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After lifeSunday, May 10, 2015
John 15:12-13 We make the mistake of suggesting this course of action for others rather than choosing it ourselves. That's not OK. Jesus is talking to each one of us individually and asking each of us to choose the act of loving. I think I hold on too tightly to life on earth. I've been taught for decades about the afterlife, always by people who had not yet been there or done that. Because of our universal lack of personal experience, heaven and hell are concepts rather than destinations described in travel brochures like Lake Tahoe, or Puerto Vallarta. Since I believe in heaven rather than know someone who has been there, I have good days and bad days when I think about dying. On the good days I think of what Jesus says to us here, because he knows more about heaven than the rest of us, and he tells us to give up our lives when we need to and always choose love. He is teaching me the values I need to live and die by. On the bad days I don't know about this heaven thing. I'm not even so sure about this God-thing. My faith falters. In Ron Rolheiser's weekly column he is blunt about what happens next. "Unless we can somehow place our present life against the horizon of an after-life that completes it, the punishing limits, daily inadequacy, and brute mortality of this world will eventually drive us to depression, bitterness or violence." Look around. Leaves are brown. And the sky is a hazy shade of winter. Life sucks, and then you die. In this maelstrom of mediocrity, I must not give in to the temptation to demand complete fulfillment from my wife or my kids or my grandkids - certainly not from "doing," whether vocation or avocation. The shiniest things are most tempting and least fulfilling: a new car, some fantastic vacation, a little fame, a touch of fortune. A mansion just over the hilltop. None will deliver. I will be disappointed and then probably try to amp up my next experience, hoping this time to taste a touch of eternity here and now. And then I'll be disappointed again. Setting aside contemporary, stoic ideas of existential meaning for a moment, my life does not seem complete without adding something beyond the present world. Jesus' command lifts me up out of "brute mortality" and violence. He sets my "present life against the horizon of an after-life that completes it." Be willing to die. Love is stronger than death. Search me, O God, and see if there is any offensive way in me. Show me who to love, when to love, where to love. You have told me why. Now open my ears to your voice and give me direction and courage. Rolheiser's column: http://ronrolheiser.com/against-an-eternal-horizon/#.VU7TGdNVhBe |
In other words, Jesus tells us to sacrifice our own interests and even our own lives, when necessary, for those of others. Choose love, not life. Face death for the sake of love.