Sickness, Aging and Death | Rev. Adam Hamilton | Church of the Resurrection

2:00 One of the most important keys. There are others, but this is one of the most important to living fearlessly. It's our faith. So you know that we're concluding our series of sermons today on living fearlessly. We did a study in December with 3,387 people who took our survey and people of different ages, men and women alike. and we've been looking each the last three weeks on what is it that makes us afraid in our broader society, in our personal lives. Last week, we looked at the fears of Gen Z and millennials, almost a thousand of them who told us what they're most afraid of in their personal, the kind of personal fears, not societal fears. Let me just remind you of what those were. So again, these are people under 40 and so not living up to expectations of mine or others. That's the number one fear of younger adults. The second, failing as a parent or spouse. and for Gen Z, that was just failure and rejection as a whole. And the last one was serious illness, injury, or death of a loved one. Now, what I'd like to share with you is what those of you who were older adults said, so people my age and older.

2:57 So looking at the opposite end of the spectrum, people who were 61, I'm a baby boomer and I'm 61 years old, 61 all the way, well, to the oldest people took the survey in their 90s. And so baby boomers and the silent generation. Let's take a look at what they said in this survey. Here we have 1,689 people who took the survey. what personal fears cause you to feel anxious, concerned, or fearful. The number one, aging. Number two, loss of mental capacity. Number three, serious illness, injury, or death of a loved one. That's the same as for younger adults. And then number four, while younger adults, it was loneliness for older adults. It's fear of serious illness, injury, or death for myself. So that's where we're going in today's sermon. We're going to wrap up this series by talking about how faith helps us to overcome those kinds of fears of aging, concerns about our mental capacity, and our concerns about death. All right, so I want to start with sickness. Now, when it comes to sickness, we know that we're all going to get sick, and we get sick with some regularity. Most of the time, our sicknesses are not life-threatening, but this is just a part of life. But we have, as a society, become more focused on health, which is a good thing. We're focused on taking care of our bodies, taking vitamins, all that. That's fantastic. We are consumed in some ways with a fear or concern about getting sick and forestalling that as long as possible. So as a society, we've spent last year $4.9 trillion on healthcare, on the healthcare industry. That's $14,570 for every man, woman, and child in America. And by the way, that average that we spend is about double what the other developed countries in the world spend on healthcare. We spend a lot of money on healthcare.

4:38 And then there's medical research and a host of other things. And all of that can be great, although our outcomes when it comes to healthcare are not as great as we'd like. But the idea that we're spending money on research, that's awesome. And I love the fact that there are many of the diseases that we have today that we're wrestling with because we have the greatest minds working on this. We put a lot of money into it. We're hoping that we are solving for dementia and Alzheimer's. We're going to solve for most of the cancers that are out there, I think, in my lifetime. And so that's very, very exciting to think about. At the same time, we find ourselves pretty consumed by our fears of sickness. And part of it is we're just constantly surrounded by messages about that. The Super Bowl, you're going to watch it next week. You're going to see five or six ads for medications while you're watching the Super Bowl. You can't get away from it. You're eating your chicken wings and your nachos, and you're seeing commercials about why you need certain medicines to keep you healthy. I mean, it's just a part of the, it's just, that's the water we swim in. I think about the internet.

5:30 And, you know, the internet is constantly reminding us of sickness. And also when we start to get sick, how awesome is it that you can do some research and try to figure out and diagnose yourself, right? The problem is that sometimes those diagnoses are not so great. You know, we start reading all this stuff on the internet. I remember this card from about 10 years ago. Google creating hypochondriacs since 1998. Now, you know, this isn't new to us. In Jesus' generation, people were also afraid. They were afraid where they were going to get their next meal sometimes. They were afraid of the armies that might conquer them, but they were also afraid of these deeply personal things. They were afraid of sickness. They were afraid of death. These were the same common fears in the ancient world as they are today, which is why Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6 devotes most of that chapter to fear, to worry. He's talking about fearing, not knowing where your food's going to come from or your clothing is going to come from, but it's also deeper fears like we're talking about today. And so he says this in Matthew 6, 27, Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life?

