Rooke Chapel, Sunday May 5, 2019
It’s been many years since my last final.
And many years before that,
that I finished,
and promptly abandoned,
my pre-med requirements.
Which means I was finished,
with Chemistry labs,
and calculus courses.
and the exams that come with them.
Long ago.
And yet still,
to this day,
almost every finals season,
and exclusively within finals season,
like clockwork,
In the middle of some night,
I’m awoken by that stress dream
in which I show up to a class I’ve never attended,
for an exam I’m bound to fail.
And it’s always Chemistry or Math.
It is a strange and stressful time,
and I can empathize with your struggles.
And am confident you will survive.
In addition to the mundane challenges of this season –
like getting the work done,
time management, memorization,
finding a few moments to sleep,
looking for jobs or internships –
I remember occasionally being overcome,
my a much more substantive challenge.
A deep-seated question,
which made it hard, sometimes, to study and write –
Does any of this actually matter?
Does this problem set actually make a difference?
Does this this obscure piece of literature,
or this essay on this far-gone historical era,
actually mean anything to anyone?
This is not a good time to take up those questions,
of course,
but if you’re anything like me,
there are times you can’t avoid it.
And somewhere,
from the very depths of our faith and being,
I hope rings the simple answer,
“yes, it matters.”
Yes,
It matters because you matter.
It matters because the word became flesh and lives among us,
for you.
And it matters because you,
are called to life,
and life abundant.
It matters because
we are on this ever-unfolding path,
to discover who we are,
and what we want to do with our talents in the world.
It matters
because we are told to love God, and love our neighbors,
not only with all our heart,
and with all our strength
and with all our soul,
but also with all our mind.
This was, as far as we know,
a novel construction,
from Jesus.
drawing from the depths of history,
and also making a change.
And loving,
with our minds,
is a long process,
in which we will undoubtedly encounter lots of small truths,
which will not form the substance of our lives.
But we cannot know that,
until we have given them a try.
Another famous Rabbi – Hillel –
was wandering the Middle Eastern countryside,
perhaps a hundred years before Jesus.
And was asked to recite the Torah
while standing on one foot.
He famously responded:
“That which is hateful unto you do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole of the Torah, the rest is commentary”
Perhaps you’ve heard that story.
Often, though,
those who recall it leave off the ending,
which is,
“the rest is commentary…go and study.”
This is a very different message.
Indeed, this idea of loving –
especially with our minds –
means that not all the story is told.
Means we have much to learn.
And so says Jesus,
even as he’s approaching the end of his life,
in the Gospel of John:
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth (John 16: 12)
And so our task –
as part of this big call to love –
is, perhaps simply, to learn.
To seek truth,
in its manifold forms.
Through history and literature,
through science and nature.
Through art, and policy.
Through prayer, and scripture study, and worship,
and service.
We love with our minds,
by using our capacity to think and learn.
And by, I hope,
discerning the needs of the world,
and our place in it.
Because there is much more that God has to say to us.
Now, needless to say,
not every moment will be magic.
Not every moment will be joyous.
we won’t always get it.
And indeed, not every moment,
will feel in support of our search for truth.
There will be long slog through unenlightening assignments.
And we will discover more paths than are not for us,
than paths that are for us.
But still, this is our task,
we who seek to be both wise
and loving.
William Sloane Coffin was famous for saying:
We need to be freed from fear for love.
We need to be free from self for God.
For God is not seeking to convert us from this world to some other, but from something less than life to the possibility of full life itself.
Today,
We go forth confident,
that we are loved, not for our grades or our success,
but because we are.
Because God is.
And because our God cares for us so deeply,
as to take on human form.
And in that freedom,
let us to our tasks.
To live,
and love,
and learn.
They are holy tasks.
Though they can be hard,
and complicated.
But, we are worthy of them,
and indeed, they of us.