The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

 © 2024, Dr. Tamilio

I hate being sick.  My wife always tells me to never use the word “hate.”  Sorry.  I completely and absolutely and thoroughly despise being sick.

I cannot remember the last time I was this sick.  (I’m still stuffed up if you haven’t noticed.)  I had COVID twice before, but this was different.  Everyone said, “This strain of the virus is just a bad cold.”  Bad cold?  I cannot remember the last time I was knocked to my butt this hard.  I’ll spare you the details but will simply say that I do not look forward to having such a “cold” again!

What is hardest for me (when I’m sick) is the boredom.  I am someone who has to always be doing something.  I thrive under pressure, when I have to juggle multiple tasks at once.  Laying in bed, unable to move too much for fear of being winded, watching reruns of The Twilight Zone — this was nice and relaxing for about six hours, but it got old fast.  It made me appreciate the plight of those who are homebound so much more.

As I lay in bed last week, my mind began to wander.  My wife had to work, so I was alone.  I thought about aloneness.  (Is that a word?  Aloneness?)  I thought about isolation.  I thought about mortality.  In other words, when you are in a state of convalescence, dark thoughts begin to bleed into your psyche.  And then it hit me.  This illness is a temporary thing.  You’re not in hospice care — and you’re not really alone.

But then again, none of us are really alone.  No matter how healthy or sick you may be, you are not alone.  You are part of a family: this family.  Some refer to this as a family that is different from a biological family, because we are not bound by blood.  But we are.  We are bound by blood: the blood of Christ.

That blood was shed out of love.  It is the ultimate sign of God’s love.

Author Michael Battle talks about how he came to discover Jesus.  He writes, “As I prayed and sought God to specifically learn about the power of the blood of Jesus, I found that I was growing in my understanding of God’s love for me.”[1]  He continues, “I couldn’t explain why, but the more I leaned into growing in my faith in Christ’s blood, the more I grew in my faith in God’s love.  When I say God’s love, I mean his love, his grace, and his mercy.”[2]

In this community, that love is made manifest.  It’s tangible.  You find it in the relationships we share with one another.  Come up here some Sunday right after Communion and watch how this congregation passes the peace.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  I know I’ve mentioned this many times before, but you, the members and friends of this church, could spend hours passing of the peace.  People walk all around this sanctuary.  There are handshakes and hugs and smiles and tidings of goodwill and laughter and all good things.  Love abounds!  I don’t even see families greet each other with such intensity.

As I recuperated in bed, thoughts such as this went through my mind.  This church.  My church.  Our church.  God’s love that appeared in a manger guides us by its light making us realize that none of us are alone.

That word love is interesting, isn’t it?  In English, we only have one word for love.  Love.  The New Testament was originally written in Greek.  Greek has a lot of words for love.  We’ve talked about this before, too.  First, there is philo, which is a platonic type of love.  This is the love shared between friends.  It is from the root “philo” that we get words such as philanthropy, philharmonic, Philadelphia, philosophy, and philoprogenitiveness, whatever that word means.  Then there’s eros, which is where we get the word erotic from.  This is romantic love.  There’s also agape, which is self-giving love.  This is the type of love that God has for us — the type of love that parents have for their children.  I used to think that the love that Christians have for one another is philo, but I’ve come to see it more as agape.  Our love for one another is to be akin to the love God has for us.

While I was in bed with a fever, I thought about those who are sick and don’t recover.  I thought about those facing their mortality, those facing the end.  “How horrific that must be for the atheist,” I thought.  To look at the ceiling and think, “There is nothing beyond this.  There’s no God.  No afterlife.  No heaven.”

In those moments, I thought of nonbeing.  If there’s nothing after this, then the lights go out when you die and that’s it.  You cease to be.  Such thoughts of non-existence terrify me.  It is not an ego thing.  It has more to do with the past than the future.  My life has been far from perfect, and I have certainly had my share of pain, heartache, and loss, but I have also experienced insurmountable joy; I have been filled with hope; I have loved and have been loved; and I know the peace that passes all understanding.  I don’t want that to end.  I think of the main character Meursault in Albert Camus’ novel The Stranger.  Meursault, an atheist facing execution for murder, is asked by a chaplain how he would want the next life to be if he believed in it.  Meursault barks at him, “One where I could remember this life!”[3]

Isn’t that what we all want?  We do not just want there to be life after death, but we want to remember this life.  We want to be reunited with all of our loved ones who went before us.

And we will be.

I believe that the next life is somewhat of a continuation of this one, only better.  Heaven and earth are not wholly distinct.  We can’t see it, but they intersect at some spiritual level.  That great cloud of witnesses that we speak about is with us now as they worship at God’s throne.

The love we experience in this life will be experienced and magnified in the next one.  When we get there, it will be the ultimate reunion with everyone we have known and loved.  More importantly, we will fully be in the presence of God.  It will be filled with so (period) much (period) joy (period).  Jesus promised this to all of us.  When we are at the point when we face our mortality, and all of us will be, we can rest upon the promises of Jesus.  He will say to us, as he did to one of the criminals who were crucified next to him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).  I love the version of this verse found in Eugene Peterson’s translation of Scripture called The Message.  It reads, “Don’t worry, I will.  Today you will join me in paradise.”

There is no need to worry.  Place your cares in the arms of Jesus.  There is no love and there is no joy like his.  As he says in John’s Gospel, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (15:11).  Amen.

[1] Michael Battle, “The Blood of Christ and the Love of God,” taken from Rooted and Grounded in Christ (online).  Published March 12, 2023.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Albert Camus, The Stranger, Matthew Ward, trans. (New York: Vintage International, 1988), 120.