An academic study came out last week indicating that the greatest problem we face in the United States today is boredom. Apparently, more people are bored than ever before. More bored than during the Middle Ages? The Stone Ages? Absolutely. During the Middle Ages and the Stone Ages people had no leisure to be bored.
I'm not going to quote this study. It is a very boring study. To quote it would be wrong. Especially on Easter. Five percent of you in attendance today come to Church only on Easter. If I were to bore you this morning, you would feel better about all of those other Sundays, the ones you miss. This would be bad for your soul. My job is to do so brilliantly that you will wonder why you don't come to church every Sunday. Most of the members of All Souls could give you lessons, but until you start coming you don't know that.
So you can leave feeling guilty, but I certainly don't want you to leave feeling bored. The stories about how bored everyone is worry me. Bored! Bored with life and death? Please! I can't speak for the Stone Ages or the Middle Ages, but anyone who is bored with 21st Century life needs something more than a video game, an IPO or a sports car to blow his or her socks off.
One of the reasons we may tend to be a little more bored than usual right now is reflected in the news. For instance, we all know that there is still seven months left in an already interminable presidential race between George Bush and Al Gore, to put it gently, two boring candidates. We know that the story of the millennium so far is whether Elian Gonzalez should stay with his father, or stay in America, or both. We recognize that the Knicks are probably not going to get back to the finals, which makes basketball even more boring than usual. As for the Senate race, most of you don't want to vote either for Rudy or for Hillary, but you will vote against one of them. Welcome to New York 2000.
All I can say is this. Easter has come at a particularly good time. A time to take the tinder of our lives and kindle new fire.
This is my twenty-second Easter sermon. Every year, I try to rise to the occasion. The church is full, the music grand. This morning, let me try something different, and fall to the occasion. Let me deal with the nails and the fire more than with the beauty and the light.
Get up on the cross, and look down on your life. Try this as a thought experiment. We will each be on the cross sooner than we think. One of my dearest friends, suddenly and unexpectedly, lost both his father and his wife this month. Right now, he is on the cross. I think of him this morning. I pray for him. I know that I might and someday will be in his shoes. This is true for all of us.
Some of us sitting in this beautiful church right now have cancer but don't know it. Some of will die of a heart attack between this Easter and next. Those near us in the pews who have lost loved ones this year, or who are struggling with illness, would be quick to remind us that no one has the time or the freedom to gainsay death.
That is why Easter is so important. Easter throws death straight into our faces. But that's not the only reason, because the questions Easter poses have to do with life, resurrection, new fire, not back then, not some distant tomorrow, but right here, right now.
I don't know what happens after we die, but I do know something about what happens before we die. We love as best we can, we hope a little, fail, often recover, struggle, and endure. We rise. I know this from so many of your stories. Even from the most difficult crisis we are often resurrected. Sometime we rise when we beat an illness, or land on our feet after being fired. Sometimes we rise when we forgive others; sometimes we when we accept ourselves.
But once we rise, how often we shift back into neutral. We numb our senses. We play our innings fairly out but without passion. We don't think about death; we simply wait for it.
One of the reasons I love Easter so is this. Easter is that one story that, by reminding me I am going to die, demands, between now and then, that I somehow fully live. Not live and die like Jesus. I am not that passionate or crazy, nowhere near that brilliant or god-starred or possessed. If Jesus walked into this church, or any church this Easter, the ushers would usher him out. I don't want to be ushered out. All I want to do this morning is to usher in a hint of his message. The message that saved Peter from his failure. The message that turned a ragtag band of disciples into a church, into a serving and caring community. I know that the church has changed over the mellenia. Jesus is as likely to be crucified on the altars erected in his name as his spirit is to be resurrected this morning. But the promise is there, the promise of love to God and neighbor, the promise of forgiveness, even the promise of resurrection.
Jesus taught us that what we need in our lives is fire, new fire. Empty your self and be filled, he taught. Give to receive. Lose your life and discover life anew. Fire can incinerate, but fire can also purify. Old fire leaves first embers, then ashes. Think about your lives, the times they were on fire, on fire with love, on fire with hope. How many embers are left? How many ashes?
As for the new fire, practicing death is not a bad thing, but living life fully, even daringly, is better. This is the day we are given, the only day from now until our death that surely we are given to love and to live. I have been with you people for almost a quarter century and I know. Death comes like a thief in the night. Vegetarians die. Joggers die. Even people with low cholesterol die. In the mean time, we are magnificently alive. Take that for granted at your peril. I mean that. Don't blow it off.
I don't mean to make light of how we live how most of us live from day to day. We do pretty well. We show up for work, take care of our children and sometimes our parents; we go to the theater and plan our vacations; we do a little volunteer work, are often surprisingly generous. We make it from one day to the next without unnecessary incident.
But that's not what Easter is about. Easter is exactly, painfully and sublimely about unnecessary incident. That's all it's about. Not that bad things happen to good people, but that terrible things happen to magnificent people. Easter tells us this, and then invites us to be magnificent.
