“… you are dust and to the dust you shall return.”
(Genesis 3:19b)
Meditating on the reality of human mortality is something most of us prefer to avoid. While we know our days are numbered, we usually manage to distract ourselves from this ever present fact with work, family responsibilities and recreation. Yet the Church has a whole liturgical season dedicated to contemplation of death and to the transience of all human endeavors? Why?
There’s an old story about an ingenious monkey trap. Reportedly, the monkey hunters tie a coconut to a tree, drill a hole in the coconut just large enough for a monkey’s hand to reach in, and place a piece of fruit or a nut inside. The monkey comes and is easily able to reach his hand into the hole to grasp the food. Yet when the monkey closes his fist around his prize he can no longer withdraw his hand from the coconut. The delay provided allows a hunter to aim, shoot, and bag a monkey for dinner.
Nothing in the material world lasts forever, but that doesn’t keep us from clinging to families, achievements, possessions, and institutions like a monkey grasping fruit in a coconut. Familiar surroundings provide the illusion of security and permanence while the hunter creeps closer each passing day. Some live to a happy old age. Others fall to illness, accidents, natural disasters, or senseless acts of violence. In the end, we all die. Can we escape this “monkey trap”? Christian faith answers, “Yes!”
The spiritual disciplines of Lent – prayer, worship, fasting, and the imposition of ashes – exist to help us let go of our old selves, our old securities and old identities. It is only with open, empty hands that we can hold the hand of God. When we take God’s hand and follow Christ we discover that acceptance of our mortality has paradoxically led us to a new life on earth, followed by eternal life with God in heaven.
“When this perishable body puts on imperishability and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: Death has been swallowed up in
victory.”
(I Corinthians 15:54)
Lent and death gives way to Easter and life.
See you in church,
Pastor Derek