Sermon preached by Rev. Lillie M. Henley 4 Mar 2007
This sermon is about dying, however, before I begin, I wanted to tell you something humorous about death. Now some of you who are in the medical field already know this, but I did not, and I thought it quite informative.
Dr. Sherwin Nuland, in his book How We Die, wrote, “Everybody is required to die of a named entity, [not only] by order of the [U. S.] Department of Health and Human Services but also … [by] the global [policy] of the World Health Organization. In the thirty-five years as a licensed physician, I have never had the temerity to write ‘Old Age’ on the death certificate, knowing that the form would be returned to me with a terse note from some official record-keeper informing me that I had broken the law. Everywhere in the world, it is illegal to die of old age.”
Makes me feel good, how about you? We won’t have to die of “old age!”
As you know, we are celebrating the season of Lent, that time of the year when those who follow Jesus’ story have an opportunity to reflect on what his ministry and his sacrifice at Easter can mean to us today.
The Gospel writers claimed an extraordinary birth for Jesus, and while the stories differ from each Gospel, it is clear they all wanted Jesus to appear divine from the beginning. What is clear to me, though, is that no matter how or what the circumstances, Jesus was born of a woman, an ordinary human being in the beginning, just like you and me. I say this for us to keep in mind while we explore “Too Busy to Die.”
In our reading from Luke, the Pharisees tell Jesus that Herod is looking for him. They warn Jesus, get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.
Jesus is no fool. He knows what Herod did to his cousin John. So he has to take their warning seriously. But, Jesus had answered his call. By now, he has been living his ministry for at least a couple of years. He knows the Law. He knows that if his ministry is to be successful, his life must reflect the prophecies of the Hebrew story. At this point, he may not know exactly how that will unfold, but he does know one thing, he is, through and through, a son of Israel, and a prophet, and he knows that his story ends in Jerusalem, not here in the country.
He is not afraid.
He says, go and tell that old fox for me… I’m too busy to die today.
I’m too busy to die today.
Now, the difference between Jesus saying, “I’m too busy to die today,” and each of us saying, “I’m too busy to die today,” is that Jesus was busy doing God’s work, while we, well, most of the time, we are too busy doing other things.
There are stories of people, who like Jesus, answered God’s call, ordinary people.
Two things to keep in mind when we hear other’s stories: One, when we are born and when we die, we are all ordinary people? And two, our deaths are meaningful, to the extent that our lives are meaningful.
One, when we are born and when we die, we are all ordinary. No infant is born to a given destiny. She or he must listen for God’s calling. Listen and follow that call for, for it is in the listening and the following that our lives become meaningful.
There was a young boy born in a German district of Czechoslovakia. Growing up he heard a call to be a missionary priest. What he believed he was called to do was take the Gospel to foreign lands. He was ordained as a priest in August 1939, and two weeks later, World War II began. Within two years, he was arrested by the Gestapo for subversive sermons and defending the Jews. Father Englemar Unzeitig never made it to a foreign country; his missionary work began in 1941 in the concentration camp at Dachau, along with nearly 3,000 other clergy, most of whom were Catholic priests.
Whenever he was not forced to work, he spent his time ministering to the needs of others. Somehow, he was moved to minister to the Russian prisoners, and even though they were Communists, he found a way to earn their trust and friendship. Father Englemar survived four years at Dachau—through forced labor, beatings, freezing weather, and famine. There were times when all the prisoners had to eat were weeds and grass.
He had survived four years when typhoid ravaged the camp. Everyone affected was moved to an isolated barracks and left there to die in horrible conditions without care or concern. Then the Germans sent out a call for orderlies to attend to the typhoid patients. Twenty priests stepped forward, Father Englemar was one.
Finally, here was his foreign mission. Because their SS captors would not enter these barracks, the priests were free, not only to care for the physical needs of the patients, but the spiritual needs as well. Even after Father Englemar contracted typhoid, for weeks he continued to care for others. In a wrote in a letter a few days before he died, “The Good is undying and victory must remain with God, even if it sometimes seems useless for us to spread love in the world.”
