The Spiritual Danger of a Long Life

This is a sermon that I preached on Sunday, 8/10/25, at Berkeley Friends Church. The scripture reading for this sermon was: Isaiah 1:1, 10-20; Luke 12:32-40. You can listen to the audio, or keeping scrolling to read my manuscript. (The spoken sermon differs from the written text.)

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It has been a very odd thing for me to be part of a generation in this country where religion is generally considered to be the domain of the old. When I first became a Quaker in my twenties, there were very few others. There were so few of us young Quakers that we held international and national gatherings to connect. As time has gone on, it seems like, if anything, the number of young Quakers is declining even further than where it was when I was a young man.

These trends are not unique to Quakerism. Religious affiliation in general is down across the United States. That’s not to say that questions of meaning, reality, and spirituality are in decline, but in terms of engagement with religious traditions and religious communities like ours, the trends are quite dire. 

One of the people who was most influential in drawing me to the Christian faith was C.S. Lewis. That’s sort of an odd thing, because Lewis was an Englishman born at the tail end of the 19th century and who was already middle-aged during the Second World War. C.S. Lewis was a foreigner to me in multiple senses – by age, by nationality, and by the era in which he lived. 

Despite all these differences, it was his book, The Screwtape Letters, that literally brought me to my knees as a teenager and first convinced me of the reality of the Holy Spirit. 

As I meditated on our scripture readings for this week, I found myself drawn back to one of the sections of this book, where Lewis talks about the question of longevity and what aging means for our experience as Christians living in this world. 

For me to explain this passage of the book to you, you first need to know that the format of the book is a series of letters from a senior devil to a junior devil, guiding the less-experienced demon in the practice of tempting the human being he has been assigned to. This human is ironically referred to as “the patient”.

In one of the last letters in the book, the senior demon, Screwtape, is explaining that it is very important that “the patient” survive World War II. His town is being bombed, and from what we can tell, the junior demon is excited about the terror that the patient is feeling, but Screwtape admonishes him that he should do everything he can to keep this human alive, because only by keeping him alive will he have the opportunity to draw him away from God. 

So this is interesting to think about, isn’t it? That perhaps, at some points in our lives, the thing that we might most want, such as in the case of the patient, surviving an attack on his city, might not be in our best interests in the eyes of God. Maybe sometimes, when bad things happen to good people, they’re not as bad as we would think if we had God’s perspective. 

Perhaps more importantly, this fictional letter serves as a reminder that a long life isn’t necessarily a blessing. Growing old is not for wimps, and it seems that the demons know this better than anybody. Screwtape writes: 

“You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair… of ever overcoming… chronic temptations… All of this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition. 

If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, our position is even stronger. Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is “finding his place in it,” while really it is finding its place in him. … You will notice that the young are generally less unwilling to die than the middle-aged and the old.”

How does that strike you? Does that sound familiar?

It does to me. This passage speaks to me now in a way that it couldn’t have when I was 17 years old. Since then, I’ve been through more 25 years of wrestling and struggle and loss and temptation. Today, I am roughly the age that C.S. Lewis was when he wrote The Screwtape Letters back in the early 1940s.

I can relate to C.S. Lewis’s message about the difficulty of a long life in a way that I couldn’t quite appreciate before. And I would also say that I can appreciate youth in a way that I couldn’t quite before. Because, along with C.S. Lewis, I see the power of youth. In the words of Screwtape: “Even if we can try to keep [young people] ignorant of explicit religion, the incalculable winds of fantasy and music and poetry – the mere face of a girl, the song of a bird, or the sight of a horizon – are always blowing our whole structure away. They will not apply themselves steadily to worldly advancement, prudent connections, and the policy of safety first.”

Sound like any young people you know? 

Screw tape concludes: “Apparently God wants some – but only a very few – of the human animals with which He is peopling heaven to have had the experience of resisting us through an earthly life of 60 or 70 years. Well, there is our opportunity.” 

