God didn't make death

“God did not make death…” –Wisdom 1:13

A meditation for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

This past Sunday we had that interesting reading from Wisdom.  It tells us with striking simplicity that “God did not make death…” And yet there it is. What are we supposed to do with such a statement?   We might have the urge to rush to some kind of allegorical understanding (for instance something involving Paul’s comment about the wages of sin… cf..Romans 6:23) but before we do, I think it is always best to spend a little time contemplating the actuality of what is said.  What if it actually means what it says? What are the implications about death, about God, perhaps even about sin?  And yet, I am unable to let go of the actuality of death itself; the death of an actual person and the repercussions that follow. I wonder what these words might mean in the light of that.

About a year and a half ago, my brother Bobby died.  He had lung cancer and was sure it was caused by working in old attics filled with asbestos insulation. He was an a/c repairman.  When he found out about the cancer, he started paying attention to those TV lawyer commercials; certain that someone owed him something for this.  But, on the other hand, he bragged that before he started coughing up blood, he hadn’t been to a doctor in close to 30 years.   He had no insurance and never had.  Instead his medical plan was to self-medicate –in every meaning of that term. And most of the time, it worked well enough for him.  But if it didn’t, he turned away from the world and handled the problem as best he could on his own.  I imagine him even doing his own dental work when necessary.  That was the kind of guy he was.

The last day I spent with him we sat in an emergency exam room in Galveston waiting to hear if he was getting checked into the hospital next door or sent home.  Most of the time we sat in silence broken only by moments of awkward conversation. Before the cancer, we had not seen much of each other over the past 25 years.  And sitting there waiting to find out how soon he would die, it was an odd time and place to catch up.  Mostly our talk turned back to the subject of his dog and how much he wanted to get back to her.  At one point, after a long silence, he suddenly announced that he was done with all this. He couldn’t do the hospital stuff anymore. All he wanted was to go home and sit with his dog. 

Up to that moment, what conversations we’d had dealt mainly with survival: money issues and oxygen tanks, plans for what his life would look like with only one lung (or less).  At that moment, though, it seemed that he understood his problems were more serious than finding somebody to buy him groceries. Yet, when a doctor came in and told him that tests showed the cancer had spread and then asked him about a DNR. Bob seemed stunned.  He looked at me. He didn’t seem to know what to say. The doctor explained: “We just need to know. If something happens, do you want us to attempt to resuscitate you or not?”

Still looking at me instead of the doctor, Bob said, “Well, hell[1], of course, I want to be resuscitated.”

The doctor looked at me, also. He seemed as confused as I was.  Up to that moment, I think we were thinking the patient was done with all this medical stuff… but clearly not.  After some silence, he noted something on his clipboard and left.

We sat there in more silence, Bob looking away; his head shaking, like he was still saying no to something he couldn’t understand.  Until that moment, I don’t think I had ever seen my brother cry.  He had been a hard boy and had grown into a hard man.  But there were tears falling on his jeans as he stared at the floor and kept shaking his head. Finally, he spoke: “Well (something colorful) [2] now, I don’t know whether to shit or wind my watch.”  That little paraphrase from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was one of the last things I heard my brother say.  He was moved to the hospital right after that.  And I was out of town when he died at home just a few days later. 

Bob had lived hard and worked hard and played hard and rarely seemed to consider the consequences, unless beer (or his dog) was involved. And at the end that was where he got to be. Home with his dog (Shirley) and his beer. He was there on the couch with both nearby when he died. 

I’ve been thinking about my brother a lot lately. Praying for him in my Rosary. Asking him to pray for me.  And thinking about how it must have felt to know you were dying… not theoretically, but imminently. It is a hard thought.

Then, yesterday morning, as I came out for my morning walk, I met a neighbor I rarely see anymore. She was entangled in the leashes of her three dogs when we greeted each other. But instead of just going on her way, she came toward me, because she had something she needed to tell me. Her son had died. He was 42 years old, married to his college sweetheart, two children; they were living in England; and there was a motorcycle accident. Just like that she knew the terrible sadness of a mother who outlives her son. As we stood there in the street, she told me she knew I was someone who prayed and she wanted me to pray for her and for her son and for her daughter in law.  I was standing there with my Rosary in my hand and said of course. I would love to.  In fact, I have to say, I was honored that she asked.

