In October 1981, Canadian Kent Cochrane was riding his motorcycle home from work when his bike veered off an exit ramp and crashed. Kent suffered a traumatic brain injury from the accident. That is not unusual, but what was very unusual is, as a result of the injury he received, from that moment onward, Kent was only able to live in the present. Though he knew facts about himself, he was not able to remember the past or imagine the future. He could look at a photo from the past and recognize people he knew in the photo, but he could not remember any details about the day that the photo was taken. His parents could tell him that they were going out, but a few minutes later, he would wonder why he was alone in the house because he could not remember what they had told him. They would leave notes for him on the refrigerator door and Kent was able to learn how to file books at the library where he worked.
Kent contributed immensely to the study of neuroscience by allowing himself to be studied by brain scientists. At the time of his death in 2014 at age 62, he was the subject of at least 32 scientific papers, and it was said that his brain was among the most studied in the world.[i]
I share that story with you because we humans, as we go through life, living and having our being, thinking, talking, making decisions and taking action, tend to live with our main focus on the present. And without a perspective that sees the bigger picture of both the past and the future as we live in the present, two things are likely to happen. First, the present can overwhelm us and cause us to lose our sense of hope and direction. Some of you, I know, are facing some really challenging circumstances right now. And those challenges tend to get layered on top of all the regular challenges of life plus all the turmoil that is happening in the world right now. It can all add up to a burden that is more than we can bear if we don’t stop and remember that there have been times in the past and there will likely be times in the future when you won’t have to face what you are facing right now. Having a present-only focus is like driving down the highway at 100 kilometers per hour with no review mirrors and your eyes are focused on a spot on the road that is just ahead of your front bumper.
The second thing that can happen with a present-only focus is that we can make permanent, irreversible decisions in response to a short-term problem. In my opinion, this is one of the great dangers of relaxing the rules around medical assistance in dying. People can make a permanent decision to die when their condition may be temporary or treatable. But the same thing can happen when someone decides to end a relationship or a career, or ditch a long-term goal, because of a temporary challenge that may not be a factor a year from now.
So what sort of a perspective should we have as we live in the present? That’s what I am inviting you to reflect on with me, and to help us as we do that, let’s meditate on some passages from the Bible. We will start with 2 Samuel 7:1-17, so if you have a Bible or a Bible app nearby, I invite you to turn there now.
The Promise of a Forever King, Home & Peace
As this passage opens, we see that David wants to build a building to house the Ark of the Covenant. David has conquered the various neighboring enemy nations that had harassed and attacked Israel and now there was peace in the land. David had built a palace for himself and lived within it, but the Ark of the Covenant, which had traveled with God’s people throughout their Exodus from Egypt and into the Promised Land, was God’s assurance that he was present among his people and for more than three centuries, it has been housed within a tent-like structure called the Tabernacle. In David’s mind, it was not right that he should live in a great and grand palace while God’s ark was dwelling in a tent.
Through the prophet, Nathan, God tells David several important things. ‘First, I don’t need a house to dwell in. I never had a house all the years I have been with my people, and I never asked anyone to build me a house.’ God’s concern is not with buildings. ‘Second, I took you from shepherding sheep and raised you up to greatness so that you could lead my people. And your purpose in leading my people is to make sure they have a place to live and protection from their enemies.’ As we read starting in verse 10, God says to David,
And I will provide a place for my people Israel and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed. Wicked people will not oppress them anymore, as they did at the beginning and have done ever since the time I appointed leaders over my people Israel. I will also give you rest from all your enemies. (2 Samuel 7:10-11) God’s concern is with people, and one of the main ways that God cares for human beings is by raising up leaders and working through them to give people a place they can call home and peace as they live there. I love it when modern-day science agrees with something God told us in his Word centuries before and again that is the case as psychologists tell us that we humans need a psychological home, a place of refuge from the challenges of the outside world where we feel safe, secure, and comforted.[ii] God knows our human needs and he gives us leaders to meet those needs.
But God is not giving his people a one-time blessing through David and then leaving them to fend for themselves after David is gone. God flips the script and instead of David building a house for God, God promises to build a house for David, and someone from within David’s house will then build a house for God. Clearly, different senses of the word “house” are being used here. The house that David wanted to build was a building. The house that God wants to build is a family of people. Again, God’s concern is primarily with people. The house that God promised to build for David was a royal family who would provide leaders for God’s people.
And one of those leaders would rule as a king forever. That leader, that descendant of David who would be a forever king, would then build up a house for God, a new and totally different kind of family, where people would be connected, not by human ancestry, but by their common king, through whom they would have all the safety, security, comfort, and peace that they need forever. Continuing in 2 Samuel, we read, “‘The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. (2 Samuel 7:11-13)
The Forever King Who Came
God kept his promise to David and, around 1,000 years later, a baby was born to an unmarried couple in Bethlehem. That baby was a descendant of David, but you would not know it by the circumstances in which he lived. Homeless because of an emperor’s decree, that baby’s first bed was an animal feed trough. As he, Jesus of Nazareth, grew up, he toiled alongside his father and learned how to build buildings. But his main focus was to build a family for his Father in heaven. For this particular human was also God the Son,
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:6-8)
God knew that humanity’s true home was with him, their Creator. That’s how things were in the beginning, and that was how God wanted things to be in the end. But first the problem of sin had to be solved, for it was human sin that inherently damaged humanity, made death our unavoidable destiny, and caused an impassable gulf to open up between us and God. And we have been wandering around looking for our ultimate home ever since.
