Death & Taxes

Scott McFarland
04/24/22 - Sun AM Worship

Death and Taxes

What did Benjamin Franklin say about taxes? — something like, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”  It’s fitting in a way that tax season ended last week (I’m actually writing this article on Tax Day) and this week, we’re talking about taxes.  Well, not really.  In our sermon, Jesus uses taxes as a way of talking about how to deal with government and other secular institutions.  So, we talk about taxes, but not really about taxes.

Most of us dread tax day every year.  It’s stressful, unless you’re one of those crazy people who love numbers crunching and seeing all your calculations adding up perfectly at the bottom of a worksheet.  And yet, we know this day comes around every year.  We know that by April we’ll need to submit the same paperwork, go through the same process, to do the same thing.  It’s not like we don’t have warning or know that Tax Day is coming.  We really don’t have an excuse—we had fair warning!

In many ways, Ben Franklin was right.  The only two things we can be certain of in this life are death and taxes.  And, they are in many ways so similar.  We dread both, for the most part have fair warning about both, and yet often find ourselves unprepared for both.  Are you prepared?  As Christians, we can have confidence that we are prepared for death (you’re on your own for your taxes ????) Thank God, we don’t have to worry!  Although we may be fearful of what death will be like, we don’t have to fear about what is on the other side.  This past weekend, we celebrated the reason for that—Jesus.  Jesus’ resurrection gives us confidence to be unafraid of our own death.  Are you prepared?

        -Scott McFarland