Today’s Scripture Reading
(November 9, 2018): Numbers 23
Jack Lemmon died of bladder
cancer on June 27, 2001. Lemmon was a private individual, and he had kept his illness secret for the last
two years of his life. His tombstone simply
reads like a movie title screen – “Jack Lemmon in …” Somehow, the epitaph is
appropriate to the man. There are others
that are also very appropriate. Mel Blanc, who voiced over a thousand cartoon
characters including “Bugs Bunny,” has a tombstone that reads “That’s All
Folks;” a line that I fondly remember from the “Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner”
cartoon hour that I loved as a child. Merv Griffin’s tombstone boldly declares
“I Will Not Be Right Back After This Message;” again, an epitaph that matches
the life and the way that his fans remember him. After all, this is the what an
epitaph is supposed to do; sum up a life and, just maybe, bring a smile along
the way.
Balaam voices a dream that many
of us would share with him. It is a dream that somehow the memory of our lives
would be that we lived life right. We hope that in the end we will be
remembered as people who made a positive difference in the world. We want to
die chasing after right and significant
things.
But the problem arises in that
we often don’t want to live that way. Balaam boldly declares that he wants to
“die the death of the righteous,” but he apparently
has no desire to live the life of the righteous. Our epitaph, if it is to have
any meaning at all, must reflect the way in which we live. There is no meaning
in our deaths; death is nothing more than a biological end to life. There can
be no grand meaning that is derived from
that cessation of our ability to draw the next breath. The meaning of our death
always lies in the way that we lived.
On October 27, 2018, a gunman
walked into the Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue killing eleven people. In
the aftermath of the event, and as the victims were
buried, it was not their deaths that were important. It was the way that
they lived their lives. Rose Mallinger was a 97-year-old kind matriarch of her
family. Sylvan and Bernice Simon had been a part of life at the synagogue for
decades, being married in the same synagogue sixty years earlier.
Developmentally challenged brothers David and Cecil Rosenthal were kind and
friendly greeters who always wanted to help out where they could. Joyce Feinberg is described by a friend as
being “a magnificent, generous, caring and profoundly
thoughtful human being.” Daniel Stein was a
family man who had recently become a grandfather. Melvin Wax was “a sweet,
sweet guy.” Richard Gottfried was a dentist who often did charity work for people
who would not normally be able to afford dental care. Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz was
“a trusted confidant and healer.” Irving Younger was a devout father, grandpa
and a “beautiful soul.” The way that they died was tragic, and there is no meaning in their deaths. But
our memories of them are because of the way that they lived.
To be remembered in our deaths
as righteous can only happen if that is the way that we decide we are going to
live our lives. Balaam wants something that he is unwilling to invest in to
achieve. As a result, he will die, but not the death of the righteous. He will
die the way he lived – as a weak man shaped by the money of the powerful.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Numbers 24
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