices calling, we have to choose which one we’ll answer.  Once that choice is made, the course of our life is set. 

The call of our Lord is a call to clarity about whom we’ll please in the way spend and live our lives.  For life in “this tent,” there ought to be clarity about pleasing God.  We’re given very good reason.  “All of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.”  This letter is written to Christians.  I rarely ever hear Christians read it.  It’s hardly a favorite nighttime devotional text.  But, because it is written to people who are already following Christ as Lord, we should know at least two things right away. 

This judgment is not about our salvation.  That issue was settled when we trusted Christ alone to forgive us for our sins and give us eternal life.  This is not about God keeping score about who behaved well enough to get into heaven.  It is about the fact that, even as Christians, we are still accountable to God for how we live; we will stand in judgment for it.  Suddenly, the unbiblical but popular Baptist doctrine that “once you’re saved you can live any way you want to” just took a powder.  In specific, this moment of judgment will be to discern the moral worth of our physical deeds.  In other words, how we live our life in this mortal tent is of spiritual, eternal consequence. 

Bowling for Columbine opened in theaters this week, a movie based on the Columbine High School tragedy in April 1999.  The writer’s premise is that Americans have been brainwashed to fear the wrong things.  For example, though murders are down 20%, media coverage of murder is up 600%.  There are similar statistics for child kidnappings and so forth.  A serial killer on the loose may kill ten or fifteen, get nationwide coverage and have people living in fear from coast to coast.  A real fear is that, as we speak, the lives of 40 million Americans are at risk because they have no health insurance.  A truck bomb goes off and we fear the rise of hate groups.  In fact, what ought to cause us greater concern is not the rise of neo-nazism but the rise of neo-gnosticism.

Gnosticism was a heresy rampant in the first century.  Quite simply, it taught that, since only a person’s soul could ever be brought into relationship with God, what a person did with their body was of no consequence.  It compartmentalized the spiritual from the physical.  The people who worshipped with the church at Corinth lived and worked every day in a culture dominated by this Gnostic philosophy; they brought it with them to church.  In his first letter to that church, Paul scolded them for allowing a man to continue in full fellowship who was sleeping with his stepmother (1 Corinthians 5).  Can you believe that?  Someone coming to church every week who was sleeping around?  Go figure!  People singing hymns of praise on Sunday whose only qualification for who they’ll have sex with during the week is that they have a pulse.  That’s a very Gnostic way of living, separating the worship of God from our everyday lifestyle.  Something we stumble into the moment we conclude that, as long as we believe the right things about God, what we do with our body is of no consequence.  It’s a kind of compartmentalization of life.  That what we do at church is worship, what we do at work is, just business.  Kind of like the mafia boss who, about to kill a long time associate, tries to comfort him by saying, it’s not personal, it’s just business. 

Christian truth calls us to a wholeness of life, a union between what we believe and how we live.  The apostle also once wrote, “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (Romans 12:1).”  To God, if it’s personal to us, it’s his business.  And, if it’s his business, it ought to be personal to us.

Again, this is a uniquely Christian way of seeing life and faith, specifically the relationship of body to soul.  It is true that we are worshipping when we gather to sing hymns and pray.  Scripture also defines as an act of worship what we do with our bodies.  In both cases, it’s only a question of whether it is worship that pleases God.  And, in both cases, it is living for which we will answer to God, “Recompense,” Paul wrote, “for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.” 

There is both warning and promise here.  Warning that, though we might be saved, we could live our whole lives so that there is nothing ultimately good to show for them (see 1 Corinthians 3:10b-15).  Promise that, even in what we might consider mundane, routine affairs of life, we can worship God by the way we work, study, relate to others.  No matter what you do for a living, if you are honoring God in doing it, even the most routine day at work or school can be filled with acts of worship with eternally good consequences of which God takes note.  “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you (1 Corinthians 3:16)?”  This sanctuary, this Temple, stays in a fixed place.  We, all of us, are Temples on

wheels.  Where did take God’s temple this week? 

An airplane was about to crash; everyone knew they were going to die.  One person screamed, “Someone, please, do something religious.”  So, the only Baptist on board got up and took an offering. 

Speaking of giving, one reason our new Ministry Teams take on such significance is that they allow us multiple opportunities for fleshing out what we say we believe, for bringing what we say we value, literally, into the light.  I’m finding more and more people saying, “Don’t just help us know what to believe about God, show us how to take what we believe and make it take shape in this physical world.”  This elevates the significance of giving our money in tithes and offerings, too.  We can, and should, love God even in the ways we spend and give our money. 

This text of scripture broadens our understanding of genuine religion to include living in a meaningful and significant relationship with God and others, heart, soul, mind and body.  There is no way, according to the New Testament, to separate an activity by one from its affect on any of the others.  Another apostle wrote, “I urge you to . . . abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul (1 Peter 2:11).”  So, I may eat at my Tejano’s and thoroughly enjoy myself.  But, a steady diet of Tejano’s wages war against that part of me that guarantees life.  It is impossible to recklessly indulge ourselves at the buffet of all of life’s pleasures without moral consequence in our lives.  We live without regard to the moral consequence of our physical choices only at our soul’s peril. 

It is interesting, isn’t it?  Jesus was only able to save our soul by sacrificing his body.  To feast at this table (pointing to Communion Table) as we have this morning is to be reminded that our spiritual salvation required an act of physical sacrifice.  If we are being swallowed up by eternal life, if we can hardly wait until the day we move into our cabin in the high country, it will show itself in how we’re packing for the journey even now.