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What would you do if you had six months to live? In the movie The Bucket List, Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson are unlikely friends who meet in a hospital’s cancer ward. They share a room, and they come to share a list of things they absolutely, positively want to do before they “kick the bucket.” It turns out they have the money to go skydiving and car racing, to visit places like Cairo and Johannesburg, to see the world’s wonders, like the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal. Along the way, they stop to consider some age-old questions: How have you found joy in your life? How has your life brought joy to others? On this third Sunday in Lent, I ask you to reflect on the question: If you knew when the end would come, how would you live your life? Would you try to make up for the wrongs you’ve done or chances you’ve missed? Would you try to chase down your dreams, one more time? If I had one more year to live, I think I’d would go for the joy. I’d spend as much time as I could with my family; I’d make some amends; and I’d keep sharing my joys and concerns with my dearest friends. How about you? One way to think about today’s Gospel reading is to consider that Jesus is asking how we would live our lives as if we knew we had a relatively short time to live. If we live life as if each year were our last year, or each month were our last month, or each day were our last day – if we live our lives in what grammarians would call the subjunctive mood – then, Jesus teaches us, we will find good news. We will find joy in life. Living life one year or month or day at a time means we really do hear what Jesus says when he uses the word REPENT. “Repent,” Jesus tells those who were with him that day, and he says it twice. “Unless you repent, you will all perish, just as they did” (Luke 13:3, 5). Those who heard Jesus were thinking about perishing, about death. Galileans had been slaughtered. John the Baptist died of a beheading. And, as we heard last week, Herod wanted to get rid of Jesus. The people in today’s Gospel story knew it was not a safe time or place, for them or for Jesus. So what do people tend to do when they’re in a season of “heightened security,” in “orange alert” times? One thing frightened people often do is to begin to insist on how right they are. When we’re scared, we tend to look for others to blame and name as the true sinners – or at least the worst sinners – around. We live in a day – not unlike that of those Galileans – when everyone seems to blame everyone else for what’s wrong with the world. Surely , the people in today’s Gospel suggested to Jesus, surely those Galileans who were killed by Pontius Pilate, long before he met Jesus, surely they were worse sinners than any other Galileans – including us!Surely those eighteen people who were killed when the tower fell on them, surely they were worse offenders, worse sinners than anyone else living in Jerusalem, including us! Surely, Jesus, we are not like those people who died those horrible deaths! Surely we are the really good people, the holy remnant, the truly righteous ones, the only ones who do God’s will! That’s why we’re still alive and talking to you! Right, Jesus?! Now, what does that sound like to you? Does that sound like preachers who suggest that the reason people on the Gulf Coast die in hurricanes or people in Haiti or Chile die in earthquakes is because they are sinners – while the preachers or those who agree with the preachers are righteous? What do you think? Here’s what I think: there is righteous behavior, doing the right thing – like going to the Gulf Coast or sending money to another country to help people who need our help. And then, there is self-righteous behavior, declaring yourself to be the only one who is right. When we are self-righteous, we think we’re the only ones who do the right thing, the only ones who see things rightly or live rightly. When we’re acting self-righteously, we fall into the wrong belief that we have the only right opinion, the only true religion. When we are self-righteous, we are convinced we have all the truth or at least a corner on it. To be self-righteous is to act subjunctively, to play God. And when we are both self-righteous and angry, we can become dangerous. One teacher puts it this way: “Self-righteous anger. If emotions were cuisine, this would be the piece de resistance, the dish we love to linger over and return to…Self-righteous anger goes down smoothly…reheats wonderfully…and tastes almost as fine the (sixth)…or (the) sixtieth time….” (Rodney Clapp, Feasting on the Word, p. 92) Last week I said in my Historic Church sermon that Washington, D.C. was like Jerusalem. Jerusalem and Washington are destinations for tourists and pilgrims on a journey. Both cities are centers of political life. And both are places where people often get judged or sentenced to death by the politically and religiously self-righteous. The magnitude of self-righteousness in the capitals of our world cannot be calculated. Self-righteous anger, found lately in men who crash planes into an IRS buildings or shoot Pentagon police, is deep and broad. Desperate men blame their personal misfortunes on what they perceive to be the evil of others. Unfortunately, for them, the repentance Jesus demands does not seem to be an option, for them or for others. The level of self-righteousness in the church is no less large. Whether we want to admit it or not, whether we know it or not, I suggest we came to church today, because we can be as self-righteous as the next person. We’re here, especially in Lent, to confess our sins and to ask God to forgive us. But first, Jesus reminds, first: WE have to repent. Unless WE repent, we will all die as others do - those who fail to repent and fail to forgive. Unless we repent, we will die without the forgiveness we all desperately need. It’s hackneyed and it’s trite, but it’s true: to repent is to live our lives one day at a time. To repent is to stop doing what is wrong and to start to do the right thing. To repent is to turn away from evil and turn to the God we see in Jesus Christ, our vision of new life. To repent is to have a conversion experience, to live a new life. To repent is to stop doing the things that tear down our relationships, and to start doing the things that build up our relationships, once again. To repent is to say to ourselves and to God, I want to leave here today and live my life differently. I want to change my life. God, I want to live today as if this were the last day or the last month or the last year of my life. I want to find joy. But how will we do that? How will we put hands and feet on that kind of prayer? Here are some simple steps we can take that may help you and me to repent:
Lent literally means “lengthen.” Finally, the days are lengthening! Daylight is getting longer. Spring is coming. Easter is less than a month away. But spring and Easter and new life will not come without some dirty, old Lenten snow, still sticking around. Lent also means we need to repent. You and I, we, too, must repent, if we want those dirty, old, self-righteous, sinful parts of ourselves to be melted away by Jesus, the Son of Righteousness. So…if you knew when your life would end, how would you live it? What would you do? Whom would you stop judging? Whose forgiveness would you seek? If this were your last day on earth, how would you live this, your one and only life? Where would you find joy? Let us pray. Help me, God, to live today as if it were my last. Help me to be grateful. Help me to grow in your grace. Help me to embrace your love and your forgiveness. And help me to repent.
Today, help me find one person I need to forgive, and help me begin to forgive them. Help me forgive myself. Please forgive me…again. And give me your joy and your peace. In Jesus’ name I pray all this. AMEN. The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg |
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