13th Sunday Ordinary Time B

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June 28, 2015

Both scripture readings today remind us just how ambivalent we feel toward death.

Ancient Wisdom was careful to acquit God of the crime of creating death — the devil did it.

Then, 100 years later, in spite of convincing evidence to the contrary, Jesus insists that the child is not dead, only sleeping.

Even Jesus doesn't want to deal with the hard fact of death; so we shouldn't be ashamed of our reticence.

Just because death is such a horrible thing, the thought of it leaves a bad taste, and we try to get rid of it.

People don’t die these days — they pass on, or they’ve gone to their glory, or some other euphemism

We speak of death respectfully when forced to speak of it at all;

we surround ourselves with comforting symbols;

we create a pious, meaningless, bland funeral conversation;

we remove sick people out of sight and mind.

We cover up the dirt at the cemetery with fake, plastic grass.

And if they are inconsiderate enough to die, we make them up to look better in death than they did in life.

Why this elevation of death to the high status of mystery?

Anything that we can count on, calculate and predict like death can't be all that mysterious.

Death is the surest thing in life.

All of us begin to die the moment we are born.

And all through life there is a continuing battle in our bodies between live and dead cells.

At about age 18, our dead cells outnumber our live cells.

Which means that at this very instant, most of us are mathematically dead.

It may take more or less time to show it, but the conclusion is foregone.

The same is true for cats and caterpillars.

The difference is: Once we know the fact, we can take a human stance toward it.

We can accept or reject it, love it or hate it,

call it good or bad or make the best of it.

What we should not do is shroud it in a veil of mystery.

That only gives it more power than it should have;

and makes it more than we can bear.

That is when we retreat to magic and subterfuge and lies.

Then what can we do?

Well, when faced with a fact, the first response ought to be the question: Why?

If we know why something is we have a better chance of knowing what to do with it.

So-why do we die?

The Old Testament answer is elusive.

It sees that good and bad people are not justly rewarded in this life,

so it proposes a fair recompense after death.

But that would result only in a balanced world. God can make a better world than that.

But there is some truth in the idea;

and it suggests a link between death and sin.

And scripture makes that link causal: it says that sin is the cause of death.

Whether personal or original, sin harms our humanity,

and the situation must be rectified.

Some sins are correctable during a lifetime;

but some evil is so deeply ingrained that only death can purge it.

But even then, we end up merely as balanced individuals.

God can make better human beings than that.

So, sin is a necessary but insufficient cause of death.

It explains why even Jesus had to die.

He ended as a breathless, bloodless, cold cadaver.

That's a fact.

Except that he didn't stay dead.

And that tells us something about his death.

he died because he was a human being; and everything in him that was merely human died.

But there was also something in him that was more than human; and that something more rose to a new life.

Which tells us something about our own death.

There is also more to us than meets the naked eye.

We are more than blood and guts; we are more than sin; we are more than merely human.

We were not manufactured for obsolescence; we were created to last for ever.

But not to plod forever on this dying earth.

We are destined for a better life.

Like. the lowly caterpillar.

It is not made for the sake of a worm — it is the beginning of a butterfly.

Only it doesn't know it.

So, it glories in its fuzzy coat and many legs and thinks it is God's grandest creature.

Nevertheless, at its appointed time, it unwillingly, blindly, grudgingly spins its cocoon and waits to die in darkness.

But only that which is caterpillar dies  — the rest of it is transformed into a beautiful butterfly.

And so it is with us.

None of us is made to be merely human.

There is something in us that reaches out, cries for another kind of life.

We were not created to die but to love.

The death we so fear is just one of the many things we have to do- —

like eating and sleeping —

to fulfill our human potential.

But we forget that simple fact.

So we glory in our humanity, trying to find complete fulfillment now, in things we know and like.

We rage against death that seems to thwart our desires.

We fight death the way a child fights sleep.

Until we learn with the child:

That when we close our eyes, we just fall asleep for a while —

— we don't die forever.