We'll All Be Rooned
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“All people are like grass,” says the prophet Isaiah, “and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, when the breath of the Lord blows on them”. (Isaiah 40:6-8). As I was writing my sermon, my dog Neelix was trying to climb up on my lap… and when that didn’t out for him he kept trying to nuzzle his nose under my arm while I was typing. Neelix is a sweet but about as lazy of a dog as one can find most days. He’s 8 years old now as a black lab/coon hound mix… so he’s getting up there, but since his earliest days of a puppy he always preferred to seek a comfortable place to lay down rather than to run and jump and play.
What’s been fun, however, is that in the last few months as the fur beneath his chin has been starting to turn gray, he's actually become more playful than he ever was as a pup. It’s like he has started to realize he's getting up there for a dog… and so he wants to play while he can.
I don’t know about you, but it’s caught my attention that it’s not just my dog that’s getting older… I keep noticing more and more signs that I’m getting older too. The percentage of grey hairs in my beard seem to be increasing… the resistance to shaving stubble on top of my head seems to be decreasing.. I find myself occasionally caught off guard by a new ache or pain here or there.
Maybe you noticed you noticed a new gray hair or an extra wrinkle when you were getting ready for church this morning or some other sign that you aren’t as young as you u sed to be. All of us are changing. All of us are aging one day at a time. We know that these bodies of ours are temporary.
I heard a clip from the late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert recently where he was talking with a guest about aging and about death. Stephen, an active Catholic, said something to the effect that death is sure a strange way to end life. And for just a moment the guest seemed caught off guard by his statement and, truthfully, I think Stephen was also caught off guard that he had said this introspective thing in the interview… but there it was for the public to hear if even for a moment… Stephen Colbert publicly wrestling with his own aging and the recognition that he too in all of his vibrancy would one day die. And he thought it was such a strange idea that death would be the way to end his vibrant life.
I remember some time ago having one of those driveway conversations where you’re on the way to leave and just keep saying goodbye another 3-5 times. It’s in good midwestern tradition. But as I’m nearing the car door and my hand is actively reaching for the handle, I received the question, “Pastor… why do people have to die?” And that’s the question… isn’t it? As we get older we see the pattern enough that we perhaps get more accustomed to the idea of it happening… but I suspect most people still wrestle with that question in some form or fashion… why do we have to get older? Maybe we fight against it… we attempt to thwart it. Goodness I’ve seen enough make-up ads suggesting that their product will make you 10 years younger.
I think even of my dog Neelix and his recent surge of trying to finally become playful as he is feeling his age begin to set in. Maybe if I act like a puppy I will feel more like a puppy again. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But that doesn’t change the reality that we are growing older... it doesn’t change the facts around the question, “Pastor, why do people have to die?”
We come and we go like the grass in the wind, as the prophet Isaiah wrote all those dozens upon dozens of generations ago. All of nature around us has that quality about it; the birds, the plants, the animals. They come and they go. The best structures ever built; the ones designed to last, may last a long time, but not forever. That’s what Jesus was telling his disciples in today’s gospel reading from Luke. The text tells us: “Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God.”
You can imagine the majesty they likely felt in that enormous place of worship. The grandeur of the temple was designed to instill that sense in those who entered its gates. Just like St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome or Notre Dame in Paris… at least as it was before the fire… they were designed to convey awe and agelessness in the pilgrim that attended. And I’m sure that in Notre Dame, the people who visited on April 14th, 2019, the day before the fire, I’m sure that many of them assumed that beautiful cathedral would continue to stand for the next 500 years without an issue. If you told visitors to Notre Dame that tomorrow the building would be in shambles… I imagine most would have scoffed at that idea.
The disciples were faced with that same predicament as they stood in the enormous grandeur of the Temple in Jerusalem and heard Jesus say, ‘As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down’.” (Luke 21:6)
It seemed impossible that a place of such vibrancy and life… a place dedicated to God the Most High could be a place that comes to ruin. This place was full of religious activity. It had offerings to God stacked all over the place. If there were any safe haven in the world to escape the threats of the world, it would be within the Temple of Jerusalem.
But it happened as Jesus said it would. In AD 70 Titus, a Roman general, with 80,000 soldiers, invaded Jerusalem to put down a Jewish revolt. It was a difficult city to take, set on a hill, and defended to the death. Jesus had told his followers to flee to the mountains when that day came, but instead they crammed into the city. The result was famine and terror. At the end the Holy Place was burnt down; and Titus ordered the whole city and the Temple to be destroyed. That place of architectural beauty and majesty was gone. That place which seemed would be around at least well past their own life times suddenly was snuffed out of existence.
