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Background: Like Last Sunday's Gospel, this is a story
with a strong theological overlay. However, Jesus surely had an experience of his Father
in heaven at some point in his public life in which he perceived that it was necessary for
him to go to Jerusalem and like the prophets die for the good news he had come to preach.
The disciples did not understand this experience then. Nor is it
clear that we understand it now. Jesus saw that, like all humans, he had to die. He also
perceived that is death, like all deaths, would be horrible, though more horrible than
most. Nonetheless because he was confident of His Father's love for him, we went to
Jerusalem bravely because he knew that ultimately God would vindicate the good news with
his powerful love. So we must understand that God too will vindicate us eventually and
that Jesus will accompany us down into the valley of death. Lent, in a way, is more about
our own deaths and resurrections than it is about Jesus's. |
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Story: Once
there was a scientist who believed in nothing at all. He enjoyed especially putting down
those who had near death experiences (NDE) in which they were revived after they
clinically died. It was all brain chemistry, he insisted, an evolutionary adjustment for a
species that was conscious of its own mortality. There was no tunnel, no figure in white
at the end of it, no
choice about whether to stay or come back. It was all an illusion caused by the brain
chemicals that were released at the moment of death. Then he had a heart attack and was
clinically dead when they got him to the hospital. However, the doctors revived him and he
reported that he had indeed gone through an NDE. It was an illusion, he insisted, caused
by brain chemicals. I still do not believe in anything at all except science. When we are
dead, we
are dead and that's that. However, he seemed less afraid of death than most of his atheist
colleagues. One of them asked him if he was not afraid that he might be wrong. Promise you
won't quote me? Yes. Well, I figure that if the NDE was all an illusion then I have
nothing to lose by saying it was an illusion. On the other hand, if the person in white
that the brain chemicals made me imagine is real, well there's so much love there, I have
nothing to lose either because I will be forgiven. So it's a good gamble. Oh, said his
colleague.
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