Risk or Rust

April 13

Read: 1 Cor. 15:35-49

Risk or Rust

I will speak at my Grandmother’s funeral today. (Thank you for your patience the last few days, I know I have fallen behind in writing to you all.) I underestimated the weight I would feel in doing this. Int he midst of the sadness, I am reminded that we “do not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.” (1 Thes. 4:13) What an odd idea… to “grieve with hope”… to hopefully mourn.

I was struck by something yesterday as I stood in a field at the farm where my Grandmother took her last breaths… the farm where my Grandfather labored for the entirety of his adult life. As I looked around, I saw the remnants of a lifetime of labor… the rusted carcasses of farm equipment, hand built grain trailers, and stacks of rotting barn wood. The verses that Jesus spoke came to life: ““Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matt 6:19-21) This is truly a world where “moth and rust” destroy. All of these “useful” things around me … when they stopped moving… when they stopped “working”… when they were stacked or parked or whatever… that is when they began to “rust”. That is when they began to be “destroyed”. We long for rest in this world, but I can’t help but imagine that to slow down and “rest” here… in this world… in this “system”… well it just leaves us susceptible to “rust”. When I walked by this old grain trailer, the earth had swallowed the wheels up… all the way to the axle. This is what the earth is doing… slowly but surely… it is “swallowing us up”. If we slow down… or quit… that is what comes next, being “swallowed up”. My friend Josh Neuer and I talk about this idea frequently. We often say :“risk or rust”. So how is it that we remain “hopeful”? How do we “mourn as those with hope”? What do we do with the longing to “rest” if slowing down and stopping our work means to rust? As the people of God, our hopefulness comes from this truth: We will rise. There is rest ahead in a place where slowing down does not destroy… where we will never “rust”.

“What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen…So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body…I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.” (1 Cor. 15: 36,42-44,50)

Whenever we feel ourselves “rusting” - whenever we feel our own “perishability”…”dishonor”… “weakness” - we remind ourselves that this is not the end. “What is sown does not come to life unless it dies”. This is why we HOPE. This is how we keep MOVING… WORKING… FORGING AHEAD FOR THE GOSPEL. What is the alternative? To be swallowed up… to watch the moths and rust feast on our labor. Rest is coming for us as God’s people, but for now - we “risk or rust”. Love you all. - JDP