He was too busy to die, yet he did; only a few weeks before the American army liberated Dachau.
Another story from Germany is about a sister and a brother who were university students in Munich 1942. Hans Scholl had already served on the Russian front and was a medical student. His younger sister Sophie Scholl studied philosophy. They were not members of any sophisticated underground, not even an organized resistance. Two young people saw the inherent evil in the Nazi regime and listened to God’s call to make a difference. In the summer of 1942 they began to distribute leaflets that called for ordinary citizens to work toward the downfall of the Nazis and Hitler.
Along with a very few other students, they were able to pass out their leaflets and graffiti “Down with Hitler” on street signs and buildings through the fall and winter. By February, they were caught, and along with another student, were tried and convicted of treason, and were beheaded.
Sophie, Hans, and Christopher were too busy to die, but they did.
Mickey Leland, a United States Congressman, was born an ordinary child and grew up in a Black and Latino neighborhood in Houston, Texas. He attended segregated schools and became a civil rights activist during his college years. It was in his own neighborhood that he became an advocate for the welfare of children and the elderly. During his six terms in Congress and five years as a Texas legislator, he brought to awareness the needs of the hungry and the disenfranchised.
It was as a Congressional representative that he first visited sub-Saharan, Africa, and brought back the information and the will to generate public support for the Africa Famine Relief and Recovery Act of 1985. That legislation provided $800 million in food and humanitarian relief supplies, and the attention Leland had focused brought additional support for non-governmental efforts, saving thousands of lives.
In 1989, on another trip to Africa, Leland’s plane crashed into the side of a mountain in Ethiopia. Too busy to die, but he did.
We don’t have to look very hard to find the stories of the ordinary men and women who have been since the 1960s and still today, in Latin and South America answer the call to fight injustice. There is a lot of work to do, and they are quite busy, and they too, die for their call.
There are stories in our time and our community that are the same as these stories.
We are all born ordinary human beings, and it is in listening for God’s call AND answering that call that our lives become meaningful.
In the “Ode to the Day Refused” about Karen and Jennifer Sandberg’s father, we see a man who was too busy to die. He had more work to do, more photographs to imagine. Yet, in between his birth and his death, there was a call to share with others the images of reality through the lens of his camera. Images which, I am sure touched the lives of the many who viewed them.
I am not saying that we have to give up the lives we know and find a cause for which we can die. It is my belief, that many of us here today have listened to God’s call and are making a difference somehow and in some way.
This is the time of year to reflect on our lives, consider Jesus’ ministry and calling, which brought to us a way to be “in relationship” with God. I believe, with all my heart that the call is a call to love. To love beyond one’s self.
Jesus was too busy to die, but he did.
Oh how grateful for the lessons of the Gospels.
Oh how grateful for the freedom to create a meaningful life between our ordinary birth and our ordinary death.
Oh how grateful for the ability to love beyond one’s self.
Amen and blessed be.
Readings
Luke 13:31-35
At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’ He said to them, ‘Go and tell that fox for me, "Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem." Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord." ’
Ode to the Day Refused by Karen Sandberg
The day my father died
The earth swooned in orbit
Tipping a few waves in Lake Superior
To thank him for a lifetime of portraits.
His eye and camera caught Superior
At her most calm or furious or simply superb
And she in turn gave him her best profile
To measure the craft of his artistry.
The day my father died
The finality of the heavy sky at dawn
And the dry bowl of burning mid-day sun could only
Hold tears.
In the days the family stood watch
in honor, in grief, the children made bets on
Grandpa’s time of death…..
Madder’n hell at the weeks spent
trying to get our of bed and walk away
raging at the hooded black presence he would not welcome,
he asked about the mail.
The burning bowl of tears
will dry. But the day he died
the sun burned a hole in the sky taking his heart with it
breaking mine.
The day that stopped him short of 90 years,
him refusing to acknowledge in his contrary-wise
fashion, he’d refused so many times to die,
that day didn’t exist for my father.
He refused it. Contrary to all appearance
and any facts, he simply got up
and walked away into the hole in the sky.