6:28 Well, okay. And then he goes on to say this, therefore stop worrying about tomorrow because tomorrow will worry about itself. Okay, I can hear that, but Jesus, tell me how to do it, right? And by the way, worry here, the word for worry captures this idea of taking something from the future and bringing it into the present. And that's what we do when we worry. We're worried about something that hasn't yet happened, may never happen, but we are thinking about it. We continue to ponder it. And then we find that worry fills our hearts for something that's happening in the future. So Jesus is saying, don't think so much about what's gonna happen in the future. Focus on the present moment. Focus on the present moment. So he says this in the end of that whole section on worry. He says, therefore, seek first the kingdom of God. Seek first God's rule, God's reign, God, trust in God, living for God, walking with God. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and his compassion and mercy. and all the other things will be added to you as well.

7:24 So he's starting to give us a clue as to how we do this. I've been trying to teach you over the last few weeks a sort of pathway to overcoming fear with your faith. And part of it just starts with faith. So this is an acronym, fear. And so we start, fear begins with this one, face your fears with faith. That is with trust that things are gonna work out okay. It may not even be faith in God, just the trust that somehow usually things work out okay. And then as a Christian, you take that one step further and say, I trust that God is with me always. I trust that God is with me, that he knows me, that he's walking with me, that he's here nearby, the spirit's inside of me. Somehow he's gonna force something good from this. He's gonna be with me. He's gonna take care of me. The second is examine your fears in the light of the facts. So you wanna try to figure out what are the facts about this thing that I'm worried about? And often when you discover the facts, the fear begins to dissipate. The third is attack your anxieties with action. So attack your fears with action. You are going to do something about the thing that you're afraid of and you find the fears begin to dissipate.

8:20 And the last is just simply releasing your cares to God. Several months ago, one of our members was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and then that led to a discovery of pancreatic cancer, which is a pretty scary diagnosis. And he was off, he had surgery, and then he came back to Kansas City, had a chance to visit him in the hospital, along with his wife. And he's been undergoing treatment, the radiation for the brain tumor, and he's responded really well to that, and things are going great, and he's just very strong right now. And it's just amazing to watch him. And this last Friday, a week ago Friday, I had a chance to stop by his house to see he and his wife and his son, and a whole group of friends just showed up. And they showed up for a party to celebrate the end of his radiation treatment. And it was really something to see, people who were surrounding them with love and care. And this is part of how God works is the people who surround us.

9:14 But we paused for a moment. and they were the stretcher bearers for this family, for Rob and Sisley. And at one point I said, you know, can all of you gather around? And Rob and Sisley and their son were there. And I just said, let's reach out our hands. I want you to touch somebody who's touching one of these family members. And once more, we gave thanks to God for them and just prayed for them. And it was just beautiful to see all of these neighbors, friends, coworkers who just showed up to say, we're here. And they've been doing that. Some of them have been praying every Friday morning, you know, lifting this family up. That's part of how God works. in our lives is in the midst of these moments, we find God surrounds us and cares for us through other people. Anyway, it's interesting to note in the survey that we did that every age group had somewhere in there in the top three, from the youngest to the oldest, a concern for fear or concern for injury or illness or death of somebody that we love.

10:07 So often our fears are not for our own safety and security, but it's for other people. And the thought of losing one of my daughters or my granddaughter, or LaVon, just would destroy me, I feel like. But here's what I was wondering. I wanted to know for Cicely, Rob's wife, what's it like for her having a husband who is facing this battle with cancer? And this is what she said. She said, I'd say that the anticipation of a dreaded event can in some ways be worse than the event itself. See, this is again, worry. We take the future, we imagine what it's going to be like, we bring it into the present. She said, it could be worse than the event itself. If you told me months ago, everything that was coming our way, I would have been overwhelmed. Jesus said though, do not worry about tomorrow. And I'm learning every day about how to do that. She said, what I'm saying is that sometimes anticipatory grief or worry is worse than actual grief. As God gives us strength to carry through whatever we're going through.

