Hilton Head Island, SC – February 20, 2022
The Chapel Without Walls
Ecclesiastes 1:1-9; 12:-1-9,13-14
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.- Ecclesiastes 1:4
Last week the sermon title was Is Dementia Inevitable? This week it is equally jarring: Is Old Age Affordable? Are those two doozies, or what?
On the front of today’s bulletin there are some statistics from The Economist, arguably the most comprehensive news magazine ever published. They estimate that by 2050 one in 6 people in the world will be over 65 years old. In 2019, they say, one out of every 11 people was older than 65. Can a time come when there are too many old people for the world economy to sustain them? Can society afford to keep the elderly living indefinitely?
Not many people like to think about the answers to the question posed by this sermon. That is especially true for many old people. We don’t like to ponder whether we personally can afford old age, because many of us are already there, and we don’t like to imagine that we might run out of money before we run out of time.
The Economist had another story about the number of old people in Japan, which has the oldest average age in the world. There, on average, women live to be 87.7 years old and men 81.6 years. But polls show that the healthy part of those years is 12 years shorter for women and 9 years shorter for men. In other words, on average Japanese oldsters live in poor health for about 10% of their lives. I suspect the percentage would the same for Americans, even though we do not live quite as long on average.
The writer of the book of Ecclesiastes, known as “the Preacher” in English and as Koheleth in Hebrew, presumably was an elderly man. He did not have the most cheerful outlook in the world. His opening words were, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Nearly his last words in this book were a repetition of his opening statement: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Norman Vincent Peale he was not. In this context the word “vanity” does not connote the meaning we normally give it, such as when we think of the queen in Snow White saying, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall/ Who’s the fairest of them all?” Vanity over one’s looks is vanity of a sort, but that’s not at all what Koheleth was talking about.
It is vain for people in northern Minnesota or Michigan to pray for eighty-degree weather in February. It is vain for a newly-employed worker on the lowest rung of the General Motors ladder to suppose she might be the CEO in ten or twenty years. It may even be vain for General Motors to imagine that it will soon if ever regain the automotive ascendancy it enjoyed in the 1950s through the 80s. It is vain to think people are capable both physically and mentally of doing in their eighties and nineties what they could in their twenties and thirties. Those are examples of the context in which the Preacher said, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Not everything represents vanity, but many things, or events, or people, do. The Brahms Requiem also carries this notion of vanity when the baritone soloist sings, “Verily, mankind walketh in a vain show, and their best state is vanity. Man passeth away like a shadow, he is disquieted in vain, he heapeth up riches, and cannot tell who shall gather them.” Vanity of vanities indeed!
Is old age affordable? That question refers to much more than mere assets. Having enough money in old age is certainly an issue, but it is not the only issue that is prompted by aging. Here we are also thinking about withstanding certain challenges or putting up with certain kinds of conditions. It is vain to suppose we shall avoid every pitfall that advancing years might cast into our path. Why shouldn’t we be afflicted with arthritis or imbalance when we walk or failing eyesight or hearing or memory? Why do we try to delude ourselves that we shall be like those few very fortunate oldsters we have known who were never sick a day in their life, and we suppose they never encountered any serious hardships, at least none that we know of, and they died at home in bed without ever experiencing the setbacks that afflict most mere mortals?
Can we afford to live with growing deficiencies of body, mind, or spirit? Can we withstand whatever life throws at us? Can we put up with all the slings and arrows that flesh is heir to?
I knew a lady who was a little bit of a thing. She always had a smile on her face, but because her dentures did not fit painlessly into her mouth, she did not necessarily have teeth to accompany her omnipresent smile. But she bore up admirably to the impediments old age dealt her. Then one day she had a fall in her apartment, and she was taken to the hospital, and there, the next day, she died. Is old age affordable, in every respect, in all respects?
The word “salvation” comes from a Greek root that essentially means “soundness” or “safety” or even “health.” Are we willing or able to experience salvation if failing eyesight or hearing or memory or mental deterioration begin to invade our lives? And if that happens, might we feel lost or abandoned by God? Does God ever abandon anyone, under any circumstances? Under duress, many people think so.
Listen to the words of Koheleth. “I said to myself, ‘Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself.’ But behold, this was also vanity….I searched with my mind how to cheer my body with wine.” (2:1,3) Can you imagine anyone ever trying such a tactic to ward off the seeming indignities of old age? Can you? Is that a useful tactic, or is it vain even to try it? “I built houses and planted vineyards for myself….I also gathered for myself silver and gold and treasure of kings and provinces” (2:4,8). After all these efforts, and many others, the Preacher discovered that the ease he sought and the security he planned did not turn out the way he hoped they would.
In Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye said that “Life has a way of confusing us/ Blessing and bruising us,” so his answer to that conundrum was one of a latter-day Koheleth, “Drink L’Chaim - to Life!” Life casts many obstacles and many opportunities in our path as we travel along – “a time to be born, and a time to die…a time to break down and time to build up…a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing…a time to seek, and a time to lose” is the way Koheleth expressed it. And it’s true; all of us are confronted by all of those things to one degree or another.
