Dr. Steimle Sermon, 1964-04-05, The Final Horizon

fb no doubt when you've been driving along in a car especially and rolling country you've played the same sort of little game with yourself that i have as you come up over a rise or around abandoned the road you've made a brief mental note of the next arrives and another hill or bend in the road and then gone back to enjoying the more immediate sites along the way and then when michael rosen has been reached the process is repeated the trick becomes in a very quiet and almost subconscious way the conquest of one for rice and after another we do the same sort of thing far more consciously and definitely as we move along the road of life of course for life is a succession of horizons some beer

and some thought and the conscious recognition of them helps make the intervening times more meaningful and significant the immediate horizon maybe simply dinnertime tonight with certain specific tasks to be done in a while or for those raising a family there's a more distant horizon day when the youngsters will have flown the coop and established homes for themselves meanwhile we tangle with the problems of education and preparing them for that day knowing that there will be an end to it now all this of course is little more than common sense it's the conscious recognition of horror rights and it's in life which helps make meaningful and significant the immediate tasks at hand but what about life's final four is

it's rare these days that a person takes the same commonsense conscious recognition of the final rites the fact that one day he will die sometime ago an intriguing little story appeared in the new yorker it was a story of a man on his way home from the office on a rainy friday evening to face a cluster of minor problems involving the various members of his family and among a teenage son who'd taken the car without permission and then give up a wife suddenly prodding by imaginary symptoms occasion by an article and pernicious anemia she had picked up and read at her hair dressers a day or so before and a father who was getting too old to live as he wanted to live alone in his own

large house the problems were minor unfamiliar and he had handled them all before in the same familiar way from the expected lectured to his son jocular reassurance to his wife to the customary talk with his father about the advantages of a small bright apart but on that rainy friday evening as he made his way home through mid manhattan he happened to see a man who had just been run down by a car lying dead in the middle of the street and for only the second or third time in his life the final highrise of which of course had always lurking about long shadowy an almost unreal game sharply into focus he suddenly realized that he too

along with those you love would also died one day and it made a difference when i got home that night a lecture to his son came out as expected but it seemed unreal and inconsequential as if he were not really talking with his son nor could he summon up the expected bantering tone with his wife to reassure her that she was played with imaginary demons he tried but it didn't come off when he got to his father he simply gave up and simply told him that if he wanted to live in his own big house there was no good reason why you shouldn't star then goes on to indicate these subtle changes that went on in the lives of the members of the family as a sudden as a result of the

sudden recognition in this man's life of the final four eyes but the point of the story is not simply the fact that changes occurred in these lies as a result of this sudden open recognition of that the point is that the author had to use the rather drastic device of dramatic coincidence a fatal street accident at the precise moment when he was leaving the office to bring that point home and also but the new yorkers thought the same unusual enough to warrant publication the new yorker was right of course one of the striking characteristics of our time is the absurd lengths to which we go to keep them out of sight and out of

mind there was a healthier and a brighter day when death along with all the other basic essentials of life like bertha marriage in the bearing of children in the raising of a family was openly accept as an enter ballpark of life's experience the burial ground for example surrounding the church stored in the center of the community it was there and there was no sense trying to avoid it you know moreover amen was buried from the church the same place where he was that was unmarried and sat with his children and wife of a sunday morning today as you well know we had our burial grounds on the outskirts of the town where we really have to look at them and if we can

actually hire them we tried to hide them behind euphemisms like memorial park slope the name at least will not tolerate too strong and odor of death moreover today a man is usually buried from the funeral hall this is curious you know it's a place which is used for no other purpose and where you and i never enter except at the time of that precisely as if we wanted to put death into parentheses it is reported that william randolph hearst you accumulated vast power and wealth in his lifetime would never allow anyone to use the word that in his breath and much in our life today

expresses the same to vote we frankly and openly take into account every other horizon and mike except the lions and as a result there is an underlying anxiety which infects our lives and nameless dread which often enough never even rises to the surface to be recognized for what it is until perhaps you happen to run across a man lying dead on the street on a rainy friday evening please do not misunderstand the intention here is not to be morbid it is quite the opposite if there is anything more about death it arises out of a refusal to face it and take it into account we stand this morning in

the afterglow of easter with all the joy and triumph which that they bring us as a matter of fact as you will know for the christian every day in the year is baby in the victorious glow of the resurrection from the dead every sunday the first day of the week is a celebration of that victory but the victory is not a hollow what jesus did not just go on living after he was crucified he died bodies so all of it and was buried the final four rise and had come for him and it's only as we face that fact you say

