The Day That Jesus Took His Newspaper to Work...Continued from page 3
Gary Yates
Jesus is direct and to the point here because he is talking to the spectators and the observers?to those who followed the coverage in the papers and watched the images on CNN again and again. To those who have watched the tragedy of others. And he wants us to understand that there is something worse than being the victim of a senseless slaughter or an unfortunate accident?the greatest tragedy of all is to enter eternity unprepared. Jesus came to earth to die for sinners and to bring God’s gift of forgiveness and eternal life; the greatest tragedy of all if you don’t know Jesus is realizing what you’ve missed one moment after you’ve died. It’s realizing all you could have had and never being able to experience it. When Jesus says, “Unless you repent, you too will perish,” he means perish forever.
We need this warning to be ready for eternity because none of us knows when death will arrive. Who could be more unlikely candidates for death than professors teaching classes like they had done a thousand times before or students just waking up on Monday morning, trying to make it to final exams, and dreaming of the rest of their lives? This can happen somewhere far away in a war-torn country or in a gang-infested city, but it can’t happen on a peaceful campus in sleepy Blacksburg just up the road. And yet it did, and death comes whether we’re ready or not. I’ve thought many times this week of the old story of “The Appointment in Samarra:”
A merchant in Baghdad sent his servant to the market. The servant soon returned trembling with fear and he said: “Down in the market place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd, and when I turned around I saw that it was Death. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture. Now master, please lend me your horse. I shall go to Samarra and hide there so that Death will not find me.” The merchant gave him his horse, and the servant rode away as fast as he could. In the evening the merchant went to the market and saw Death standing in the crowd. He went over to her and asked, “Why did you frighten my servant and why did you make a threatening gesture?” “That was not a threatening gesture,” Death said. “It was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”2
None of us knows when death is coming?it pays to be ready.
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Gary E. Yates is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Liberty Theological Seminary in Lynchburg, Virginia.
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Notes.
1. V. Philips Long, “Renewing Conversations: Doing Scholarship in an Age of Skepticism, Accommodation, and Specialization,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 13 (2003): 232.
2. Haddon W. Robinson, Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Sermons (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), 168-69.