Weekly Sermon Illustration: To Die With Him

In our blog post every Monday we select a reading from the Revised Common Lectionary for the upcoming Sunday, and pair it with a Frederick Buechner reading on the same topic.

On October 13, 2013 we will celebrate the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost. Here is this week's reading from 2 Timothy:

2 Timothy 2:11

The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him.

Here is an excerpt from The Wise Man, part of "The Birth" which was originally published in The Magnificent Defeat and later again in Secrets in the Dark:

''And now, brothers, I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him is the only life?"