Phyllis: Ready for Glory
So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18; 5:1
Here is the passage of the Bible that I look at more often than any other, because I turn to it ever time a church member dies. It speaks so clearly of our hope of eternal life. It says that eternal life starts here. It started for Phyllis Keddy a long time ago on this earth. It started for her when she began to have her inner nature renewed day by day.
What is that all about? How do you get renewed every day?
There was a song in the musical Godspell that was called “Day By Day.”
“O dear Lord, three things I pray:
To see thee more clearly,
To love thee more dearly,
To follow thee more nearly
Day by day.”
That prayer is a pretty good description of living a life that gets renewed on the inside day by day. Because Phyllis was so faithful to New Hope Baptist Church – we saw her every Sunday in worship and in Bible study – we start there, assuming that she really wanted to see God more clearly as God has shown himself in Jesus.
We saw her growing in her love for God in her love for people.
We saw her wanting to follow Jesus more closely (“more nearly”) as she brought her sons and her daughters-in-law and other friends and relatives into her circle of influence and got them to church or to talk about spiritual matters.
The great promise of this passage from Paul’s second letter to the Church in Corinth, Greece is this: “For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure. . . .” Another way of saying that is this: “These little troubles are getting us ready for an eternal glory that will make all our troubles seem like nothing.”
The troubles we go through in our lives may seem very large at times, but compared with the glory for which we are being made ready, they are small.
That is why we are saying that Phyllis was getting ready for glory. She was preparing herself, by the way she loved God and by the way she followed Jesus, to enter into life and health and joy beyond our ability to imagine.
Let’s look at some ways we can see Phyllis getting ready for glory.
1. She cared for the people around her.
How many people in this room and up north and not able to be here today can testify to her caring about the happiness of other people without expecting anything in return for herself?
Here is what I saw in the relatively short time I knew Phyllis:
She cared for us here at New Hope. She came here because she wanted to be around us. Worshipping God with this little flock meant a great deal to her. She told me so, and she showed how much it meant to her by being here so faithfully. But that is not all. I saw how she brought some of you here.
And Phyllis told me the next to the last time she was able to talk to me how much church had meant to her life. She said that her parents didn’t go to church. It was church folks picking her up when she was a little girl and taking her with them to a Lutheran Church that gave her a sense of what church is meant to be. For her it became foundational to her life. The church was her spiritual family, extending out beyond her large biological family. In the tough times, when there were struggles, when there was illness, when there was a challenge to be faced – what the Bible calls “a slight momentary affliction” – she would reach out for support to all of her family, including her church family.
There is a law of Christ. It is this: “Love one another as I have loved you.” In fact Jesus said this is how people are going to be able to know that you are a follower of his, a disciple. They will see that we in the church genuinely care about each other. Phyllis was a leader in this kind of love.
I had an aunt who liked to cook. I would eat dinner at her house about every Friday night during my childhood. She would cook something she really liked and say to you, “Taste this. This is really good.” That is the way I see Phyllis. She found what made a real difference in her life and she would say to her family and friends, “Try this. This has brought me some joy and peace and I want you to have the same.”
She cared for people and loved the church. That was getting her ready for glory.
2. She loved life as it came to her.
I noticed that when I talked with Phyllis. There was no super spirituality. She didn’t try to impress me or anyone else with her knowledge of the Bible or her prayer life or her regular church attendance. She lived her life in this world and loved it. That was evidence of her getting ready for glory.
I heard someone ask this question recently: “If you don’t enjoy living this life, what makes you think you will enjoy the next one?” I would expand that a little: If you aren’t experiencing what the Bible calls the fruit of the Spirit in this life, what makes you think you will get it in the next life?
The fruit of the Spirit is what God is making us now in this life. Here it is in Galatians 5:22-23, “God's Spirit makes us loving, happy, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled.” Does that describe Phyllis?
Henri Nouwen said,
“For a long time I have thought about eternal life as a life after all my birthdays have run out. . . . But the older I become, the less interest my “afterlife” holds for me. . . . Wondering how things will be for me after I die seems, for the most part, a distraction. When my clear goal is the eternal life, that life must be reachable right now, where I am, because eternal life is life in and with God, and God is where I am here and now.
The great mystery of the spiritual life – the life in God – is that we don’t have to wait for it as something that will happen later. Jesus says: ‘Dwell in me as I dwell in you.’ It is this divine in-dwelling that is eternal life. It is the active presence of God at the center of my living – the movement of God’s Spirit within us – that gives us the eternal life.” (-Henri J.M. Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, 1994)
3. She endured hardships with faith.
This is at the heart of the promise in 2 Corinthians about getting ready for glory. “For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.”
An affliction is anything that causes pain or suffering. We saw Phyllis go through a relatively short battle with cancer. I am sure that there were some other things in her life that caused her some pain and suffering. Many of you would know those pretty intimately. My guess is that she had learned along the way in her life to go through pain and suffering with trust in God.
Trust means that you let God be in control. Trust means that you accept what happens to you as somehow not outside God’s care. You submit to the pain and go through the suffering with an awareness that God didn’t cause you to suffer in order to punish you. You know that you are not different from the rest of humanity. You are just as likely as the next person to be in an accident, to be struck by lightning, to get cancer. But in all these things, we are more than conquerors, more than champions. We know that they are not evidence that God doesn’t care. In all the events of life, we trust God.
Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”
Joseph, after his brothers had sold him into slavery in Egypt and he had gone through false accusations that resulted in a long time in prison, he came to see that God used his suffering to bring about good for a lot of people. And Joseph, when he got the chance to get back at his brothers for what they had done to him, hugged them and cried and said, “You intended to do me evil, but God used it for good.”
Paul said, “God is at work in all things for those who love God and are called to find out God’s purpose in their lives.” And he said, “I am sure that neither death nor life, nor suffering nor hardship, nor war, not even angels or demons – nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from God’s love that we have in Jesus.”
So Phyllis let herself be renewed on the inside. That is why we know that she has entered into a new life that we can only call, with the Bible, Glory. Did you know. as you saw her live her live and deal with her hardships, that she was bound for glory?
We can’t really picture in our minds what it is like for her now, but the Book of Revelation helps us.
John wrote that he “saw a vast crowd, . . . from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. (The Lamb of course is Jesus after he has been the sacrificial lamb for our freedom from sin and death.) They were clothed in white robes and held palm branches in their hands. And they were shouting with a mighty shout, “Salvation comes from our God who sits on the throne and from the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living beings. And they fell before the throne with their faces to the ground and worshiped God. They sang, . . .Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and strength belong to our God. . . .”Then one of the . . . elders asked me, “Who are these who are clothed in white? Where did they come from?”
And I said to him, “Sir, you are the one who knows.”
Then he said to me, “These are the ones who died. They went through the great affliction . They have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb and made them white.
“That is why they stand in front of God’s throne. . . .
And he who sits on the throne
will give them shelter.
They will never again be hungry or thirsty;
. . . . For the Lamb on the throne
will be their Shepherd.
He will lead them to springs of life-giving water.
And God will wipe every tear from their eyes.”
Can you see Phyllis in Glory? Can you see her in that vast crowd, in her clean, white robe, standing in front of God’s throne with Jesus, the Lamb, by her side? She is filled with all the fullness of God’s love for her. She has life that flows forever from the Springs of the Water of Life.
