Our Gospel lesson this morning is about surprise! .... and yet not a surprise .... at least it should not be. Listen to the tone of these few words: the angel of death upbraids a rich man calling him a fool (certainly a term no one else would venture with the wealthy and the powerful). Immediately, this form of address is explained with an implied question, to which every mother's son knows the answer: "Thy soul will be required of thee!" Who does not know this? Evidently not the rich man, who by that measure, is a fool. And, of course, there is this: angels are always right:

I can still recall the effect the angel's tone and form of address had on me as I heard this passage every year in the Anglo-Catholic churches of my youth. I had stored this version in my memory as,

You see, I had made the implied question explicit in my mind. (I suppose we all do.) I maintain that this is the better translation: it captures the irony of the breathtaking-surprise-that-is-not-a-surprise and the additional irony that the wise man (are not all rich men accounted to be wise?) is actually a fool.

Who does not know that his or her soul will be required or that an account must be rendered? Yet, this "man of success" is willing to bet everything he has, including his eternal life, on the contrary.

Our Gospel lesson this morning is very brief — five sentences — yet, no additional words are needed. Indeed, it is one of the standout passages in the Holy Bible with its meaning echoing down the ages requiring only five words:

Say these words to anyone, and they will fill in the blank, "for tomorrow we shall die," (words that do not appear in the Bible but do go to the essence of the passage).

How can the rich man be so obtuse? His contemporary, John the Baptist, whose words are widely quoted throughout the Levant, has said,

So our image of the "grim reaper" as angel-of-death-with-his-great-scythe is not a modern invention. We ask, how could this so-called wise man be so deluded?! Is he not a farmer who threshes and winnows?

And the Lord Jesus in His public preaching all over the Levant constantly compares the human lifespan to a harvest. He tells His Disciples that the harvest is plentiful (Mt 9:37). There is Jesus' parable of the sower of seed (Mt 13:3-23). And circling back to John the Baptist, there is His parable of the tares and the wheat:

But our farmer cannot not see. As Jesus would say, "Who has eyes let him see. Who has ears let him hear."

Let me ask all of you: what is the state of mind when we cannot see what is plainly before us and we cannot hear what is plainly spoken? This is known as delusion. As this is a master subject of the present era, it is a wonder that we do not reflect on it more often.

I must add that in ongoing conversations with the Sisters, we point to this and this and this as being fantasy and fantasy and fantasy. The world is constantly proposing fantasy life to us. In the case of the rich man's fantasy, we may rationalize by saying, "Well, this fantasy is common enough." Certainly, it is. When I was told nearly thirty years ago that I had Multiple Sclerosis, I was stunned. Friends would say, "But why you?! I would reply, "Why not me? Do people not die?"

I would ask myself, "Why should this be a surprise? Did I not already know that I was dying? Does not everyone? We are all on a train. Each knows that his stop is coming .... though, in general, we do not know when. It turns out that my stop was coming a little sooner than I thought. Shall we all now scream and weep ..... because my train stop is coming a little sooner than I thought it might?"

As I say, "common." And what is more common? Yet, we who have eyes and ears do not see it and do not hear it. This is our farmer.

We live in an age which is remarkable for its lack of self-examination, whose purpose is to cut through delusion. Only two generations ago, daily self-examination during our last prayers of the day had been taught. This was a matter of routing life. Now, this practice seems morbid to many. Yet, what could be more healthy and, therefore, life-giving than correcting our rationalizations and freeing ourselves from our delusions?

When I say that ours is the "Age of Delusion," few people will stop to wonder. Few people will dissent from that opinion. From "avatar" online to sex-reassignment operations, delusion has become institutionalized. Needless to say, it has mainstreamed culturally. The genesis for this whole, new world dismissing God — followed hard-upon by the loss of morality, which in many cases is the motivation for dismissing God — may surprise you.

You see, once we have no one to answer to, the next order of business is to invent a morality, which have come to learn has two great commandments: "Live and let live!" and "Don't judge anyone!" — the new morality. I call "the Great Commandments of Hell."

A cornerstone for this new age was set by an unexpected gate-keeper. George H. W. Bush declared the 1990s to be "The Decade of the Brain" calling upon "mental health professionals" (now there is an ill-defined and amorphous body of people) to make a new Diagnostic Manual for mental illness. This call was quickly answered by the American Psychiatric Association, producing a one-thousand-page textbook titled, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (known as DSM-5). This book is the medical foundation for normalcy, human conduct, human behavior. and, by that measure, may reassure some people — finally a definition. But many inside the mental health professions were not reassured, and continue not to be reassured, calling it "rickety, unsafe, unscientific ... [even] a catastrophe." (Andrew Scull, "Delusions of Progress: Psychiatry's Diagnostic Manual," Los Angeles Review of Books, May 19, 2013)). This ponderous book, the DSM-5 — which famously removed homosexuality and transgenderism as being abnormal — is anything but reassuring.

I recall a private conversation I had with a foremost neuropsychiatrist following DSM-5's publication.

