I'm Attached To Life

The message of the early Church was that "Christ is Life", and we are attached to His life through the Church, and through Baptism, and Confirmation, and Communion, and worship and a thousand other things.

In Paul's wonderful letter to the Philippian church, he said, "For me to live is Christ." My own youth was captured by this thought as have millions of others as Paul said: "It is my eager expectation and hope that, with full courage, now as always Christ will be honored in my body, by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." (Philippians 1:20,21)

What a faith. If we only believed it, and lived it. Years ago when I had surgery, I awoke with the strange realization that a tube was protruding from my abdomen. It felt strange, but my body needed it. During the surgery, life had come to a rather slow beat, but the doctors and nurses were watching my pulse, my heart, and my breathing, and back in my room were members of my family caring and praying. And I realized that I was attached to life, by many kinds of cords. And I thought, "How good it is to be attached!"

Life has a way of "plugging us in", in a variety of ways. And through the years, we have been reminded that these attachments to life are important. We are not designed just for "some future heavenly planet". This world is needed too. The Mississippi River is a life‑line to which many of us are attached. The farmers are in a business to which most of us are attached. The car dealers, the schools, the hopes and fears of our teen‑agers...we all have much at stake in these things. And through the years, the Christian faith has said: "Every part of life is sacramental. It is holy and sacred, and I cannot separate my religion from my work, and my family, or from my community. These life‑lines are all important to us."

And so, I am grateful that my work as a clergyman is not just to give aspirins and sedatives to take away the pain, but to plug folks into a job so big that the pain doesn't matter. Ours is not just a Sunday‑message. It is not just for speaking in hushed and holy tones. But the faith of the Christian has legs on it, has a tube running to it. It plugs into our jobs, into our Mondays and our Tuesdays. There are times when like Peter, I become afraid and deny the saving power of my Lord. Like Judas, I betray what has become in me a weak Christ, an insipid and meaningless faith. But there are also times, thank God, when I can arise out of my bed, and look out on the world, and say, "Hallelujah, Christ is alive, and I am attached to his Life, and don't anybody un‑plug me."