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What Price is Life?December 07, 2008 Second Sunday of Advent On Tuesday, a front page article in the New York Times began this way: “When Bruce Hardy’s kidney cancer spread to his lung, his doctor recommended an expensive new pill… But Mr. Hardy is British, and the British health authorities refused to buy the medicine. His wife has been distraught. “Everybody should be allowed to have as much life as they can,’ she said in the couple’s modest home outside London.’” A clinical trial showed that the pill delays cancer progression for six months at an estimated treatment cost of $54,000. In other words, pay $54,000 and get six months more of life. But according to a government agency, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, otherwise known by the acronym NICE, Mr. Hardy’s life is not worth prolonging. They’ve determined that the nation can afford only about $22,750 to save six months of a person’s life. Although, after a public outcry, the agency is reconsidering their initial assessment of the cost/benefit ratio of this and other drugs. The article challenges our perceptions about rapidly evolving healthcare issues; matters pertaining to the role of government, private insurers, drug and device manufacturers; matters of pricing, availability of services and setting ceilings on cost. “Skyrocketing prices for drugs and medical devices have led a growing number of countries to ask the hardest of questions: How much is life worth?” As a result, many are following the lead of Great Britain. The British health agency provides advice, but decisions about these matters are made by one of three committees made up of doctors, nurses and economists from outside the government. As an example of their self-imposed parameters its been decided that “the nation should spend the same amount saving or improving the life of a 75-year-old smoker as it would for a 5-year-old.” The United States spends more than twice as much per capita on health care of other industrialized nations while not getting better overall health outcomes. Michael Leavitt, our current Secretary of Health and Human Services recently said “that at its present growth rate, health care spending ‘could potentially drag our nation into a financial crisis that makes our major subprime mortgage crisis look like a warm summer rain.’” Not the most uplifting assessment of our current situation. The troubling article ended with Mrs. Hardy’s reflection: “‘Its hard to know that there is something out there that could help but they’re saying you can’t have it because of cost…What price is life?’” [1] After reading that, I sat still for a while and allowed myself to think about my life and the lives of those closest to me, then out into an ever-widening spiral of life, say, all the way to the farthest reaches and poorest villages of the world. I just sat with it. What price is life? I let the matter settle into my consciousness. As I cogitated, the words of Isaiah came to mind that I had recently read and you just now have heard: “All people are grass…The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.” This led me to think that Mrs. Hardy had asked an Advent question – What price is life? In part, it’s an Advent question because this is our season for anticipating the birth of a seeming illegitimate child – remember that Mary became pregnant prior to her marriage. Yet that little vulnerable life was deemed worthy of a loving reception and the child would grow into a man who would come to be known as the very embodiment of abundant life, only to be cut down at a relatively early age, say in his early to mid thirties. And the noisy, irascible character we call John the Baptist who we heard from today, the one who points to Jesus, you might remember he also had an early and dramatic end to his life following the famous dance by Salome who demanded John’s head for payment. What price is life? That question has very specific economic considerations in our 21st century world that rattle the cage on our often small-bore, self-serving ethics. But it also has a timeless, existential quality as well. If we listen deeply to its cadence, we’ll hear much of the world’s current trauma in that question. For instance, listen close and we’ll hear about the astonishing cost various wars around the world exact; listen close and we’ll hear voices emanating from prisons; and we’ll hear the voices of the hungry, the dispossessed and those that mourn. We’ll hear the stress of Mr. and Mrs. Hardy as well as everyone we know who struggles with some turmoil of body, mind or spirit. This question has been asked in every language in every time in some manner or form. Indeed, the words of Isaiah I quoted earlier came from a time Israel was languishing in captivity in Babylon. The people were yearning for someone to take notice that their lives were worth a great deal more than what they were currently experiencing. They longed for release, restitution and salvation. They wanted their lives. And then they heard the proclamation that, “All people are grass… The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.” It was the last part of that phrase that captured their attention, as well as ours – “the word of our God will stand forever.” That phrase was the source of their hope and living into that hope they did indeed find their way back home, the covenant with their God renewed, reformed as they trusted that God – again, in the words of Isaiah – “would feed his flock like a shepherd, he would gather the lambs in his arms and carry them in his bosom.” In anticipation of this homecoming another proclamation bubbled up in prophetic urgency: “In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God…the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all people shall see it together.” It was this last prophetic cry that John repeated in the wilderness outside Jerusalem centuries later. He could repeat it as though it were new precisely because “the word of the our God stands forever.” The word of our God is timeless in its urgency for answering the question, “What price is life?” The answer lies with the source of life itself, with God, who in turn shows us a pattern, a way of living in the world. In here we say this is the way Jesus walked. It was the way of love and hope and trust and faith. These are the tools we’ve been given for filling in the valleys and leveling the mountains and making the rough places plain. Centuries later we repeat the same word of God John reclaimed from an era centuries earlier than his own in an enduring, timeless cadence that sets forth the human situation: we are creatures who sprang to life from God’s own breath. In this way our time is no different than any former time; this explains why our ancient texts still ring with such clarity concerning our situational predicament. Annie Dillard points out, “There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation… There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less. “There is no less holiness at this time than there was the day the Red Sea parted… There is no whit less might in heaven or on earth than there was the day Jesus said, ‘Maid, arise’, to the centurion’s daughter [who had been left for dead]… In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger… In any instant you may avail yourself of the power to love your enemies; to accept failure, slander, or the grief of loss, or endure torture. [Any day. Any time. A day just like today, for instance.] “[Of eternity, theologian, Paul] Tillich said, ‘If it is not seen in the present, it cannot be seen at all.’” [2] Which, is another way of hearing Isaiah’s words: “The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God stands forever.” It even stands forever right here, right now, in this present moment, pregnant in nearly the very same way the way Mary was pregnant. That’s the astonishing word we’re hearing today addressing our own variation on the question, What price is life? That’s the very one for whom we await in Advent. I tell you, this message is as important, as comforting and challenging as it has ever been. This very season eternity invades the present moment. The promise comes to fulfillment not a moment too soon. __________
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