11:03 She says, in the very moment, he gives us the strength that we need. She said, Rob is my world and I don't want him to die. And yet the only thing that really matters in the end and that no one can take away from you is your love for God and your relationship with Jesus. Nobody can take that away. Everything else can be taken away. And she said, if you had told me at the time, you know, months ago, all the beautiful things that were gonna happen, I wouldn't have believed that just like I couldn't have believed or handled, you know, the hard things that were gonna happen. I can't believe all of the ways that God has just surrounded us. There is so much good out there. And we don't factor that in when we're thinking about the future of a fearful, event. We can't imagine, we can't see yet how God is going to sustain us, carry us, walk with us. All we can imagine is how terrifying it'll be. I want to remind you again of the words of Jesus. He said, who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? Therefore, stop worrying about tomorrow because tomorrow will take care of itself or will worry about itself.

12:03 Some of you know that a year and a half ago, our granddaughter Stella, who's 11 years old, She's in sixth grade. She'll be 12 in another month and a half. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. We were at Children's Mercy Hospital. And had you told me two days before this, I would have been overwhelmed with sorrow and grief, just sad about the fact that my granddaughter would have to battle this the rest of her life. And of course, 100 years ago, it would have been a death sentence. Fortunately, insulin was discovered. And then since then technology to be able to administer insulin. And so, but the thought of it in advance would have been overwhelming. But, you know, we're there in the hospital, and somehow we roll up our sleeves like, okay, what are we going to do? How are we going to battle this? And we become Team Stella. Her mom, her dad, LaVon, and me, her other grandpa, we're all Team Stella. And we're in her corner, and somehow it's going to be okay. And she's been a rock star. I'm like, it's amazing to watch this kid.

12:55 It's like nothing for her. And, you know, she's got a little device that she wears on her body somewhere, different places it moves around, that broadcasts to her phone how her glucose levels are at any given moment. And then that goes from her phone to all of our phones. And so every day I'm looking at that. Throughout the day, I get notices, you know, and all of her, you know, her grandparents and her parents do. And, you know, at night, one of the last things I do, and by the way, she's got a pump that automatically administers the insulin. It's not perfect and there's problems sometimes. But, you know, here's the thing. The last thing I do at night before I go to sleep, and I'm the last person to go to bed, usually in the entire family. So this week it was 1.30 in the morning and one night. But the last thing I do every night is I get my phone out and I look to see how's your glucose level look. And usually it looks fine. Sometimes it's too high or too low. And if it's too high or too low, I'm texting somebody. I'm texting her mom and dad. Okay, hey, how are we doing?

13:47 Is everybody on it? You guys asleep? Are you awake? And usually they're on top of it. One day this week, it was really low in the middle of the night. And as I was going to bed and I texted, couldn't get anybody. Nobody responded. I finally called. Okay, are you awake? Yep, we're awake. We're on it. And here's the thing. after I do that every night, then it's time for me to pray. And so I've done everything I can do. I attack my anxieties with action. And I've spent a lot of time learning about the disease of type 1 diabetes. And then the last thing I do is I release my cares to God. And that night I'm laying there on my, you know, my head on my pillow. And I'm like, God, I love her so much. Please take care of our little girl. Please watch over her and take care of her, not just now, but for the rest of her life.

14:30 And I can sleep when I've released my cares to God. Like that's how it works. So once more, this is what I do. I face my fears with faith. God, I know you are. I know you walk with us. I examine my fears in the light of the facts. I attack my fears with action and I release my cares to God. And I'm just saying, these four things are really pivotal and living our lives with fearlessness instead of fear. One little piece of this in terms of trusting in God, trusting in Christ. There's a story in scripture that I really love. It shows up in Matthew, Mark and John's gospel. It's unusual when you find something that shows up in, you'll find things Matthew, Mark and Luke, but Matthew, Mark and John, that's an unusual combination. But in all three of those gospels, Jesus has sent his disciples on a boat across the Sea of Galilee. It's night. They've been ministering all afternoon and evening. And now it's early evening.

