Transcript
Today and tomorrow. And on the third day, I finish my work. Please be seated.
Last year I read a book. Actually, I read, like, 30 some books, but this one specific book was very intriguing. You might have heard of it or even read it. It’s called The Measure. It’s by Nikki Erlick. It’s totally fiction. Science fiction. And the story goes like this.
One day, everyone woke up to a box at their door with a string inside. Some strings were short and some strings were long. And after scientists studied the strings, they realized the length of your string determined the length of your life. Some people had strings that were barely an inch long and then died within the next couple of chapters. Some had super long strings and lived well into old age, as the end of the book said. And some people chose not to look at their strings at all. They didn’t want to know. They were afraid it would change how they would live their lives.
In the book, scientists even figured out the day when someone would die based on the length of the string. Just measure it. Go to the website and to your birth date and the length of your string and… Thursday, December 19th, 2024 or Saturday, August 13th, 2022. The day you would die.
The book was highly recommended among book groups where readers could talk about it, not just about the morality of how in the book, the military was requiring recruits to show their string so as not to waste resources on, quote, short-stringers. Also, so readers could talk about it in their own lives, about what would happen if this fictitious premise really happened. Would you look? Would you open your box and look at your string? Would you even go as far as measure it and enter the measurement into the website?
Or would you hide it? Never look. Just trust and however your life is supposed to unfold. In other words, if you could find out how and when you would die. Would you want to know? Would knowing make you live your life differently?
Maybe quit your job. Pursue that dream you’ve always been slightly too scared to pursue. Travel the world. Work with starving orphans or those who are super ill, or plan to spend every waking moment with those whom you love. Maybe reach out to that one person, friend, or family member whose relationship you kind of let lapse.
Here’s the thing: Jesus knew. Jesus wouldn’t have to open his box and look at his string because Jesus already knew. And today, in our gospel reading, Jesus is trying to give some hints to those around him. Hints about the where and the when. Hints about what will happen at the end.
In Matthew and Mark, Jesus comes right out and tries to tell his disciples what will happen. That’s when we get that very quotable line from Jesus. Get behind me, Satan! He says to Peter after Peter tries to convince Jesus to stop telling people about how he will have to suffer and die. And Luke, Jesus just gives us hints.
In today’s gospel reading, there are a number of hints, not least, of course Jerusalem. Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets. So Jesus knows he will die in Jerusalem. Good to know.
Another hint that doesn’t quite translate into English very well is the line today and tomorrow. And on the third day I finish my work. Because the verb Jesus uses is a passive tense that we don’t really have in English. Instead, we could almost translate it as on the third day. I am accomplished, or I am brought to my end, or even it is finished.
This verb is indeed the same verb Jesus uses in John’s Gospel when he hangs on the cross. Quote. He said, it is finished. Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. End quote. Perhaps you also caught the parallel there with the Nicene Creed, and on the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures.
So I ask again, would you live your life differently if you knew when you would die, or how you would die, or where you would die, or who would be with you when you died? As Jesus knows. Would you live your life differently? Or would you do what you do every day? Be that living a very predictable life or a completely unpredictable life? Would you quit your job and sell your house and travel the world? Would you move to Africa to spend the end of your already ending life with AIDS orphans? Would you spend all your money on a really big house, so that everyone you love could come, move in and live with you under one roof?
And then as the end got closer. Would you try to negotiate otherwise? Maybe bargain with God for more time? Would you tell people that you’re about to die? Try to let them understand that it won’t last forever. You won’t last forever.
Jesus knows. He knows all of it. He knows the whole arc of his life, from being swaddled in cloth and laid in a manger, to hanging on a cross all the way to the empty tomb, and being mistaken as a gardener. That’s in one of the gospel readings. He knows who will betray him, who will deny him. Who will abandon him.
And yet Jesus still lives his life. He doesn’t change anything. He still slowly moves to Jerusalem where he knows he will die. He still invites all his disciples to dine with him, including the one he already knows will betray him.
You might be telling yourself that Jesus can do all of that because Jesus is God, divine. And in addition to being all knowing, Jesus is also all merciful and knows that all of this must happen to him. For us, out of love for us, Jesus knows he must do all of these things. And yet, even with the divine, Jesus is also human, just like us.
Tempted to turn away. Tempted to go a different direction. Tempted to live differently.
On this past Wednesday, for the Hampton Episcopal Churches Lenten Series, Father Hector at Saint Cyprian did an excellent job talking about temptation. As part of the program he handed out questions to each table. The table I was at had a really long question, with a whole bunch of scriptural references to Jesus being tempted, tempted by Peter to stop bringing down the party by sharing information about his passion and death, tempted by Satan to rule all the kingdoms and end all world hunger. We heard that last week. Even at the very end after the arrest, tempted by Pilot and Herod to denounce any claim as the King of the Jews and go on with his happy itinerant life, even in all that, Jesus still refuses to fall, to send, to give into temptation, and instead chooses to live into his already known and anticipated death.
I don’t have the answers to our own futures. I don’t even have an answer to what will happen in an hour. I had someone to ask me for a ride home after church, and I said, probably. And yet, I do know what happens to Jesus at the end. We all do.
And as we journey with Jesus during this Lenten season, we also can journey with Jesus in the knowing, knowing what will happen next. Knowing what the end looks like and where and how and with whom. Like I said last week, we don’t have to live like Jesus during this time of anguish, of anticipation, of fear in Jesus’s life. Granted, we may be experiencing those emotions in our own lives, which perhaps is why it’s even more crucial that we walk with Jesus now during his own journey to the cross, so that we can better understand how much Jesus knows, not just about himself, also about us.
Like I’ve said, I can’t give you a magic box with a piece of string that will tell you when you die. I can’t give you any hint as to how or where or with whom. What I can do though, is show you what Jesus did. Jesus made the moment of death irrelevant because Jesus made his own death irrelevant, at least as much so as to rise again to overcome death.
Let us continue with Jesus down the path laid out before him to the cross, to death, and to resurrection, to Holy Week and to Easter. Because even in death we will continue to journey with Jesus into everlasting life.
Amen.