Lead by the dogs, we started down the street together toward her house –not my normal direction, but…  As we walked, she told me about the funeral. How many people were there and how loved her son had been –by so many people. Pausing to untangle herself from the leashes, she smiled and told me how she had been asked to speak at her son’s funeral. At first, she was shocked that they asked. And she was certain she wouldn’t be able to do it. That would be impossible. Too much. And yet –in the end—she did, and how glad she was that she had.  How good she felt afterwards.

That morning, she was going back to work for the first time since she returned from England. And her main concern right then was the people at work who would be nervous and wouldn’t know what to say. But, she shrugged, she was kind of amazed that she didn’t really feel that bad. Maybe it’s the prayers, she speculated. “A lot of people are praying for me.” 

Death frightens us –all of us. Despite all the science and the inevitability, it seems a little unnatural.  This life, whether it is a happy one or a hard one –it’s all we know. It’s what we know.  And change is hard… even just the direction of your morning walk (for some of us)…

Change is hard and death is about as big a change as we can imagine. Last night, I learned of the death of a friend’s husband.  Change is hard and it just keeps coming.  And I don’t know what to say or do or write…  But I keep thinking about my brother, and my neighbor, and my friend and I keep asking: why.

I don’t have an answer.  St. Paul says that death is the wages of sin (cf. Romans 6:23).  Possibly. I think the temptation story in Genesis would support that (cf. 2:17). But there is solace in the fact that death is not part of God’s creation; it is not something that brings Him delight.  In fact, the Love of God overcomes it.  As Paul also says, through Jesus Christ, God conquered death (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:55-57).   If we look at the Gospels, I think we see that could easily be the only thing Jesus actually does during His entire public ministry; He goes from one kind of death to another and brings only life: to the blind, to the hungry, to the outcast, to the sinner, to the sick, to the widow’s son, to Lazarus, and to the little girl –the daughter of Jairus—he brings life. I remember how I have always been struck by what Jesus says to the little girl: Talitha koum –Little girl, arise (cf. Mk 5:41). 

Its as if death were no more than a moment’s sleep.  And the Lord calls us to wake up.  Come to think of it, that’s what I saw in my neighbor’s smile even as she talked of her pain and sadness, I saw the simple beauty of someone fully alive; someone fully awake. And that’s what I pray my brother found as he fell asleep not alone in a hospital bed, but at home on his couch with his dog by his side.  I pray that what he heard as he drifted off was the sound of love calling to him: my beloved son, arise. 

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[1] I’m writing “hell,” but he really said something much more colorful. 

[2] During the Watergate trials this would have been replaced by [expletive deleted]

Toiling in vain --just like John the Baptist?

“Though I thought I had toiled in vain

and for nothing, senselessly, spent

my strength, yet my reward is with

the Lord, my recompense with my God.”

--Isaiah 49: 4

 

Listen to this message.  One of our greatest voices, one of the most important prophetic figures in scripture; and he feared his work, his life, had been in vain.  Is this not the proper response to anyone who feels their life has gone unnoticed?  Most of us, I imagine, looking back on our lives see missed opportunities, unfulfilled promise; years of unrecognized effort, uncelebrated worth.  Who hasn’t felt the fear and the pain and the neglect envisioned in the first half of this verse? We had promise, we had opportunities, and amounted to nothing.  We toiled in vain, spent our strength uselessly and our lives have gone without note or success; our dreams and our promise unrealized.  Or we feel unseen; no one seems to care (or notice) that we exist.

Today we celebrate the nativity of John the Baptist, a man who on most any earthly scale would be deemed a failure; someone who “toiled in vain.” He goes out to the wilderness and lives like a homeless man, becomes something of a public spectacle with his ranting against sin, then goes too far and is arrested and put to death due to a party game gone awry.  And if it wasn’t for this other guy (his cousin) whose earthly ministry also ends kind of badly, we probably wouldn’t even remember John.  He would have faded into history; just another forgotten misfit with dreams and promise who lived and died without notice by the Caesars of the world. At best, an annoying mosquito to be swatted away and forgotten.