“Why,” you may be asking yourselves now, “is Micah reading me these passages out of a book about demons strategizing how to tempt humanity?”

Well, like I say, these passages came to my mind as I was reading our scripture for this morning, particularly out of the Gospel of Luke. I was struck by Jesus’ words – as I always am because they are so challenging – where he says: Don’t be afraid. It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give alms. Store your treasure in heaven, where no thief can steal and no moth can destroy. Where your treasure is, your heart will be also.

These passages from C.S. Lewis came to my mind when I read Jesus’ command to stay “dressed for action with your lamps lit” – to “be like those who are waiting for their Master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks.” When the owner comes, he’s going to do something very unexpected. Rather than expecting his slaves to wait on him and feed him dinner, he’s going to tell them to sit down, and he’s going to serve them. Now isn’t that weird!? Very strange, and an example of the surprising, upside-down Kingdom that Jesus is proclaiming to us.

But this happy story relies on vigilance. The slaves who were served by their Master were only in that happy position because they stayed alert and kept their lamps lit. Jesus drives the point home again by pointing out that if an owner of a house knew what hour the thief was arriving at, he certainly wouldn’t have left things alone and let his house be burglarized. In the same way, we can’t know when the master is coming back. We have to stay alert at all times. Jesus is coming in an hour that we do not expect.

I remember that as a young person, these lines about watchfulness and discipline and readiness sounded exciting. They sounded like the kind of challenge that I wanted in my life. They sounded like an adventure.

But for me now, as a middle-aged person who is burdened by a lot of work – raising children, caring for the elderly, and just generally holding society together as best I can – all this talk of readiness sounds like an awful burden. At this point in my life, I’m not sure whether I want an adventure. I just think I might be happy having the bills paid and the children put to bed and a little bit of free time to read a book. 

I believe that I am going through exactly what C.S. Lewis was talking about, what he knew from his middle-aged vantage point: Getting older and holding fast to the way of Jesus is hard. It is one thing to tell people to light their lamps and stay alert for a night or a week or a year. But to stay on high alert for decades? I’m sorry, Jesus, that sounds exhausting.

As I join C.S. Lewis in middle age, I find myself, first of all, appreciative of the young. Appreciative of the gift that they bring in their ability to encounter the word of Jesus as a positive challenge. I’m grateful for the energy that so many young people have to take up the life of the gospel and take risks for God. The ability, as C.S. Lewis puts it, to go off on tangents – at “the incalculable winds of fantasy and music and poetry.” 

Here at Berkeley Friends Church, we need to be a community that welcomes children and young adults, precisely because they so often set an example for us older people. They remind us to keep our attention on the things that are most important, even if those are not the things that seem most practical.

I find myself appreciative of the young. But I also, in this passage from C.S. Lewis, find myself appreciative of the old. Appreciative of the immense challenges that the middle-aged and the elderly must go through to get the imperishable wreath, to reach the goal of a life lived fully for God despite the decades of grinding frustration, setbacks, boredom, and exhaustion. Night after night of waiting with our lamps lit, trusting that Jesus is coming.

I am reminded that even after all these years and even with all the additional responsibilities of middle age, Jesus is still inviting me into this adventure of the Kingdom. Jesus is still calling to me, and to all of us together, saying, Little flock, it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Saying, “Sell your possessions and give alms; make purses for yourselves, unfailing treasure in heaven, that do not wear out where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.”

Reading again these words of scripture, together with these words from a middle-aged Englishman amid World War II, I find myself looking at myself through my own eyes as a 17-year-old and saying: “Don’t give up, old man. Don’t forget your first love. Don’t forget how full of joy and challenge and possibility this life is. Don’t stop going off on tangents. Take more risks. Keep the fire burning.”

The race is long, but the Master is coming.

How about you? Do you feel ground down sometimes by the responsibilities you carry? Does the fire feel dim?

What are your priorities? Do they include adventuring with Jesus, a life of risk and mystery? What does it mean for you to keep your lamp lit and stay alert for God’s arrival?