Learning to love heaven more than earth
Luke 17:26-37
Jesus
said to his disciples: “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the
days of the Son of Man; they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in
marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and
destroyed them all. Similarly, as it was in the days of Lot: they were eating,
drinking, buying, selling, planting, building; on the day when Lot left Sodom,
fire and brimstone rained from the sky to destroy them all. So it will be on
the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, someone who is on the housetop
and whose belongings are in the house must not go down to get them, and
likewise one in the field must not return to what was left behind. Remember the
wife of Lot.
If you woke
up in the middle of the night to see your house engulfed in flames, is there
anything you’d try to save, besides your family? Some would run in to save
their dog or cat, and for some people their pets are more important than their
family (at least their pets are a lot nicer!). Perhaps you’d try to save your
precious jewelry, or any family heirlooms passed down over many generations.
Maybe you’d rush back to grab old photographs or other memorabilia.
On September
15, two months ago, Gideon Hodge, an actor and writer in New Orleans, ran back
into his burning home to save his laptop containing his drafts of two novels he
was writing. He ran past firefighters who yelled: “Hey, you can’t go in there!”
And he emerged a couple of minutes later soaking wet caring a bag with his
laptop. Some of us would love our laptops to go up in flames! But we can
certainly sympathize with people who do such things: they want to save
something they might lose forever.
But in the
gospel today, Jesus suggests that we should put our sympathies elsewhere, not
on earth but in heaven. That is, we should have a certain detachment from
worldly goods. Jesus reminds the people of the catastrophe that befell Sodom,
when “fire and brimstone rained from the sky” and Lot and his family fled the
doomed city. The angel who escorted them to safety warned them: not only do not
go back for your laptop, but don’t even look back at the city in flames. Do you
remember what Lot’s wife did? She looked back and was turned into a pillar of
salt. Her gesture of turning back, which seemed innocent enough, really
betrayed her heart: she wanted to go back to Sodom. Her heart was still back
there with all her earthly treasures, instead of where the angels was leading
them (heaven). In other words, thank God
for the gifts he has given you, but when the time comes to leave them behind,
don’t hesitate. Love heaven more than you love your laptop.
My friends,
God has given us this world for our happiness and for our holiness. But he has
something much better waiting for us in heaven, and so we should exercise some
detachment from earthly treasures. Here are a few examples. I know a priest
who, whenever he buys new clothes or a new book, he always gives to the poor an
equal number of old clothes and old books. That way, he doesn’t accumulate more
and more. One family I know tithes down to the penny. They calculate their
income and give exactly 10%, which could be $54.23. The spiritual purpose of
tithing is to teach detachment, to be able to let go of this earth.
Yesterday,
at a meeting in Little Rock, Bishop Taylor shared something called, “The Pact
of the Catacombs.” Apparently, in 1965, at the close of the Second Vatican
Council, 40 bishops gathered in an ancient, underground basilica to sign a
“pact” by which they pledged to “try to live according to the manner of our
people in all that concerns housing, food, means of transport, and related
matters.” They wanted to live “evangelical poverty,” like Jesus lived. In other words, these bishops vowed not to
run back into a burning building to grab their laptops; they vowed not to look
back if the world went up in flames.
Folks, it’s
a good thing to love this earth. But we should love heaven even more.
Praised be
Jesus Christ!
No comments:
Post a Comment