15:22 And he says, now you guys go on, take the boat over to Capernaum. and I'll meet you on the other side. Now he could walk from where he was to Capernaum. It'd take a couple hours, but they were taking the boat across. He would meet them later on, maybe in the middle of the night or in the morning. Well, in the middle of the night, as they take off and it's gonna take them a couple hours to get there, but the wind comes up and a storm comes up and they're blown to the middle of the Sea of Galilee and the waves are crashing over the boat. And then you remember the story, Jesus comes walking on the water to his disciples and they're terrified. They see what they think is a ghost and they're also at the same time thinking they're gonna drown. And then Jesus says to them, be of good courage, be encouraged. It's me or I am. Don't be afraid. And then he steps into the boat with him. In one gospel, he asked Peter to step out on the water with him. But the other, Mark and John's gospel, he just gets in the boat with him. And suddenly when he's in the boat with him, the wind and the waves stop. And that story is not so much telling us about this miraculous thing that happened with Jesus and calming a storm. It's telling us about Jesus' identity and it's telling us about ourselves. The reason why we tell that story is because there are times that we are in the Sea of Galilee in a boat, and we are afraid we're drowning. The storms of life are coming, and we find ourselves terrified. And with that story, we remember, even if we can't see him, we remember he says to us, listen, I am with you. Don't be afraid. Be encouraged. And when we allow him into our boat, somehow the waves seem less. Sometimes, somehow we find the calmness that comes when we invite him into the boat.

16:52 I remember, and I've shared this with you before, my mother-in-law, when she was the last year of her life at the assisted care center, or assisted living center, and talking to me, I was sitting there with her in her room and saying to me, you know, Adam, there are times I'm afraid, and then I just remember, Jesus is in the boat with me. He's in the boat with me. Jesus, be in the boat with me. And I find that peace comes upon me. By the way, this is just an interesting update. Here at Resurrection Leawood, we're building our permanent chapel for weddings, funerals, our 730 service, and for use for other events. and that chapel is shaped like a boat to remind us of this story in the gospels. And knowing that people are coming in there at times of funerals or other times to pray, that it just reminds them, you know, you're in the boat and you're one of those disciples in the story. And then the stained glass window has Jesus walking on the water in the middle of the storm. Let me just remind you of the image of what this looks like. So this is the chapel from the outside, shaped like a boat and inside, you see the stained glass window there of Jesus.

17:46 You come inside and there's Christ. The carpet is blue waves, like the water's crashing into the boat that we're in. But then there's Jesus. And go a little closer and you can see this is what the stained glass window looks like. And I'm showing this to you today because we got a picture the other day from the stained glass artist. And here's the update. Some of the images that are already done are the part of the window that's already finished. And I love that, this idea that the chapel itself and that image is there. And when I walk in, just remembering when I'm anxious, he's there in the middle of the storm with us. How many times I've heard people say this story is part of what sustains me, is remembering he's there with me in the storm. All right. It's not just sickness that we fear, of course. We fear growing old as well. So we fear it for a variety of different reasons. We fear becoming obsolete or irrelevant. That's true. We fear looking old for a variety of reasons. We are a society that values youth so much, and so we desperately want to postpone growing old.

18:43 And for that reason, we spent as Americans last year $52 billion on anti-aging treatments for our faces, or I don't know if that even includes hair care products to make our hair look younger, but here we are constantly, as we get older, fearing and trying to postpone getting old as opposed to embracing it. On a side note, by the way, only 6% of people believe they actually look their age. So most people believe they look younger than their age, and most people believe other people look older than their age. 52% of people believe that other people they see look older than their age, while they feel they look younger than their age. Well, some of the fears we have about getting older, particularly when we're at midlife, are unfounded. So when you're a younger adult, or maybe you're Gen X or even baby boomers, you know, we start being fearful. I remember in my 40s, I started being concerned because I would forget where my keys were. I'd forget a word.