There is no reason that each and every one of you today cannot be magnificent. I don't mean to flatter you, only to challenge you. You have about twelve hours left. Each could be a station on the cross. Take just one station. Don't go crazy with this. Take one station a week. Between now and summer you could redeem a good part of your life by simply saying, "I could die tomorrow. If I don't do this today it will never be done."
None of this is easy. I know that. On our crosses, we too question God, and confess that we thirst, but we also, often, forgive our enemies, and sometimes, somehow, almost always miraculously, we too are saved. One more little death. One more little resurrection.
That's all you have to say to yourself. But then you have to believe it; otherwise you won't do it. You will put it off. And it will never happen.
However many tomorrows we end up having, we own but this one moment. It alone is ours. To live for today may lead us to squander tomorrow, but not to live in today is even worse. We squander the only moment we surely have to love and be loved, to look out at the buds breaking forth on the branches, to shake our heads in wonder that somehow, miraculously, we are alive.
That is the Easter message. Life out of death. Resurrection. New Fire.
When little things go wrong and we ask, "What did I do to deserve this?" I can almost promise you, the answer is "Nothing." We did nothing to deserve being born. We did nothing to deserve dying. But everything in between is up to us. We can endure our lives, begrudge them, make peace with them, enjoy them, ignore them, evade them, accept them; we can simply live until we die. We can spend our lives, or we can live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for. After we die, it won't matter. I'm not even sure that it mattered for Jesus after he died. My guess is and I know nothing about life after death that his death was no different than any other. My guess is that his consciousness was extinguished and that his life ended or was transfigured in the usual way. But of course, it didn't end, because none of our lives ends when they die. For better or worse they go on and on. My father is still alive. And my grandparents. Hitler is still alive. And Jesus, alive, remembered, betrayed and yet also saving lives unto this very day.
So, let me ask you this? If you were to die today, and any of us could, is there anything truly important unfinished in your life. I'm not talking here about an unfinished deal or your favorite sports team winning a championship. I'm talking about your life projects, your communities, your dreams, especially about your relationships. Do your loved ones know how much you love them? Have you told them? Have you shown them? Have you really?
Are you investing your life not your money, your life? Will it reap dividends far after you are gone? Do you really know how short life is, how little time you have, how much your love matters, how few opportunities you have left in which to prove it?
You could start with a phone call. How many friends do you have that you haven't talked to this year? How easy it would be this afternoon to give one or two of them a call? Happy Easter. I love you. How are you? What's happening in your life? Is that difficult? Of course it's not.
You could call your mother, or father. You could use Easter as an opportunity to say I'm sorry to someone you offended, or say I forgive you to someone who offended you.
Remember, it's Easter and you are on the cross. I'm the vinegar or the sword or whatever it takes, but I beg you, please, and you can do this, bid this very day for resurrection, for new fire. Die a little bit unto yourself. Live on for others.
None of this is complicated. All of us are dying. All of us are still alive. The clock is ticking and the alarm hasn't rung. Before it does, we need a wakeup call. "Good morning. This is your wake-up call. You are alive." That is a blessing. Don't take it for granted. Receive it as a gift. As for your loved ones, how often do you take them and their lives for granted too. So your son is doing poorly in school? In the larger frame of things it couldn't matter less. Does he love you? Is he healthy? I can think of twenty questions that come before, "How is he doing in Chemistry?"
We care far too much about things that don't really matter. Life and death issues only have to do with life and death.
When my four children were entering their teenage years, I wanted to make sure that only one of them at a time was having problems so I could give my full attention. Now that all of them are in, or just out, of their teenage years, I want to make sure that at least one of them is doing well, so that I don't feel like a complete failure as a parent. That could sound like bad news, but it really isn't. Our children love their parents and one another. This matters so much more than any other benchmark for success. Am I pleased with everything in my life and their life. Of course not. Am I confident about their futures? Frankly, no. But, framed by Easter and and the miracle of life itself, I continue to be stunned by the privilege of being a father, of doing my best, of loving them as best I can, and receiving so much love in return.
In the Greek Orthodox Church in the cool darkness of an early spring night, the celebration of Easter begins with blessing of new fire. Struck from flint, this new fire passes from one candle to another until the church is filled with light. And then the people walk out of the church through the darkness to their own houses, and light a candle in each of their windows, the Easter fire. From one light, many, first filling a church and then an entire village, the Easter fire.
That's all I ask of you this morning. We start here. All Souls is a tiny village in this great city. Strike the flint of Easter here. Kindle new fire. Be blessed by it. Carry it out with you into the day and then into the darkness. Light your homes. Pierce the desolation of your world when and where you can. Fire your consciences. Enter the darkness of your heart, acknowledge and claim it as your own. Admit your guilt. Confess your need. Light new fire.
When the new fire is lit, blessed and passed, its blessing unites you with your loved ones and neighbors. It becomes our blessing. And then Easter lives. It lives on in your heart. You kindle it in the hearts of others. It burns and and fires new hope even now, even here, today, once again. Copyright AllSouls 2000.