"Now let me get this straight," I said. "If I wear a Rough Riders uniform and Pince-nez glasses and go strutting about saying, 'Bully! Bully!' punctuating my points with a riding crop, I am thought to be psychotic because I believe I am Teddy Roosevelt. If I start to wear a great, black, two-cornered hat and a nineteenth-century French general's uniform and tuck my hand into my waistcoat, I am thought to be psychotic because I believe I am Napoleon. And this would be right, for believing that you are something or someone that you are not is a vivid symptom of psychosis. But if I tell everyone that I am a woman trapped inside a man's body, everyone will rush forward to proclaim my normal mental health and perhaps provide funds so that I can conform my body to my delusion. Is that it?"

My famous friend looked at me in silence with a bemused stare (I knew all too very well), replied, "I have more useful things to do with my career than wake up in the morning with a hundred naked men on my front lawn chanting, "Act up! Act up! Act up!" And he turned on his heels and walked away.

I know this response to crisis very well. I suppose everyone does. We call it, "the hill I am willing to die on." Choose it carefully, for you can only die once! Who is willing to burn down his whole career because of the follies of his colleagues? The answer to this question is a matter of historical record since we have been in this mess for two generations. The answer is, no one.

But not everyone walked away. The psychotherapist Gary Greenberg labeled the DSM-5 The Book of Woe in his text having the same title, thoroughly discrediting it by simply recounting the process that produced it. Dr. Thomas Insel, Director the National Institute of Mental Health, also gave a thumbs-down on the DSM-5 and said,

You know what constructs are: constructs are the things that cultures invent to lend an air of reality to the delusions they wish to be true. Constructs — there is no reality to homosexuality or to transgender fantasies. But fantasy is able to sweep over entire "truth"-world no less rapidly for that. "What I believe is my truth" — that is sufficient .... especially if these "truths" have been deeply burnished onto our imaginations with intense pleasure to reinforce them .... to the point that we think of fantasy as being identity. Ask any behavioral psychologist, and he or she will tell you how it works.

No less a figure than the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health proposes that the principle impediment to getting on with research and practice in the mental health professions is the DSM-5.

My brothers and sisters, looking out on the world, do you sometimes feel that you have stumbled into the Mad Hatter's Tea Party? Please take heart at least from this much: we are all lost in the same funhouse. God has been dismissed from the public square — the last vestige of stability, sanity, and reality. An anything-goes amorality controls our schools and all permitted public discourse. We have minders who censor what ever strikes them as being "hate speech," which is crypto-speak for "whatever minders don't agree with." (You see, somebody has criticized their constructs.) And the great arbiter for normal, the DSM-5, is a book of sand.

Nonetheless, while all this is going on, something else is also in motion: a train we are all on. We all know that our stop is ahead .... though we do not know when, at least most of us don't. I thought mine, for example, was far down the line, then I thought it was coming up soon, then .... well, I live day-by-day. As the Sisters know, (I have had a lengthy MS relapse during these recent weeks.)

This is the most valuable thing I can say this morning: let us all live day-by-day .... though many live as if there were no tomorrow. It turns out, "no tomorrow" is not the greatest delusion, thoug, though. The greatest earthly delusion is that death is a thing, a reality, a state of being. To borrow Dr. Insel's words, I dare say that death is a construct. For death has no reality .... no more than passing through a gate is a state of being. Humans are created to be permanent. This is their blueprint and their destiny. Each of us is possessed of an immortal soul. It turns out that this immortal soul is possessed of a body, which is also mysteriously deathless. The insight given me by a very holy sister when I was a seminarian I already knew to be so: "We will be resurrected," she said, "in all of our beauty .... whatever that may be."

The greatest of all delusions on earth is that there is no God, the imperative and commandment of a fool. This is the master delusion. Everything else in our lives is ordered to it — whether there is God or (in the fool's heart) there is not. Everything in our lives is ordered to this.

When we left Haiti, I told the Sisters, "Everyone, near the end of their lives, should stop all the busy-ness and give themselves a most beautiful gift — the most precious gift of contemplating God and what their lives have meant in His sight." You see, the most important book we shall ever read is our own story. And we must read it carefully. For in it are important, hidden themes illuminated by the Holy Scriptures. Our stories are allegorical, tropological, and eschatological in addition to being literal. We must think on God and read the book.

As I have shared many times, we did not intend to leave Haiti. But once we saw that there was no choice, we began discussing this subject again: the gift, time at the end of life, and God. In a sense that is what the Hermitage is. We spend our days pondering God and all the ways He is present to us. We count our many blessings. Yes, we continue to be tempted. All people are. But our main thoughts are these: our love for God and our love for each other — a wonderful safeguard. And, of course, we spend our days serving many neighbors.

We have had time to confess our sins and to understand that our lives have not always been ordered to God. (I do not speak for everybody, only myself.) And now we wait. We wait for an angel of death. And we pray every day, and at Evensong, our petitions include this:

I do not say, "Remember death!" I say, "Remember God!" For with God alone there are no constructs, there are no delusions, and there can be no debate. Learn of His ways. For He says

Take upon you His yoke. Know His humble spirit, and make it your own. For He is lowly in heart, and you will find peace unto your very souls. Now and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.