Year B
 Joel 2:1-2,12-17
 Psalm 103:8-14
 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
 Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

Our cat Simon…  a Siamese Tabby mix…  turns sixteen in little more than three months…  we got him in 2008…  during my second year of seminary…  I thought he’d be the cat who would sit on my lap as I read…  and read…  and read…  there was a lot of reading…  but he turned out not to be a lap cat…  no way no how…  but instead…  to be an…  I’ll-sit-right-beside-you and stretch my paw out onto your leg cat…  but Simon is very social… ] like a dog…  he’ll sometimes put his nose under your hand so that you’ll pet him…  and if he wants attention…  or food…  or something else he’s not getting…  like a lot of cats…  he’ll scratch the couch…  but he will sometimes scratch wooden furniture…  or chew it…   he’s never really totally destroyed anything…  but he has damaged some things…  and Joel and I kind of joke about it…  we say that he’s teaching us the value of impermanence…  I mean…  we’re at the point in our lives where we’re more interested in figuring out who’s going to get what…  when we die…  instead of thinking about how much more stuff we can accumulate…  but a few years ago…  Simon was very sick…  with pancreatitis…  so sick that I thought he might die…  and it took several months before he seemed to be back to normal…  and during that time…  I thought about his mortality…  and mortality in general…  including my own…  and there’s an app for that…  it’s called We Croak…  and the app has a red frog as its logo… and you can get it for either your iPhone or Android smartphone…

Now a croak is the low…   hoarse sound…   a frog makes…  but crows and people with sore throats can croak too…  and when people croak…  they need either a glass of water…  or perhaps a mortician…  that’s because dying people can make croaking sounds too…  and according to the Oxford English Dictionary…  the verb “to croak” entered English in the 1400s some time…  and the whole idea behind the app is based on a Bhutanese folk saying…   that to be a happy person…  one must contemplate death five times each and every day…  and the app displays five notifications each and every day…   which appear at random…  as death sometimes does too…  offering one of over a thousand quotes about death from a poet…  philosopher…  or notable thinker…  and when they appear…  one is encouraged to take a moment for contemplation…  conscious breathing…  or meditation… ]  which helps us spur needed change…  accept what we must…  let go of things that no longer matter…  and honor those things which do… ] one of the quotes is from Mark Twain…  who said…  I do not fear death…   I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born…  and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it… 

In the 1971 movie Harold and Maude… young… wealthy…  but sullen Harold…  stages somewhat frightful scenes of his own death…  but one day…  at a funeral which he attends more out of morbid curiosity than anything else…  Maude is sitting in the pew behind him…  and says…  Pssst…  would you like a piece of licorice…  Harold declines…  you see…  neither one of them knew the deceased…  and while Harold is obsessed with death…  Maude is obsessed with life…  she is a seventy-nine-year-old concentration camp survivor…  she acknowledges that death is a part of life… and doesn’t resist… deny… or reject it… and by going to funerals… she lives every moment as a blessing…  and because of this…  finds an unshakable joy in life…

And I wonder if one of the reasons so many of us in the west fear death…  is because it’s the painful or sudden or brutal deaths around us that grab our attention…  and I don’t think that genocide or wars or mass shootings or violent movies or video games…  help the matter any…  help us welcome death when it does come…  but it is possible to maintain a balance between the two extremes…  to never hurry death…  to never seek it or invite it before its time…  but to not resist it at all costs…  the gift of life is precious…  but it is after all…  only one aspect of our existence with…   and within…  God’s eternal presence…

In his Lenten address to our two dioceses…  Bp. Skip Adams said…  that Lent is about getting honest…  honest with God…  honest with ourselves…  and honest with the community of faith…   about who we really are before God…  perhaps you’ve heard the old one-liner he asked…  about a very non-emotive German farmer who said…   I love my wife so much…  I nearly told her once…  ]  we need to be able to speak honestly…  as Isaiah does…  and as Jesus does…   not for the purpose of making us feel bad about who we are in our human condition…  but in order to establish…   maintain…   repair…   and transform our relationship with God…  and our relationships with one another…   and indeed…   with the entire creation…  ]   though we must be careful not to do the right things…  for the wrong reasons…  to draw attention to ourselves…  simply for doing what…  as human beings…  we are called to do…  as the Pharisee in tonight’s Gospel may have done…  ]  as John Dominic Crossan said…  Heaven is in great shape…  Earth is where the problems are…  and while we may be dust…  we are redeemed dust…

A pastor once wrote about simple acts… she wrote…  I wonder if I can treasure washing the dishes… if I could… I would be amazed that the dishes can be used again and again and again… they are there… waiting for me to put eggs and toast on them for breakfast… and sandwiches and soup for lunch… when I washed the dishes… I would think about all the people who have eaten off those plates while sitting around the table with me… I would think about the laughter… right along with the moments when tears welled up in the corners of our eyes… as we told each other stories of real things happening in our lives… I would even be grateful for the awkward silences that have sometimes happened… when new friendships were trying to be forged…

If I could treasure washing the dishes… I would make more space for mundane things… like cooking and eating… I would sweep the floor like I loved it… as though I was caressing it… because on that floor I walk and have my life… if I could treasure washing the dishes… I would not store up treasures on earth… but I would store up treasures of the heart… treasures of love and honor and simple joy… and then we might well say…  unlike the German farmer…  I love those in my life so much…  I tell them at least five times…  each and every day…