19:35 And by my 50s, it got even worse, you know? And you try to tell yourself, well, I got so much stuff on my mind, it must be that. But inside, you kind of get this little sinking feeling. And then, you know, at 60, there are times, like, I can't think of a word. I know it. I can't think of it. I Google search it. Like, what is the word for? And I put out the definition, you know, and don't remember people's names. Like, people that I know and love, but I look at them and I'm like, I don't tell them this, but like, I, you know, sometimes I can't find that word for about their name for about four or five minutes. And so every person my age that I know thinks that they might have early onset Alzheimer's or dementia. And I'm pretty sure that's true for many of you who are listening to this at our locations or online or on TV. And so just, again, examine your fears in the light of the facts. Here's the facts. That if you are 45 to 65, the chances that you have early onset Alzheimer's are 0.25%. So I just want you to hold that in mind. You are forgetting things because you're getting older.

20:29 That's just what happens with your brain. You don't have Alzheimer's. You have a 0.25% chance of having early onset Alzheimer's, which means that you have a 99.75% chance that you don't have it. So if the weatherman said, there's a 0.25% chance of rain today, are you gonna carry your umbrella with you everywhere you go and put on your galoshes? No, you're gonna say, it's a 99.75% chance. It's not gonna rain. I'm not worried about that at all. And I wanna encourage us to do that when it comes to illness as well. Now, when it comes to growing older, I think we often think that growing older is going to be accompanied with being less happy. So we think, what a bummer. We're gonna get older. We're gonna be less happy than we are. Do you know that is absolutely not the truth? So can I just share with you some data? This first chart that I'm gonna show you comes from some data of a survey of 355,000 people in the United States. It's a massive survey. The results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And let me just show you this data. So this is showing the well-being ladder. And the well-being ladder is showing just looking at age alone and then looking at covariates. But here's what we see, is we start off about this, you know, this is the level that 355,000 people reported, at least those who were this age group reported being happy.

21:40 Those are 18 to 21, so in our 20s. But happiness begins to drop off a cliff pretty quickly over here. You know, we graduate from high school or college. We got careers. We got stress for money. We got kids maybe. All of those things are happening. And then it kind of levels off for a little while in our 30s, but still way below where we were up here. And then we keep dropping down somewhere. This is like midlife and our midlife crisis. And maybe, you know, our kids start moving away from home or whatever. And then look what happens around the age of 55. We find ourselves, our reported well-being goes up and up and up. And so what we find is the, so here's relative well-being, reported well-being from people who are teenagers. And here it is, starting in our 60s, we surpassed the happiness that we had in our teenage years. I wanna just show you another chart. These are actually some other charts from that same study. I don't care if you can read all this.

22:33 I just want you to know this is stress. Look what happens to stress over time. Look what happens to worry over time. Look what happens to anger over time. Now, the only thing that stays roughly the same is sadness, which we have a relative sadness, you know, across life. I want to show you another study. This is from the UK, and this is 300,000 people in the UK that were studied, and this looks at life satisfaction across age. I want you to notice it starts off right up here when you're a young person, and then you graduate from high school, and it begins to drop off, and then you have kids and all this. but I want you to notice what happens when those kids move away from home. And I want you to see the happiest years, life satisfaction. The people who feel life is most worthwhile, they're in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. The people who have the greatest happiness, right here, 60s, 70s, and 80s. The people with the least anxiety, right here, 60s, 70s, and 80s. So it is a misnomer. And here's what I love. My son-in-law is turning 40 this week. And on Friday night, we had dinner together.

23:27 I gave him his birthday card. And I'm like, dude, All of your best years are ahead of you. You have no idea how much cool stuff is coming in the years ahead. That's what every study shows, is that the happiest years, the happiest people in these charts are in their late 70s. And happiness continues in the 80s and 90s as long as you keep your health. All right, so that reminds me of a couple in our congregation, Alan and Kay Kimes. I love these people. They've been a part of our church for 20, I think it's 26 years, and they're now 86 years old. And I sat down with him this week and I just said, hey, tell us about what happens. You're 86. So for all of the rest of us who aren't there yet, tell us about your 50s, your 60s, your 70s, and now your 80s. And Kay's going to talk about Silverlink. Silverlink is our ministry for older adults in nursing care centers. So she's devoted a lot of her time to caring for people who are older adults. Take a listen.

