Am 6:1, 4-7 / Tm 6:11-16 / Lk 16:19-31
A donkey fell into a deep well, and it cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure what to do. Finally, he decided that the animal was old, and the well was dry and needed to be filled in anyway, so he invited his neighbors to come and help fill it in. As they all began to shovel, the donkey realized what was happening and cried miserably. But after awhile, it fell silent and everyone presumed it was dead and buried. Just to make sure, the farmed leaned over the edge. He was astonished at what he saw! The donkey was still alive! As each shovelful hit his back, he’d shake it off and take a step up. Again and again: Take the hit, shake if off, step up. And before long, the donkey stepped over the edge of the well and trotted away! What had looked like death and burial turned out to be resurrection!
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Life shovels dirt on all of us. There’s no escaping it! But what is within our power is how we respond. Jesus told us that “for those who love God, all things work for the good.” But they don’t just work automatically. We have to search for the good that’s hidden in even the grossest of evils. We have to search for it and then build on it. That’s the task we face.
So what is the good that’s hidden in a tragedy like 9/11? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to rethink the values and priorities of our country and of our own families. Such tragedies shake us badly, but they also shake loose habits and attitudes that have needed changing for a long time. In the face of such tragedies, suddenly, a lot of what we think and do seems stupid, shallow, irrelevant, or even shameful.
Every tragedy that the world has suffered, from the 9/11 attacks to the continuing war in Iraq, reminds us, better than any preacher could, that life is precious and not to be wasted or frittered away. We are paying a huge price for that insight, and we mustn’t lose it. We need to look at ourselves: How we spend our leisure, how we spend our cash, how we use our gifts, what we teach our kids, who we listen to, what we look at, what we read, what we ignore, who our heroes are, what we invest in life, what our choices tell us we value.
We have a lot to learn about ourselves and about what a good life looks like. But if we search out the truth and act on it, evil will not prevail in us or in our country. Like the old donkey, we will take hits. Like the donkey, we can shake them off and step up. What looks like death and burial can turn out to be a resurrection!