I know people who never seem to receive their moment of glory.  I’ve worked in universities and schools almost all of my adult life and witnessed time and again how some people repeatedly are singled out for praise (often very deserved) while others (also very deserving) year after year go unnoticed. I’m thinking of a particularly dedicated teacher I know who shows up every day, works long hours, loves and nurtures her students, yet when it comes time to single out people for hard work or extra praise, she is never mentioned; never singled out; apparently never noticed, while the same English teachers or Science teachers or Math teachers are honored and praised time and again.  Is it because the one teacher constantly goes beyond, exceeds expectations and the other simply doesn’t have that extra skill or talent or charm?  Possibly.  But that doesn’t change the fact that a capable and dedicated teacher might feel exactly as Isaiah does in this passage.  That she/he has toiled in vain, uselessly spent her life’s energy doing work that goes unnoticed and unappreciated.  Yet, what Isaiah is also saying is: Don’t look to earthly honors and awards as the measure of your real worth. 

Today, as we remember the nativity of John the Baptist, we are called to remember that our reward, our true worth isn’t found in the praise of Caesar or by the number of “likes” we get or the number of times we are singled out for praise, but in the Lord; our recompense is with God; our true worth is measured not in man’s eyes, but in God’s glory.  We are His servant, and we must remember we are working for His glory. Not our own.

A couple of weeks back we had the Gospel in which Jesus said that a house divided against itself cannot stand (Mk 3:25).  I hear reverberations of that great truth here as well. Perhaps that is why this reading from Isaiah spoke to me so profoundly.  What I hear in Isaiah is a message about division of the heart.  I hear an echo of a division that rears its ugly head inside me most every day.  When I am writing a poem or working on my novel –if I am in the zone, so to speak-- I write single mindedly. The words, the story, the image, the work itself is all I care about. But, when I am distracted, or things aren’t coming easily I will begin to doubt myself and question myself –I will second guess.  And often when I hear of some young author who just published a first book to great acclaim, I will grow a little sour with envy as I recall my drawer full of rejection slips.  I begin to doubt my worth, to suspect my efforts have been in vain, my strength senselessly spent, because instead of doing my work the best I can, for the glory of God, I’m doing it for myself; for my glory, my rewards, my recompense, and in my selfishness, I am becoming a house divided against itself.  I’m seeking not what is my true reward but something like a shadow of it. In fact, by seeking an earthly reward I am serving Caesar; but as the prophet tells us, we were made for God and our true glory comes from serving Him. 

If fact, whether we are called on stage to be honored or we toil in humble anonymity isn’t really our concern.  We are not servants of the Academy or of the Nobel Prize Committee or even of the NY Times (or the Whitehouse), we are servants of God. Our work is done not to bring us glory, but God.  There are teachers I know who become legends (at least for a time) and others who retire and are quickly forgotten, but the key to being a successful servant of God isn’t found in earthly acclaim.  In fact, the important work we do for God may be found as much in our anonymity as in our efforts. As Mother Teresa said, “We are not called to be successful, we are called to be faithful.” Or as John the Baptist said:

“What do you suppose that I am? I am not he.

No, but behold, after me one is coming, the sandals

of whose feet I am not worthy to untie.” (Acts 13:25)

The work we do isn’t about us; it’s about Him.  And the reward, the recompense, isn’t found in certificates or trophies or acclaim, it’s found in being a faithful servant.  Don't be divided; be true, faithful, united in purpose with the One who created you. Grow where you are planted, bear fruit where and when you can, and leave the rest to God.  Do your best, not for praise or honor or glory (or a raise) but because you are serving God. We must remember that any work done for God’s glory is never in vain. 

Plus, if you want to contemplate the value of earthly success, consider when was the last time you heard anyone talk about the movie: Cavalcade (1933).  Academy award for best picture and a money maker for Fox Studios.  But… 

The salt of hope

 “If salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?” –Matthew 5:13-16

 I remember once when my youngest daughter was a little girl (maybe 6 or 7), she called me at work one day very excited.  She had just received a new book full of knock knock jokes and she wanted me to know!  In fact, she was so excited, without saying hello, she just started in with the jokes.  I answer the phone, and hear a familiar voice say: Knock Knock! And so, what else could I do but say: Whose there?  And for perhaps the next 10 minutes she was laughing and reading jokes to me, one right after the other. Barely a pause. Maybe 2 or 3 pages of them.  And yes, it was inane.  But, I have to say, by the time she was reading me the fifth or sixth joke it was no longer the joke that mattered. I couldn’t stop laughing. Not at the jokes, but at her joy and excitement and delight in reading them to me.  And the fact that a someone had called me at work to tell me knock knock jokes; AND they wouldn’t stop!