Jesus told his followers that, not only the temple, but the end of the world was coming. He said, “No-one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”. Mark 13:32. But the end is coming. You will see signs of it when the end is near. There will be false messiahs, wars and rumors of wars, natural catastrophes, signs from the Heavens, persecutions.
All these things have been happening for thousands of years, and when we think of them we realize just how fragile life itself is. It is TEMPORARY. Everything material ends. We could respond to all this by throwing up our hands in despair and becoming completely pessimistic about our lives and the future.
Father Patrick Joseph Hartigan, a 19thcentury priest and poet in Australia who went by the name John O’Brien in his poems expressed that feeling in verse:
“We’ll all be rooned”, said Hanrahan
In accent most forlorn
Outside the church ere Mass began
One frosty Sunday morn.
The congregation stood about,
Coat-collars to the ears,
And talked of stock and crops and drought
As it had done for years.
“If rain don’t come this month”, said Dan,
And cleared his throat to speak -
“We’ll all be rooned”, said Hanrahan,
“If rain don’t come this week”.
In God’s good time down came the rain;
And all the afternoon
On iron roof and window-pane
It drummed a homely tune.
And every creek a banker ran,
And dams filled overtop;
“We’ll all be rooned”, said Hanrahan,
“If this rain won’t stop”.
And stop it did, in God’s good time:
And spring came in to fold
A mantle o’er the hills sublime
Of green and pink and gold.
“There’ll be brush-fires for sure, me man,
There will, without a doubt;
We’ll all be rooned”, said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out”.
But is that what Jesus is trying to communicate to his disciples in the temple? Is Jesus just trying to tell the disciples that their temple is going to come to an end anyway so… what’s the point? If it’s all going to be ruined anyway… if the armies are going to march on it… if the torches are going to be lit… if the end is coming… why bother? Is Jesus trying to leave his disciples in a place of hopelessness?
As much as we tend to put our focus on the end… and much as we might wonder alongside Stephen Colbert and that person I had the driveway chat with… why do people die… even as much as that might be -our focus- I don’t think it is Jesus’ focus here.
While we get caught strongly on the lines where Jesus talks about the temple being destroyed… and we hear him say that his disciples will be betrayed by parents and brothers, friends and relatives and that some of them will be put to death.. while we get caught up STRONGLY on those words and for good reason and we join with Hanrahan in chanting “We’ll all be rooned”… Jesus’ message doesn’t stop with the destruction.
All material things are temporary, transitory, terminal. The temple in Jerusalem… this world we live in… our aging bodies… but Jesus’ parting words is not “You’ll all be rooned.” Instead, he says not a hair on your head will perish.
Now you might be saying to yourself, “Jesus literally just said that some of his disciples will be put to death! It doesn’t make sense for him to then immediately follow that up by saying that not a hair on their heads will perish.”
And you would be right, that it wouldn’t make sense. But I believe what Jesus is getting at here is not that our bodies will go unscathed through the trials of this life… but that even as everything comes to an end… even as our very bodies take their last breaths… that God will keep us safe. That we are more than just a collection of cells bound together into an organism that just tries to keep from life being “rooned”… but that we have something special breathed into us by the Creator of the Cosmos that God will care for even after our bodies return to dust.
And this kind of teaching permits us to live a different kind of life. Allow me to offer a final quick story to illustrate that
One day in a small English town a certain tailor became ill. A week later, he died. A few days after that one of his landlady’s young sons died, and then the man who lived in the house next door. It wasn’t long before 20 people per week were dying in the town.
The year was 1665, the disease was bubonic plague.
The people of that village were called together for a meeting at their church. Someone suggested that they draw an imaginary line around their village which none of them would cross as long as the plague was raging. The whole town agreed and chose to voluntarily quarantine themselves rather than trying to escape to places where there was no plague. The people knew how quickly the plague would spread if they went to other towns. As Jesus had offered his life for the world, so they offered theirs for people they didn’t even know. By the time the plague was over in November of 1666, 260 of the 300 people of the village had died. But because of them many lives were spared. And from the town’s perspective, there is much reason to see that all has been “rooned” and yet… and yet there was and is the hope that life does not end in death but that this life ends in a new life. That even as the temples of their bodies were falling ill one after another, that their Creator would not forsake them.
Their hope in Christ… their trust in God helped see them through that horrendous plague because their trust and hope in Christ helped them live into a sacrificial love. For when we understand that all in this life is temporary regardless and that the next life is eternal, we can be moved to live with a selfless love knowing that Christ will see us through.
And Christ’s love will hold us: “I am with you always, to the very end of the age”. (Matthew 28:20). And reminding ourselves of this truth, there is nothing in this life… not disease or finances or war or drought or storm that truly can cause us to all be rooned that God cannot see us through. And for that, we can give thanks. Amen.