24:21 We met when we were three years old and we grew up in a small town and we attended the Same birthday parties. How did you make this thing work over all those years? Patience and love, understanding and encouragement. And I think we were each other's encourager, but we were steadfast. There was never a thought of leaving. You know, we're going to make this work. Never ever even a moment where you thought, I don't know if I can stay with this person for the rest of my life. There may have been a moment. Let's call it real small. Okay. Well, the 50s were a time where we got to know each other. I remember our 50th birthdays. We thought we were really old. And now I think 50 is really, really young. The 60s, January, the first Sunday in 2000, we found resurrection.

25:22 Yay! That was really good for us. And it has been such a joy to grow in our faith, to take classes, to join a small group. Yeah. What about the 70s? What happened in the 70s? I had to find something to do. Silver Link has taught me how to age gracefully. how to just be happy every day, to not let your health just take you down completely. You still have so much to give, so much to live for. I don't think about being old. I, you know, when they said retire, I said, I'm not tired of doing anything. You know, I want to keep on going. Then the time came where I was asked to work in the grief ministry program, people who have lost their loved ones. And that has, in a way, changed my life, too.

26:26 I tell you, when you get to the year 80s, you need a big whiteboard, calendar whiteboard. We have it. It has every day marked on it. And we have two different colored pens. And so we each know where the other one's going. and there will be at least three or four things in every square. I mean, it's a busy time. I don't know how we do it. We absolutely love serving. When you think about dying, I don't fear at all. I just want to keep doing what I'm doing, but I'm looking forward to it. I, um, I'm thinking, I just want to hear those words. Well done. Good and faithful servant.

27:18 I just love them. And I got to tell you, the interview is about 35 minutes and I'm going to post it on my podcast this coming week. So be watching for that. If you're, if you follow my podcast, making sense of faith, because I think you're going to enjoy hearing more of this story. We just cut it down to such a short period of time, but here's what I saw in them. I saw in their 50s, the kids had grown up and they're getting to know one another again. They're growing in love for each other once more and rediscovering life. In their 60s, they joined Church of the Resurrection and a lot of people, you know, people start going to church when, coming back to church when they have kids, but they also start coming back to church when they're getting in their 60s. And they were going to church already, but they came to resurrection. And here, you know, they started growing in their faith. They talked about how their personal relationship with Christ grew. They had the Holy Spirit working in their lives. They just felt like they were growing so much. And 60s is a time of incredible spiritual growth for many people. And then they got to their 70s and it was a time for service.

28:11 They retired. And now they're saying, what can God do with us now that we're not working full time for a living? And so they started getting involved in Silverlink and grief support groups and all kinds of things where they were serving. And they're finding great joy in that. And then they get to their 80s and they're continuing that service. And at the time where many people are slowing down, they're like, no, we got a lot of stuff going on, both our service, but also fun we're having. And it was just beautiful. There's just such joy in that. And, you know, if you maintain your health, if you can keep your health and you take care of yourself when you're in your 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, you find you have some amazing things, some amazing years ahead of you. And when I listened to them, I was just reminded of Robert Browning's poem, that famous line, grow old along with me, the best is yet to be, the last for which the first was made. And that's what I see in Alan and Kay Kimes. And that's what all those surveys showed too, of hundreds of thousands of people, 700,000 people between the UK and the United States. And I began to wonder when I was listening to this interview and when I was looking at the data, maybe this is why so often in the Bible, God chooses older adults to do some of his greatest work.