Retirement communities are not necessarily the last stop on life’s railroad. Within a few months of moving into The Seabrook, we got to know the names of a sizeable majority of the residents. We thought they would all be there until they died. Not so. Many people have moved away, to be closer to where their children live, or to other facilities for the elderly. Some may have moved because their money was gone before they were gone. But for others, they moved because they could not withstand the physical limitations by themselves that had assaulted them. Is old age affordable? Maybe so, but then again….
It is a great blessing to have enough assets for anyone to be able to live wherever they want for as long as is necessary, having someone there to wait on them twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, year after year after year. But most people are not so fortunate. And then what? Is old age affordable?
COVID has taken a toll on everyone to one degree or another. In general, it is more of a challenge to older folks than to any other group. The virus is likely to be more of a threat to the elderly than to others. And so people our age are extra-cautious. I would estimate that a quarter to a third of the people who regularly attended The Chapel before the plague hit have not attended at all for the past two years. In that period of time, as in any two-year-period in the life of an older congregation, we have lost a few regulars to physical or mental impairment, although there have been no deaths, from COVID or any other factor. Are the masks we have been wearing symbols of life, or of death? Can we afford to try to avoid COVID as assiduously as we are doing? Will “social distancing” lead to permanent social distance? Can we withstand old age in a pandemic?
Here is a question that has nothing to do with a pandemic. Is it worth it to liquidate your estate to stay alive, but in relentlessly declining health? Most people probably never frame that question in such stark terms. But is it worth it? And if so, to whom? Only to you? No one has an obligation, moral or otherwise, to leave portions of an estate to heirs, but is that issue something you might want to think about, and never even thought to ask yourself?
These are hard questions, for which there are no easy answers. Life is an incalculably valuable gift from God, and God gives us a responsibility to live our lives as well as we can as long as we can. However, it is my conviction that God has nothing at all to do with how long we live. We deceive ourselves if we assume that God has a “due date” in mind for us, an exact date and time when He will, as they say, “call us home.” We have been home here on earth as long as we have existed, and presumably we shall move into an entirely different plane or level of existence when we die. In the meantime, we are to do the best we can with the guidance and encouragement of God. As a card-carrying member of the clergy, I believe we experience that most fully through worship and in the community of faith.
For the first two-thirds of my ministry I was a pastor of the denomination officially known as The Presbyterian Church (USA). It went through four iterations with four different names during my forty-one years of being officially affiliated with it (although I still consider myself a Presbyterian parson). The word “Presbyterian” comes from a Greek word which, ironically but in actuality not so ironically, means “elder” or “old.” (“Presbyopia” means “old eyes,” the kind that no longer produce good vision.) Without explaining it, the Presbyterian Church is governed by elders, of whom there are two kinds: ruling elders, who are ordained lay people, and teaching elders, who are ordained ministers. In demographic fact, Presbyterians also are among the oldest of Mainline Protestants, who themselves are, in general, probably the oldest branch of Christians, the other main branches being Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Evangelical Protestants. Younger people are more likely to be Nones, N-o-n-e-s, those who belong to no church.
I tell you these things because even though the Presbyterians are governed by lay and clergy “elders,” The Chapel Without Walls is the oldest congregation in average age that I have served, as I have noted on occasion. A few of you have put up with me for the full eighteen years of our existence as a congregation, but most have affiliated with this eclectic gang of geezers at some point in the last two to fifteen years. Furthermore, I am one of the oldest pastors I am aware of who is still preaching as an early octogenarian. As such, I feel I can say things to you that I would not or could not say were I still under the jurisdiction of the Presbytery of Charleston-Atlantic, where I could be tried for heresy. I am profoundly grateful that I can feel free to preach whatever I felt compelled to preach without worrying about it getting me into severely hot ecclesiastical water. If people in The Chapel are unhappy with the preacher, they probably just stop coming. It likely never occurs to anyone to try to fire me. Having mentioned that, I hope nobody gets any ideas from my having said it.
Old age is not for sissies. Physically, psychologically, spiritually, and financially, it can be quite a struggle. Fighting illness or hardship is hard enough when we are younger, but when we’re older, it is exponentially more difficult. Dealing with heart disease, cancer, rusty joints, ALS, dementia, or plumbing problems are bad enough when we’re in our forties or fifties, but when we’re in our seventies, eighties, or nineties, it is another matter altogether. Old age is affordable if it is affordable, but if it isn’t, it isn’t. Again, that refers not only to money, but also to the growing challenges of diminished physical faculties and increasing mental erosion.
In the end, we ultimately have no one but God. For this reason the Book of Ecclesiastes says, “Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come, and the years draw nigh, when you say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’” (12:1).Whatever degree of “youth” we have left in us is fast disappearing or, more likely, is long gone. Therefore it behooves us to prepare for our final years as best we can, making plans for what we can control and steeling ourselves for whatever is beyond our poor power to add or subtract.
On the cross, quoting the 31st Psalm, Jesus said to God, “Into Thy hands I commit my spirit.” We should live like that every day of our lives, but especially in old age, when the number of our days is rapidly decreasing. If we can afford to live like that, we can also afford to die like that.