Decision Day--Don't Wait

Friday of the First Week in Lent 2025

Ask anybody of mature age what are the two most important dates of anyone’s life and you will get a potpourri of answers. The statisticians will say the dates of birth and death, because those dates control so many decisions and outcomes. The real answers, for the moral persons, especially the followers of Christ, are the day of death and this day, today. Once I am dead, everything is locked into place morally. There are no more opportunities to change my decisions, alter my life.

But we don’t know when our termination date will be. It could be later today or tomorrow. We don’t get to decide. But today is more under our control, subject to our decisions. So if we are careering down a path of sin and concomitant poor decision-making, today may be the last time to turn to God and ask for help. Today may be it, as far as conversion goes.

Ezekiel wants God to tell him what sequence of events will end in salvation, and what different sequence ends in perdition. We can’t tiptoe around that reality. We can, if we want, end up in a hell of eternal punishment, simply by serious sin. We can’t get into heaven on our own, by our own volition alone, but we certainly can go in the other direction by our own choices and actions.

God tells Ezekiel, in a sense, that the last action standing is the most important. Somebody may be wicked, killing and lying and stealing and swearing and neglecting right worship all his life. But if a day like today comes and he turns away from that path of sin, repents and begins to live righteously, helping instead of harming others, he has chosen the path of life and can escape eternal punishment. Why? Because God hates death and wants us all to live and be happy with Him for all eternity.

On the other hand, consider a fellow who has done good all his life, and one day decides that’s not working for him, that he wants to focus on his own pleasure and honor and power and acts accordingly. He becomes a real jerk, doing jerky things. The good that he has done in life avails him nothing. In God’s own words, “None of the righteous deeds which he has done shall be remembered; for the treachery of which he is guilty and the sin he has committed, he shall die.” That, fortunately, is unlikely, because people generally follow the trajectory of life they set for themselves early in life. But it’s possible, and we may even know friends or acquaintances who have followed that losing strategy.

Our psalmist today sings one of the great penitential psalms for our consideration and practice. All of us are born in kind of a moral hole, and we need to pray to God to release us from the trap set for us by original sin. Moreover, there is a reward for repentance even in this life. Once we have been forgiven, we can turn to the Lord and ask to see His face. We may experience His loving gaze before death, but we need to keep fixed on His saving word and sacraments for that purpose. The psalmist is absolutely right; whatever evil we have done can be forgiven. We never exhaust Our Lord’s loving kindness and redemptive grace.

Matthew’s Gospel today is best understood when we give attention to the Hebrew court system. Suppose you have cheated somebody out of property. He’s angry and may bring the offense to a magistrate. That judge will weigh all the evidence and rule. If he rules against you, you’d be put in debtor’s prison until your friends and family have paid the penalty assessed by the judge. So, in the words of Scripture, make friends with your accuser way before the court date, because debtor’s prison is not the best place to settle accounts. Isn’t that another way of practicing the Lord’s prayer: forgiving and being forgiven as the Lord forgives us?