NOTE: I am putting my weekly sermons on the church website. It will be on for two weeks (usually posted on Friday) and then placed in the Archives area by date. You can download in a matter of seconds.

Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766

Sunday, September 26, 2004

Sermon: “Living While Waiting to Die”

Scripture: Luke 16:19-31

Reverend Larry Gerber

Dr. David Demko’s Death Device projects the date of a celebrity’s demise using lifestyle information such as smoking and exercise. Whitney Houston? 2022. Keith Richards? Should have died in‘95. But maybe it’s more important to discover when we are going to live.

pp1

Are you dying to know when you’ll die?

Okay, maybe not, but there’s at least one person who thinks it’s possible to determine death dates with reasonable accuracy. Dr. David Demko is a well-known gerontologist in Boca Raton, Florida, who for the last 30 years has been doing research on the lifestyle patterns that either enhance or diminish life expectancy.

In 1974, while in graduate school in Michigan, he developed the death calculator and shortly later received the support of the United States Administration on Aging. Since that time it has been used all over the world as a predictor of life expectancy, based upon certain lifestyle behavior patterns.

The death calculator itself is actually a simple quiz that includes questions like the following:

“Do you have an annual physical exam?” If so, add three years to your score. If not, subtract three years from your score.

“Do you volunteer on a weekly basis?” If so, add two years to your score. If not, one year deducted. Volunteering means non-paid service to unrelated individuals.

“Are you able to laugh at, and learn from your mistakes?” If not, subtract three years.

“Do you smoke a pack of cigarettes daily?” Subtract four years. Live or work with smokers? Subtract one year.

There’s more. “Do you own a pet?” Add two years for interactive pets (dog, cat, bird). Add one year for passive pets (fish, reptile, tarantula). If you are left-handed, subtract one year (maybe it isn’t too late for me to become right handed. Do you think? After 60 years I doubt I can change). For every inch of your height that exceeds 5’8”, subtract six months ( I always new there were advantages to being “short”). “Are you a religious person, and do you practice your faith?” If so, add two years.” (To take the entire 22-question quiz, see www.demko.com).

For the curious, Blender magazine asked Dr. Demko to predict the deaths of some celebrities based on their current and past lifestyles. Whitney Houston is predicted to die in 2022. She scores six years for being married but loses four for being married to Bobby Brown. (Her drug addiction doesn’t help her score either.)

Clean-living Clay Aiken will live to 82, while Courtney Love is outta here at 62, losing eight years for enjoying a smoking habit that is, among other personal habits, out of control. At least one well-known musician has beaten the odds — Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones should have died in 1995. Dr. Demko’s calculator gives Ozzy Osbourne only another nine years (based on an Associated Press report, February 11, 2004).

Most of the lifestyle patterns that Demko has identified are obvious, both those to be avoided and those to be adopted. On his Web site he writes, “Long life isn’t just a result of smart genes and dumb luck. Most of the time, it’s due to moderate eating, sleeping, diet, exercise, work and leisure. In fact, 80 percent of the factors that control how long you live are related to your lifestyle, not your genes.”

pp 2

Which brings us to Jesus’ sobering parable of a certain rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). While he was alive Dives — Latin for “rich man” — lived a lifestyle of the rich and famous. Luke tells us he “feasted sumptuously every day” (16:19). While he was feasting, Lazarus was dying at his gate, wasting away with the afflictions of desperate hunger. Predictably, they both died.

That’s when the shock begins; or at least it ought to begin for those who are alive and have ears to hear. After all, Lazarus, who had no lifestyle choices, being desperately hungry and dependent upon the kindness of the wealthy, is raised to enjoy the consolations of heaven. While Dives, the rich man, who presumably had every choice available to him and the power to shape his lifestyle any way he wanted, is sent to suffer the torments of hell. Only then, suffering the painful consequences of hell itself does Dives begin to assess his “lifestyle.”

This is not a parable for the squeamish, or more pointedly for those who think how we live has no real consequences.

Dr. Demko’s quiz may predict when we are going to die, but that’s not really the point of his death calculator, is it? The point is to choose to live in the healthiest way possible — now, before you’re dead, and have no choices at all.

In Jesus’ parable, that’s precisely the point of Father Abraham’s sharp reply to the rich man. Dives had a lifetime to live in a way that honored Moses and the prophets, and he failed even to notice the poor dying man at his front gate.

pp3

That’s the problem with narcissism and a narcissistic culture: you don’t see people. We don’t see the blind, the lame, the ill, the suffering, the dirty, the imprisoned, the child, the poor. They’re outside our field of vision. Here at Sun Lakes, we might not see the blind, lame, suffering, dirty, and imprisoned, and the poor, in person, but we know about them, and we give generously, through UMOM, Wesley Center, and others.

What is shocking about this parable, or ought to be shocking, is that Dives appears to be living a successful life not unlike any other reasonably wealthy persons in our time, which would include the majority of Christians in our most prosperous churches in North America.

There is no indication that he mistreated or abused the poor Lazarus, only that he lived his life in such a way that Lazarus, along with all the other afflicted, hungry people at the gates of the rich, were rendered invisible. Only after he died and felt the consequences of his lifestyle — one of ignoring the prophets’ summons to care for the poor and the hungry and Moses’ call to love God and neighbor — did he want to make a change in his living. Then it was too late.

Father Abraham reminds Dives that, even though he will not get a chance to warn them personally, his five living brothers still have time to heed the call of Moses and the prophets. So do we.

pp4

By implication, we are those five brothers — we still have time to make the lifestyle choices that will bring our lives in tune with God’s way now, while we are still living.

What precisely is God’s way that Jesus affirms in this parable? It is the heart of the Jewish tradition summed up in the law and the prophets: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).

Commenting on this parable, Peter Gomes, in his book: “Strength for the Journey”, says that the story is a cautionary tale, telling us that it is not yet too late for us. It may be too late for the five brothers, but it does not have to be for the rest of us. So, what is the bottom line? Jesus is challenging us to get our acts together now! We are challenged to listen to the gospel and hear it, and then act on it in whatever ways we can. “Here it is in clear color,” says Gomes: “God does not expect you to do the impossible, but God does expect you to do both what you can and what you must.”

Get your act together ... now! The apostle Paul had the same sense of urgency about getting on with one’s life now, and not later when it may well be too late. “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15-16).

Dr. Demko thinks we should make the right lifestyle choices now if we are to live a long and healthy life. The gospel teaches that there is more to the right choices than what will benefit us alone. The wisest choices include shaping our lives in ways that care for the strangers at the gate, the neglected on the margins, the lonely in the shadows, the hungry on the streets. Dives went about his life apparently not paying attention to the very one in front of him.

It’s this lack of attention to life, passing through without deliberate intention to a moral life that led Henry David Thoreau in 1854 to the radical decision to live alone for a time. Thoreau did not want to let life pass him by — he wanted to live it with full attention.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,” wrote Thoreau in Walden, “to confront only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

pp5

In the end, it doesn’t matter when we die. It matters only how we’ve lived.
```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
Source:

Gomes, Peter J. Strength for the Journey. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2003, 244-245.

Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766