God knew that for the damage of sin to be undone, he had to come into this world and become fully human to take our place to live a perfect human life to fulfill all righteousness for us, and then die a horrible sinner’s death for us to pay the cost of forgiveness of all our sins for us. On a long ago Friday, Jesus was beaten, flogged, stripped naked, and nailed to a cross to suffer and die with a crown of thorns jammed down upon his head. As horrible as that day was, and it was horrible, we call it Good Friday that was the day David’s descendant, Jesus, laid the foundation for the new house, the new family, he was going to build for his Father in heaven.
And we know that that foundation is in place for us because on the third day that followed his death, Jesus rose from the dead, proving that his victory for all humanity is complete. When Mary Magdalene and the other women who came to Jesus’ tomb to finish the job of surrounding his body in aromatic spices, they could not comprehend what had happened. The stone in front of the tomb had been rolled away and Jesus’ body was not inside. Even though Jesus had previously announced that he would rise from the dead, Peter, John and the other disciples, could not figure it out either. Later, Mary saw Jesus, risen from the dead and in-person, and she still did not understand who he was or what his presence meant. But when Jesus called her by name, saying, “Mary.” She immediately recognized who it was standing before her and cried out, “Rabboni!” which, John, tells us, means “Teacher.” For a Jewish person to call someone their teacher, or rabbi, means significantly more than what we mean in our time when we use the word “teacher.” A rabbi is someone who you follow and from whom you learn how to walk in the way of the Lord. In other words, a rabbi is your leader from whom you learn how to live as one of God’s people in this world. Mary recognized Jesus as her rabbi, her teacher, the Messiah, the leader, sent by God to give his people peace and a place they can call home forever.
Healing Our Emotions with the Gospel
So what does all this mean for us? Well, one of the reasons why we tend to narrow our focus on the present is because of stress. It’s an instinct God has put in us to protect us. Sometimes, our stress is caused by circumstances, but other times our stress is caused by our emotions. And the emotions that tend to cause us stress are things like fear over the future, regret over the past, or shame in the present. Because of our emotions, our vision narrows, and we can only see this part of the picture before us.
Recently, Susan and I started working with a family therapist. And one of the things that our therapist has been working on with us is active listening. Now, I teach this to pre-marriage couples, as some of you know, but I am still learning. And the thing is, it’s one thing to teach active listening, and it’s another to do it. Active listening is especially difficult when your emotions start rising up within you. And guess what? Your emotions tend to rise up within you when you’re engaging in a conversation with someone whom you really love.
Now, active listening has its greatest power when we’re not only listening for the content of what people say, we are also their emotions behind what they say. When we hear the emotions behind the words, and we recognize that and say back to them, “It sounds like you’re feeling this emotion, is that right?” That’s when active listening becomes really powerful. Because the other person then knows that not only have you heard what they said, you have also acknowledged how they feel.
The other day, I was really stirred up in anger, as happens from time to time, and I thought to myself, “I need to go to a quiet place and just sit in stillness for a while.” Then, in the quietness of my bedroom, I started thinking about active listening and listening for emotions. I began to get curious, and I asked myself, “James, what emotion are you feeling?” Anger, you see, is a secondary emotion. It’s not the root emotion. Usually, there’s something else underneath it. And the answer that came back for me when I asked myself what I was feeling was shame, shame about the possibility of being exposed as a failure. Now, we’re not doing therapy today, I’m only sharing that with you as an illustration. And what happened for me was when I was able to name the feeling, the power it had over me lessened dramatically.
But there’s another step that I am you need to do after we identify our emotions, and that is bringing our emotions to Jesus, so he can heal them. Because, dear friends, there are no failures in Jesus’ eyes. He’s taken away all of our shame. With Jesus, there are no people who need to have regrets hanging over their heads because he’s taken all of that away from us as well. With Jesus, we do not need to be afraid of the future because he’s holding our future in his loving hands and he has a future prepared for us that is far greater than we could even ask for or imagine.
Gripped by a Fear of Death
In the 20th century, William Randolph Hearst, was one of the richest men in America and perhaps in the world. His net worth peaked at around $500 million, which was a lot of money in the first half of the twentieth century. He built a palatial estate in California called Hearst Castle, which you can still visit today if you’d like, and he would invite the rich, wealthy, and famous people of his day to his estate for a visit. But Hearst had a rule that his guests should never utter one particular word, and if they did, they would be immediately escorted off the premises and never be allowed to return. That word was “death.” Hearst was so afraid of death that he imposed this rule on his guests. In fact, on his estate, there were palm trees, and if a palm tree died while he was there, groundskeepers paint the leaves of the tree green until he left, and then they could replace the tree while he was gone.
But, in 1951, guess what happened? William Randolph Hearst died.
Jesus has Stripped Death of its Power to Instill Fear
Dear friends, Jesus Christ has taken away the power of death to instill fear in our hearts. He’s taken away its sting. He swallowed up death by his own death.
And so the challenge that I’m leaving you with today is this: to be like Mary Magdalene, and make Jesus your rabbi and your king, and then follow him into that forever home which he has created for you, and live in the peace he has for you forever. Amen.
(This message was shared at Walnut Grove Lutheran Church in Langley BC on March 31, 2024. For more info about our church, please go to wglc.org.)
[i] Helen Branswell, “Famed Canadian Amnesiac Kent Cochrane Dies at 62,” CTV News (Internet; available at: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/famed-canadian-amnesiac-kent-cochrane-dies-at-62-1.1756363; accessed March 27, 2024); and “Kent Cochrane,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia (Internet; available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Cochrane; accessed March 27, 2024).
[ii] Diane E Dreher, “Where Do You Feel at Home?” Psychology Today (Internet; available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/your-personal-renaissance/202402/where-do-you-feel-at-home#:~:text=We%20need%20a%20sense%20of,at%20peace%20in%20our%20world.; accessed March 27, 2024).
Farewell to Shadowlands 