Nothing Gold Can Stay

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 9:6-15


The tiny rural Michigan community where I grew up had an area we affectionately called “downtown.” Downtown consisted of the following enterprises: There was Dick’s Bait and Tackle, which was reassuringly owned by a guy named Dick, and which sold not just bait and tackle but also candy that, over time, had come to taste like minnows. There was a hardware store that had a display cabinet of pocket knives that, as a little kid, I lusted after to no avail. And there was a pharmacy that had a counter where malts and cherry Cokes were served by a young woman with whom, when I achieved adolescence, I came to develop a relationship similar to the one I had earlier suffered through with the pocket knives.

A mile or so away in one direction there was a saloon with a couple of pool tables—a single-room dive that I once heard my mother call “the bad part of town.” And a mile or so in the other direction there was a big old barn, in front of which stood a sign bearing the single word “Antiques.” The place was filled to the rafters with furniture, decorations, books, wooden and metal toys, mechanical banks, bottles of patent medicine—all manner of stuff. Many a rainy Sunday afternoon included a trip to the antiques store, an odyssey my father always initiated with a stale joke about going to see what was “new.”

In one of my first visits to the store, I noticed a throw pillow that had embroidered upon it the following couplet: “I slept and dreamt that life was beauty / I woke and found that life was duty.” That I can still recite the message verbatim after more than forty years tells you something about how badly it traumatized me. Indeed, it seemed to me a singularly distressing note on which to doze off at night. And it did not surprise me, and it will not surprise you, that in all my years of stopping by the antiques store—with different merchandise coming and going—this particular item remained on the shelf. It appears that no one wished to drift off into dreamland freshly reminded of the notion that our existence consists of nothing more than drudgery and obligation.

Nevertheless, duty obviously has a strong moral claim upon us. After all, duties arise from a variety of compelling sources, such as our promises, our beliefs, and our relationships. And, most relevant for today’s purposes, duty can also arise from a sense of gratitude. Jesus powerfully captures this idea in these familiar words: “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” (Luke 12:48) Indeed, gratitude may move us to offer up much even when we have been given little. “Truly,” Jesus declares after the woman gives her last two copper coins, “this poor widow has put in more than everyone else; for they have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had.” (Luke 21:3) Extravagant generosity comes in all shapes and sizes; but I would suggest to you that it is intimately, if not inextricably, linked with a mindset of extravagant gratitude.

So, in some places the gospels direct us to feel gratitude and to act generously for the simple reason that this is how God wants us to behave. But, as the Bible makes clear from its opening chapters, God understands that we are a free-willed, independent, and headstrong species who tend to resist straightforward directives, like "don't eat that apple" or "here, follow these commandments." God therefore coaxes us into that grateful and generous state of mind in countless subtle ways. (I sometimes call this God's divine and sacred sneakiness.) Today, I want to suggest to you that one of those ways is through the very nature of life itself—the delicate, tentative, finite nature of life itself.

This came home to me recently when Lisa and J.J. and I went for a Sunday afternoon walk in the fall woods. The trees had changed colors and had the path was covered with a thick carpet of fallen leaves. It was the sort of peaceful autumn day that will make a philosopher out of you, and so my mind turned to one of my favorite poems by Robert Frost. It goes like this:

Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Lisa and J.J. and I were surrounded by what happens after “leaf subsides to leaf.” And all around us was abundant evidence that gold is, indeed, nature’s “hardest hue to hold.”

In the fall, in our neck of the woods, we pause to celebrate those colors precisely because we understand that they will not last--we will not have them forever. In our best and most alert moments, it is this same awareness that prompts us to call a friend we haven’t talked to in a while; to listen extra closely to what our children have to say; to prolong our hugging of a loved one; to forgive someone who has offended us; to smell the flowers, pet the dogs, watch the birds, and hear the music; to join the dance. The fall stage of the cycle of life reminds us that everything we have is fragile, and therefore precious, and therefore worthy of thanksgiving—extravagant thanksgiving.

That is the place to which our passage today calls us. “Look,” the scripture says to us, “don’t give of yourselves hesitantly or out of a sense of duty. Do it cheerfully! Do it because sharing abundantly of your time and your talents and your gifts and your service and your love and your grace and your empathy and your humor will enrich you beyond your wildest dreams! Do it because that is how we give praise to and celebrate the indescribable blessings that God has bestowed upon us.” And do it now, because time is fleeting; because life doesn’t wait around; because nothing gold can stay.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux once declared: “What I know of the divine science and holy scripture I learnt in the woods and fields.” On a pleasant weekend afternoon, with a cool breeze rustling through the leaves, the woods and fields taught me a lesson about being thankful for this life. But they taught me another lesson as well. They taught me to remember that God does most of His work out of sight; that underneath the leafy paths and the crazy clutter of fallen limbs God was making something beautiful and new; and that paths we have not encountered, through gates we cannot conceive, will someday lead us to places we cannot imagine.

For this, too—for this, especially—a thanksgiving, a thanksgiving.

And the people said: Amen.