Life and Death
Preached at St. Thomas à Becket Episcopal Church on January 26, 2020 (The Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord, Year A) on the following texts: Malachi 3:1-4, Psalm 84, Hebrews 2:14-18, and Luke 2:22-40.
“The one with the most toys when they die wins.”
What do you think of this bumper sticker, as sighted on a Los Angeles freeway, for a life motto? Doesn’t that sum up the values of a few who openly and unashamedly see this as the goal in our world today, and point to an underlying driving force for many more of us who wouldn’t want to admit it?
Now, I don’t want to be too quickly dismissive of this slogan. I believe it’s pointing toward the deep hunger we all have to live life to the fullest. We desire a deep satisfaction with our journey here on earth. While I disagree with this cultural narrative built up over decades by our vast marketing machine, I can understand the underlying pull.
I think this search is what is going on in both the psalm and gospel readings from today.
* * *
Moving back and forth between the Gospels of Matthew and John is giving us a lot of overlaps and different tellings of the same basic underlying events.
Once again Jesus is starting his ministry. This time his baptism was followed by a wilderness fast and series of temptations. He then waits until John the Baptizer is arrested before making his own independent move. And a move it is—he sets up his base in a town named Capernaum, a relatively new and bustling fishing village on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee some distance from his tiny mountain village of Nazareth.
Matthew introduces this location by calling on the prophet Isaiah, loosely quoting the same passage we just read from the ninth chapter:
“The people sitting in darkness saw a great light,
and light dawned upon those
sitting in the region and shadow of death.”
The contrasting imagery of light and dark can be problematic at times, so let’s be very clear: these are metaphors of night and day, and they point to something even more universal: life and death. Yet it’s not literal cessation of breathing either—the quote is that light, or life, has come to those sitting in the “region and shadow of death.” These are people living in death.
* * *
What might it mean to “live in death”? A feeling of inner death, of hopelessness and deep dissatisfaction with the experience of living?
Despair? Depression?
It’s a very real state of the soul that many of us feel from time to time, or in an ongoing presence that we often try to run from with so many distractions and schemes.
* * *
Into the midst of this “realm of death” steps forth Jesus, declaring:
“Change your hearts; for the Kingdom of the heavens has drawn near.”
A quick translation note is necessary, because the version we read in the liturgy seems to say something quite different.
First: the Greek translated "repent” is metanoia. It does not mean “feel guilty” or “feel bad" as we often associate with repentance, but rather “change your mind.” “Transform your heart” is another way to read it. It is an appeal to undergo a conversion of orientation so deep that it results in a changed life and behavior.
Second, the phrase “the kingdom of heaven has come near” is a little misleading as well. It’s easy to skim past this thinking Jesus is talking about an afterlife destination we call Heaven, but the reality is a bit different. This is Matthew’s pious Jewish rendition of the phrase we see first in the Gospel of Mark and later in Luke—the kingdom of God. In good Jewish fashion, he has added a layer of interpretation, referring to God indirectly with the term “heaven.” But! It’s not actually “heaven.” The Greek is clearly “kingdom of the heavens. There is a definite article, “the,” and the noun is plural, “heavens.” Matthew is talking about a more abstract idea, that of the divine system designed creation entire—the realm of the heavens.
Finally, this realm has “come near.” The term is not spacial, but temporal. The time has arrived! As Mark adds, it is “within grasp.”
* * *
Jesus begins walking along the shore, picking his way over nets and around boats.
He sees two fishermen out doing their work, and another couple doing the daily task of repairing their tools. He calls out to both pairs, making them an offer of a changed heart, and the four immediately accept.
What must have that invitation been like? What drew them away from their identity as fisherman, their families, their livelihood and homes?
Is it possible that they also had been searching, searching for a deeper sense of a lived life, and all they had found so far was something that felt like death?
* * *
We read in John’s Gospel last week, that after Jesus called Simon and stripped him even of his name, there came a time when many followers were leaving and Jesus asked the remaining why they stayed. Peter said “To whom would we go? You have the words of life.”
Peter and his three companions had found a source of life so full and real that all the things offered as “life” by their external world fade in comparison. While not all of us will, or should, abandon these roles, responsibilities, and relationships, counting on them as our primary source of meaning and purpose in the world will likely disappoint us eventually.
This is a way of seeing the world which Paul seems to be discussing at the end of the epistle selection of the day. He says this message is “foolishness” to those who are perishing, those living in that shadow of death, but for those whose hearts are changed, who turn and follow, it is the very power of God.
* * *
One way of talking about this new way of existing that these men found is that of the Psalm we read today: the desire “to dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life.”
I don’t see this dream as that of literally sitting in the stone walls of the temple, but rather as living constantly in the presence of God. This reminds me of a special little book by a nearly anonymous little lay monk living near Paris in the 17th century. He was known for having a joy and presence about his daily work of peeling potatoes, mending sandals, and weeding the garden that led to folks seeking him out. Conversations and letters were compiled into his work called The Practice of the Presence of God, wherein he explains how he came to live fully in prayer and presence with God in the midst of every activity in which he was engaged.
I believe it is this kind of presence-within-life that these four men were seeking, which Jesus offered, and which is that that humans yearn for. It is something that does not come automatically for any of us, but must be nurtured through a changed life and daily pattern of spiritual practice.
May we all know this source, feel our hearts drawn toward it, and encourage each other in the discipline of the spiritual life.
AMEN.
