Feeling Guilty

Did you hear about the man who sent a check to the government for back taxes with a note attached that said: "I felt so guilty for cheating on my taxes I had to send you this check. If I don't feel any better, I'll send you the rest."

Well that's hardly the kind of repentance Jesus was talking about. Jesus wants us to put away everything that keeps us from being his wholehearted followers. And he wants us to do it now. The message is clear, simple and direct. We don't have forever to change. Death will come to all of us at some unknown point of time. In the book of Psalms we read: Make us know the shortness of our lives, so that we may gain wisdom of heart.

And so my job today is to convince you that you really are going to die and that you had better get your act together right now before it's too late. Now that should cheer you up, shouldn't it? But no matter what angle we take, as we look at today's gospel, we just can't get away from the fact that the message is loud and clear—we don't have forever to change the way we live. For some of us, it's now or never.

John Climacus, a seventh-century ascetic urged Christians to use the reality of death to their benefit: "You cannot pass a day devoutly unless you think of it as your last," he wrote. He called the thought of death the "most essential of all works" and a gift from God. "The man who lives daily with the thought of death is to be admired, and the man who gives himself to it by the hour is surely a saint."

I hope you can see that this spiritual writer actually used the thought of death as a source of freedom and peace. He calls it a gift from God. When we realize that we are not going to live forever on this earth, then so many things in life lose their undue and inflated importance. When we are able to see life in perspective, we begin to relax about issues that would normally drive us to distraction. Since our life on earth is only for a time, then it doesn't make sense to live as if there were no end in sight.

Looking Good

For example, take our physical appearance. We do have a responsibility to look after our health. And so we should be concerned about sleep, diet, exercise and so on. But so many people act as if they were going to live forever. They want to look young even when they are no longer young, and so they take drastic steps to hide any signs of aging. There is nothing wrong with aging. It is simply a part of life. To act as if God made a mistake in allowing us to grow older is in some sense a defiance of God's plan for us. But the real problem is that when we do things to ourselves in an attempt to deny our age, we create a subtle illusion within ourselves that we can somehow cheat death for a while longer. Anything that keeps us from living in the world as it is can't be good for us.

We've all heard of, or known about, the middle-age man who suddenly buys a sports car and starts wearing clothes that only look good on a 20-year old. He may even dump his wife for a younger model. It's very clear what's happening to that fellow. He has come face-to-face with the fact that he is growing older and he just can't stand that thought, so he does everything possible to live in denial. But the reality is, no matter how many sports cars he buys, no matter how many younger women he seduces, no matter how loud he plays his music, he is still going to die.

A Date with Death

An ancient story is told about a slave who traveled with his master to Baghdad. As he walked the busy streets he found himself in the market place where he saw Death in human form. Death looked at him with such a piercing look that it frightened the slave, and he interpreted that look to mean that Death was planning soon to take his life.

He quickly rushed back to his master and told him what he had seen in the market place and asked if he might ride his camel to Samara, 15 hours away; because he was sure that he would be safe there, for Death would not know where to find him. The master gave him permission, and quickly the slave was on his way to Samara.

A few hours later the master was in the market place where he also saw Death in human form. He walked up to Death and asked, "Why did you look at my slave with such a threatening look?" Death answered, "That was not a threatening look. That was a look of surprise. I had a date with him tonight in Samara and I was surprised to see him here in Baghdad."

Running From Sin

Instead of running away from death, we should be running away from sin. Sin is the real death. It kills our capacity for real living, and so makes life distasteful and empty. When we get caught up in a sinful habit, we lessen our capacity to bring life to other people. Sin drives us inward and so we become self-centered instead of other-centered.

Life can be cut short for anyone of us at anytime. The roots of living in the illusion that we will never die seem to go very deep. And so today we are given a double-headed task. We are asked to shatter the illusion that we will never die, and break the attachment to sin. If we can start to accomplish both of these tasks, we will live a fruitful and other-centered life. And please remember that we do not have to do these things by ourselves. The Divine Gardener will be more than happy to nourish and strengthen us so that we might become healthy trees bearing life-giving fruit.