 By the time she finished, I was exhausted from laughing, and my cheeks hurt. But, what a glorious feeling.  I don’t remember if I was having a hard day, or if anything was going wrong,  I just remember hanging up that phone and feel a strange and wonderful lightness.  A sense that there was something good in the world. A feeling of hope.  Nothing had really changed. But for me, the world seemed like a better place because a six-year-old called me up and read me 20 (or more) knock knock jokes. If she had stopped after one or two, it would have been cute.  But, forgettable.  But her persistence, made it something more.

“You are the salt of the earth,” Jesus tells His disciples. And then challenges them to be that salt, reminding them that if salt loses its taste, what is it good for, but to be “thrown out and trampled underfoot.” (cf 5:13b) But how are we to be salt for the world?  How do we add flavor to this life?

My daughter wasn’t doing anything “special.” She was just being herself. She had received a gift and she wanted to share it with someone.  That’s all.  Nothing special. Nothing fancy. Just a phone call and a few very silly jokes.  But think about salt.  What is salt? Nothing fancy. Nothing too special (unless you buy one of those strange sea-salt things with the crystals that you have to grind or a flavored salt to go with your popcorn or garlic salt! Eegads… I’m so glad Jesus didn’t say we were supposed to be celery salt).

What I’m trying to say is this:  We are called to be salt of the earth. Salt is common and simple and often goes unnoticed, except in its absence.  It may not be essential, but it adds flavor and without many foods seem flavorless.  I wonder if part of what Jesus was telling his disciples was this: wherever you go, add flavor. Be a source of joy. Be a source of renewal.

 It doesn’t take much.  Another example I often think of is this: A few years ago, I had back surgery.  When I woke in the recovery room I was shivering and confused and felt lost. The nurse was telling me something and I remember a doctor (or someone) asking me a question, but most of all I remember shivering. I guess it is how I react to the anesthesia. It was a coldness inside me that I couldn’t escape. They put those warm blankets over me and I just sat there waiting for my teeth to stop chattering. And suddenly, my wife was standing next to me with a cup of hot black tea in a white Styrofoam cup. And I remember taking that cup and looking at it –not sure if I could drink it. But she encouraged me to take a sip and I did and oh, how good it felt going down.  As I finished it, I remember looking up and she was already standing there with another cup. It was nothing fancy. Nothing amazing. No cream. No sugar. Just plain old Lipton tea and a cup of hot water. I don’t remember a word she said or the doctors. But, I remember how she kept bringing me those cups of tea. And how good it felt just to hold them; to sip on them.  And I remember I felt loved. I felt like I mattered to someone; that in this world so full of pain and cold and confusion, someone cared.  That’s the key to being salt. You don’t have to save the world. You don’t have to fix anything.  You just have to care.  Just show up. Again and again.  That’s what it means to be salt of the earth.  Small and humble; it may not get noticed, but it makes all the difference.

So, what does this mean? I will call this the knock knock theory.  The first step is to knock.  Make time, seek someone out; let them know that they matter.  Maybe your first “knock” is to get on your knees and say a prayer.  Ask God to show you who needs salt.  Is someone you know feeling down, running on empty, truly losing hope?  You may not be able to fix anything for them, possibly you shouldn’t even try, but you can let them know they matter.  Ask them to talk; ask them about their life, their experiences, their dreams, or their favorite book. Maybe offer them a hot cup of tea (and a ginger snap). If you can’t think of anything else to say, ask them who was their favorite teacher in middle school.  You may be surprised by their answer… and delighted by what they remember.  If nothing else, just sit with them, in silence. Drink your tea, eat your cookie and don’t say a word.  That’s okay, too.

The first time will feel odd.   It will be awkward.  The second time, too.  Possibly, even the third. But keep it up.  The key is consistency.  And that takes time. With time and consistency, that person will begin to know that you care. They will know that they matter.  And that is the key to hope. And I guess that’s the second “knock.” It can’t be a one-time thing. You have to knock again. And again. And again.  And I think there’s a parable about that, too (cf. Luke 11:5-8 & 18:1-8).

 And don’t worry that you don’t have anything to say or anything to offer. Remember, Jesus doesn’t ask you to be the pot roast or the scrambled eggs or even the tofurkey.  Those come and go.  We aren’t called to come and go. We are called to be there, on the table, every day, every night, every meal.  We are called not to be the roast goose Bernoise, but the salt that gives it flavor.  The friend who gives hope. You may not change the world, but you just might change someone’s life.  And you know what, that may be even better.