that death the last enemy had come and that it's a it's full say that the eastern shore it mean anything but the last enemy had been conquered by god had raised him up from death to life again but the final horizon had been overturned there's a healthy real isn't about the bible it doesn't shout it's ours to any of the facts of what it lets every single one of them squarely in the eye takes them all into account santa's evil self unbelievable stuff that and then announces triumphantly in the face of all of this oh lord god omnipotent

rain which is why contrary to what a lot of people but they seem to believe the earliest christians did not go around talking about what a wonderful an unselfish life this jesus of nazareth lived before he died and how we ought to follow his example the earliest sermons did not contain themselves with excerpt asians to live the sermon on the mount in practice the golden rule this isn't what early christians talked about at all know the record is perfectly clear on this the earliest christian preaching amounts of it three of the resurrection over death they were religious it's there's no sense telling people to live good lives and love their neighbors until the lurking anxiety in every man's

life there has been brought out into the open taken into account and conquer not as is clear eyed realism make any practical tips let's suppose instead of constantly pushing affordable final horizon into the background and attempting to avoid it as much as possible it's brought frankly into the picture taken into account what difference does it make it will make at least one big difference for our inner serenity of mine what paul calls the peace of god which passes all understand this is not a superficial piece of mind can we get on a satisfying vacation for example when we get away from the

tensions in service anxieties of life and enjoy the peace and quiet of sunshine in florida in the weather or in the mountains in vermont or the lake in minnesota alone in the summer there's a great deal to be said of course for this kind of refreshment this kind of peace of mind but it's temporary and song you know it only serves to underline that the pretensions and anxieties of the rest of the year until we wish we could get away from it a wall all the time instead of for just a few weeks there is a deeper some of which comes from a man who takes that into account for one of the big causes of our anxiety

which leads to all kinds of results is the constant fear of being found out every day of our lives records the little deceptions in which we tried to hire what we really are from the world from our friends from our family it's even from ourselves sometimes of course these little deceptions a perfectly innocent like a woman using lipstick because everybody recognizes the deception for what it it's more frequently however they may be dangerous even poisonous it's amazing for example how much of our time week after week is spent simply just define ourselves and our actions and even our motives to other and to ourselves

or of justifying herself were little shopping it's duggan says particularly if they were about our sweaters she have to justify it you know the husband constantly justify himself because he doesn't spend more time with the children or crack open a discussion which has drifted into an argument and from argument into an ugly better car and almost invariably you'll find the cause for the bitterness has been this consuming urge to justify ourselves and the urge to justify our souls arises out of the fear of being found out we are consumed by the desire to appear to be right where as you and i know that deep down

we are not right that no judgment no motive of cars is pure mix and so we go on day after day hiding behind our deceptions justifying ourselves fearful that someone gave on those we love wife husband children will find out what were really like mountains now if at the end of the road when we reached a final rise there is nothing but the bear fact that we will be found out that we shall stand in the face of him from who knows secrets or it isn't surprising that we try to banish the full

height our cemeteries get funerals out of the church and a funeral home someplace at the blue on the were death or as the christian knows an inner serenity he takes death and this business of being found out which is what judgment really me into account brings it out into the open and into the present tense for the god or face him then at the end of the row when he will be seen without any pretense or defense cesium know for what he really is and offers to accept as he actually it's witches what forgiveness of course me and what a relief you know here and now i

don't know but there is one who sees us just as we are in a way we are on winning for anyone else to see us in a way we are unwilling even to see ourselves and i set us then you see these silly pretensions is futile business of constantly trying to justify or so it's for you that will be found that are seen for what they are and we can accept ourselves big cause god sees us and accepts as precise as we are certain enters serenity the very piece of thought this is what makes it possible that means to handle the surface tensions and anxieties of life because the deeper anxiety

has been resolved by our willingness to so love and forgiveness for us just as we are so the christian life might well be described as the art of living with debt and there is no completely satisfying part of living or style of life apart from that so pollack and write an insultingly about life here and now that we are more than conquerors oh because he has been persuaded that that law last annan has been taken into account and distraught and the result in your life in my own

is an increasingly violent mess such as edna st vincent millay has described when she wrote all up from the ground sprang up high and hailed the earth with such a cry as is not heard saved from a man who hasn't been there and lips whose son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain and entered not into glory before he was crucified mercifully grant that we are walking in the way of the cross

may find it none other than the way of life and peace through the saint jesus christ as borrowers bombers b