Games People Play

Gospel: Luke 17: 26-37

Human beings continue to play a cosmic casino game that has never paid out and no one has ever won: forecasting and predicting the end of the world.  Despite its zero success rate, the game grows in popularity.  Christians popularized it and now even non-religious people play versions of the game: we have the doomsday clock and an array of scientific predictions of our collective demise on this planet.  

Our own individual deaths are far more certain bets on the cosmic roulette wheel, and yet we place no bets on that square.  In fact, we do all in our power to avoid thinking about it and attempt in various and sundry ways to prevent our own deaths.  The day of our own individual demise is as certain as the collapse of a Buffalo Bills season.  We ought not be surprised when people die or when our own end comes.  

Over the centuries, the spiritual masters have found great wisdom and profit from meditating on the four last things - death, judgment, heaven, and hell.  Death and judgment are certain; heaven and hell are contingent.  A continual remembrance of our own mortality can lead to great growth in how we live: it can make us more loving, more merciful, more selfless - not because we face judgment and a vengeful God but because death reminds us that we are all frail, all in need of love and mercy in our lives.  Death reminds us of our radical equality before God and one another.  We have a common, universal destiny.