What would you do, if you knew there was just one week left? Just a week to say goodbye to your nearest and dearest; just a week before your world comes crashing down; just a week before all that you have known and loved is changed forever. What would you do?
I wonder what our friends in Haiti, Christchurch and Japan might have done had they known, what they know now, about the way their world would be shaken so disastrously in recent times. Would they have prepared themselves differently?
For as long as I can remember, Civil Defence has urged New Zealanders to develop survival kits in our homes. Water and food, transistor radio, torch, batteries – get ready, so you can get through – we have been urged. How many of us have done that? My guess is, not many – although I do believe that in recent months, throughout this country, there has been a more intentional effort to become better prepared. Our apathetic and ignorant confidence that natural disasters happen in other places – not here – and our laissez-faire dependency that, if they do happen, someone else will take care of us; all this, since the 22nd of February, has been shaken to the core. For those of us outside the earthquake zone, our aftershocks have been practical rather than geological. We’ve been jolted into the realisation that personal preparation and community action are essential for survival. We’ve filled our bottles of water, built up a stash of candles and know where the matches have been stored; we’ve started to re-connect, getting to know neighbours, valuing cooperation and sharing. Should disaster hit, we just might get through.
I don’t know if Jesus knew he had only a week left – but the storm clouds were gathering; the signs were there; his time was certainly limited. Let’s clear the mists of interpretative fog for a minute – let’s sweep away all the fulfilment of prophecy, all the murky mist that smothers a human being with a story about a God-man-puppet being led to the scaffold to fulfil the vengeful plans of a manipulative God. Let’s cast all that aside and see, for a moment, this very human man – just 33 years old – facing up to hatred, scheming, lies and betrayal of seismic proportion – and imagine, what must it have been like? How could he possibly be ready – how could he possibly see the week through?
So, back to the question: what would you do, if you knew you had only one week left for life, as you know it at the moment? Would you quickly assemble your ‘bucket list’ and try to fit into that week all the things you had not bothered with over the years, but still had a hankering for – or would your direction be more focussed, drawing on a spiritual survival kit that you had been developing intentionally over many years – a kit that would bring about, even in the toughest of times, a blossoming into unbelievable flourishing life?
Should you want to go the way of the ‘bucket list’ – that is, the list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket – there’s plenty of help at hand: just Google ‘bucket list’ to find over 7 million hits in just 0.12 of a second – movies, books, web sites and social networks abound – all encouraging you to ‘kick start your life goals’. The American based social networking site Bucketlist is “where you go to keep track of” ... “all those things you swear you're going to do before you die” such as “Climb a volcano ... Get the other guy elected ... Perfect your chili recipe ... Learn to play oboe ... Visit New Zealand ...”[1] All interesting achievements; but it seems to me a bucket list on its own doesn’t help much when you are facing your own death, minus one week, one month, or one year. Sure, having climbed a volcano or been to New Zealand – or Alaska – might be nice to look back on, but, life offers much much more than the ticking off of achievements. Don’t we need something behind the list; some meaning that takes us deeper into a more expansive way of being?
I know it’s rather an anachronistic thought, but I do wonder what kind of bucket-list Jesus might have drawn up. Without his deep spiritual preparation, it might have read something like “get baptised, do some miracles, teach some stuff, participate in a parade, go see the sights of Jerusalem.” All ticked off, all completed one week before death. But, somehow, I can’t see him getting through this next week on such trivial achievements. Rather, I think his list is much more that of building a spiritual survival kit over a life time (even a very short life-time) and expressed in much more disturbing terms: hang out with the losers, be wasteful in love and passionate about justice, get rid of religious hypocrisy, provide provocative alternatives to governments ... ongoing life-style choices, all based on a deepening relationship with God and about which it’s not very easy to say ‘been there, done that – got the t-shirt’.
Over recent weeks some of us have been meeting in study groups, developing an integrated sense of self; others of us have journeyed in a weekly pilgrimage, focussing on our thirst for living water; and as we have all come together in worship each Sunday during Lent, we have been invited into building a Jesus-focussed spiritual survival kit - built not on things but on relationship. In all these explorations, we’ve been preparing for something important. We have learnt to take risks, to venture into the unknown with wasteful generosity, justice and love, to encounter the strange and the stranger and to be radically transformed.
And now here we are, with Jesus, poised at the beginning of a week that could change our lives forever. It’s crunch time. After all our weeks of preparation, the tectonic plate of our spiritual lives crashes against that other tectonic plate of holidays, travel, easter bunnies and chocolate.
Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem acts as our shake-up call. It’s an earthquake off the Richter scale – reminding us of our deep need for our survival kits.
So, how will this next week be for you?
There’s just one week left .......
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