29:13 So Abraham was 75 years old and Sarah was 65 when God said, I want you to go to the promised land. And Moses was 80 when God said, I need you to go to Pharaoh and to tell him to let my people go. And you look throughout scripture, Solomon, so much of the wisdom that he offers comes at the latter part of his life. David, some of the most beautiful Psalms later in his life, when you come to the New Testament, you find Simeon and Anna, you know, they're in the temple when Jesus is dedicated. You find John the Baptist's parents, older adults, because they're at a place in life where they've been through all of this. They've learned all of this. They've experienced these things. And they've come to a place where they're ready to say, God, I'm yours. I trust you with my life. And I want you to do whatever you want with me. And in that moment, God says, okay, let's go. All right, that leads to the final concern. It's underlying the concerns about aging and illness as well. It's our deepest fear as humans, and that's our own mortality. Now, most of us, you know, are going to live, according to the latest data that came out just this last week, the average life expectancy for somebody born today, they're going to live to be 79.

30:14 Women older than that, but for men, 79 years old. But the reality is once you pass 65, you're going to live a lot older than that. You're going to live into your 80s. When you get to 80, you're going to live to be 88. When you get to 88, you're likely to live to be 95, I think it is. They're actuarial tables. that tell you all this. When you get to be 95, you're gonna live to be 97. And then at 97, it's 99. And the 99, it's 101. And that continues, you know, where it just shrinks a little bit more until you get to 120. And the IRS actuarial charts stop at 120. But you know what? If you've made it this far, you've got a good chance of making it quite a bit longer from here. Now, Christ offers us. So here's the reality. We're all gonna die. That's just part of, that's part of being human. We're gonna get sick sometimes. We're gonna grow old. We're gonna die. We can be terrified about that or we can live as people with faith. I'm reminded the Buddha told, you know, in Buddhism, this is the idea of non-attachment.

31:06 And by not attaching, not clinging to things, you know, you can maybe be free of some of these fears. But I think Jesus, and now Jesus says not to attach to. So Jesus and the Buddha agree on some things, but when it comes to this, Jesus' answer is a bit different. His answer is resurrection. I mean, I love this. This is what he says when he sees Mary grieving over the death of her brother, Lazarus. He says, I am the resurrection of the life. Whoever believes in me will live. Even though they die, everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. I mean, he's making this promise that this life is just the beginning, that there is so much more to our existence, to our life, than just what we can see, feel, and touch in our 80 years or 90 years or 100 years here on this planet. I sat at supper this week. There was a gathering of some friends, and I was sitting at the end of the table. Levon and I were there, and a friend of mine who's a rabbi, and one of his parishioners was there and a congregant was there.

32:00 And this man was sitting across from me and he asked me a great question. He said, you know, you're pastor at Church of the Resurrection. What does resurrection mean to Christians? And I said, well, you know, of course, it's the story of Christ's resurrection. So we believe the Romans crucified Jesus and he was buried. And on the third day, as miraculous and as unlikely as this sounds, he walked out of the tomb that God resurrected it from the dead. And so he walks out of the tomb. And the reason that matters to us, you know, it's like, why does that matter? Well, here's why that story matters to us. Because what it says is that evil and hate and sickness and old age and death do not get to have the final word. That's what the resurrection of Jesus is saying. This was God saying to the world through the death and resurrection of his son, none of these things have the final word. And as we often say around here, Easter means, and I shared this with him, Easter or the resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing. Now, when you believe that, you trust in that, You believe in the resurrection and you trust in Christ.

32:55 It changes how you face everything else in life. You know, no matter what happens, even if I die, the worst thing is not the last thing. No matter what happens to my loved ones, the worst thing is not the last thing. That's why we say that a lot around here because that's what Easter is all about. We are the church of the resurrection and this is what we fundamentally believe. The apostle Paul says it this way in 1 Corinthians 15. He's describing what happens when we die. Our body is buried in the ground, he says, and when the perishable body puts on imperishability, That is, we have a new body in heaven that's indestructible. And this mortal body puts on immortality. Then the saying that is written will be fulfilled. And he quotes from the scriptures from the Old Testament, death has been swallowed up in victory. Don't you love that? That death has been swallowed up in victory. Now, we like David in the 23rd Psalm, we believe that Christ who died and rose again walks with us all the time, that God is with us through Christ all the time.

33:49 And so we say together with the psalmist, say this with me out loud, Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me. For God is with me. I want to end by returning to the story of Robin Sisley. Rob was diagnosed again with cancer, a brain tumor and pancreatic cancer. Difficult to treat. And his response has been amazing. I mean, you know, when I first saw him after this, of course there's fear and shock, you know. And so you work through that, but then you come back and you say, but I trust in God. I trust in God in the middle of this. And I will not be afraid because I do. And that's what I've seen in him. And so I asked him, you know, how have you dealt with this? Tell me what your experience is, you know, what you're thinking. And he says, from my perspective, I really don't live in fear having cancer. Even before being diagnosed, your message that the worst thing is never the last thing always has provided me a peace or calm, not fear.

34:46 Now that I've been diagnosed with cancer, this phrase lifts me up every day. I'm blessed to have a wonderful support system of friends and family whose prayers mean so much to me. I'm also blessed to have an amazing wife who is so caring and compassionate while working so hard to get the best care for me. I don't live in fear of dying. I've spent a lot of time in machines, MRIs, CT scans, radiation over the last several months. So I have a lot of time to think. I've realized that there are a lot of great people in the world, including my family and friends. What they've done for me inspires me to be a better friend, dad, and husband. I told my kids that this diagnosis is not the end. It is the beginning. Through prayers, God has given me a second chance to be around the people who love me, who love me the most. I don't want to live in fear, and I'm not going to miss out on all these opportunities.

35:34 This week, I was speaking to a dear friend, Chuck Bloom. He's probably watching this from Colorado. Chuck, good to be with you today by worship. But Chuck's been a longtime member of Resurrection. He and his wife, Mary, moved to Denver about a year and a half ago. And then And then Mary passed away this last year. And that's been very hard for Chuck. And he's just such a great guy and a person of deep faith. And we were talking together, had a great visit. And he was telling me how he was launching a new small group at the church that he attends there in Denver, St. Andrews United Methodist Church, great congregation. We have a lot of friends in common. And so he was starting a new small group and he's describing just all the things that he was doing to care for people and encourage people and serve and by the way, he still plays racquetball. Guy's in amazing health. Still plays racquetball, would easily beat a guy like me in racquetball.

36:27 And he says, you know, in some ways, I lament the fact that I have such good health. He's 89 years old, still has clients that he works with. He says, in some ways, I lament the fact that I have such good health because there's a part of my heart that's already in heaven. Having lost Mary and he lost his daughter years ago, having lost Lori and Mary, there's a part of me that can't wait to see them again. But while I'm here, I'm gonna be as useful as I can to God and for God's purposes. You see, what Chuck knows is that the worst thing is never the last thing and that Mary and Lori are safe in God's arms and believing that changes everything. Listen, Jesus said this on the night before he was crucified. He said, I go to prepare a place for you. And if I do, I'm gonna come back for you. And he also said, trust in God, trust also in me. I wanna give you this invitation. I want you to trust in Christ. I want you to trust that he is. I want you to trust that he rose from the grave.

37:19 I want you to trust that he knows you and loves you. I want you to trust that he's gonna walk with you throughout this life. I want you to trust your life to him and trust it to him and your worries and your concerns and the people in your family that you care about. I want you to be able to say, Lord, I release my fears to you and I trust in you as my savior to rescue me from myself and my fears and as my Lord who's gonna walk with me and lead me until I see you face to face, face to face. So I'm gonna ask you, would you be willing to put your trust in him today and to allow your faith to overcome your fears. Would you pray with me?

37:54 And just whisper this under your breath. Lord, I trust in you. I trust in your unfailing love. I trust that you died and rose again. I trust that you know me. I trust that you love me. I trust that you'll walk with me to the very end. I entrust my life to you Jesus my family and my friends and I release my cares to you thank you for loving me