March 22, 2008 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
My dear friends, in the darkness of this night, we stand in awe before the power of light and life which reveals to those who wish to see and understand the wonder of God; Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier: a God of love and mercy. We gather in holy place tonight and express that wonder and our deepest hopes in the presence of these 50 people whose faith and hope has become our own. We see in them what we have become. While we watch and listen to what they say and do, we are reminded of what we must all become: a people open to grace, seeking the truth, dying and rising, filled with the Spirit. They remind us that conversion is way of life, not a one-time event. What they are tonight for us, is what we must become.
For you, our blessed elect, the time has come to wrap yourselves in mystery; not in the sense of something you can’t understand, but in the sense of mysterion: a gift from God that you will unwrap again and again in years to come; a gift in which you shall take unending delight. From this night on, life is that gift; and from now on, you must not think of life as a possession, something that is yours, something that is yours to control or protect. It is no longer a possession you can choose to share with others or from which others can be excluded.
If we see ourselves as a kind of property we have a right to control rather than as a gift with infinite depth we are meant to experience, we will make radically different decisions when we are faced with moments in time that threaten our autonomy. We do not exist alone. We have no identity without other. We would could not be here had not two people come together in intimacy with God to conceive this gift. Our lives are grounded in this mystery which we are meant to live. Our lives are not a form of property. The inevitable end of that thinking is despair because when suffering comes (suffering we cannot control) there is no hope.
Grasp that cross hanging from your neck right now. Hold it. May it be for you what it is for this church you are becoming: a sign of hope that we share because we have received the mysterion. It is both a sign of what it means to live on this side of death, and the resurrection we hope for. It is a reminder that loving surrender makes suffering a sacrifice of love that redeems not an experience of misery we have to control. Buddhism speaks of existence as suffering. It is inevitable to the Buddist mind that to live is to suffer and then to die. It is tragic, this way of thinking. What we all know to be true is that suffering is inevitable and dying is unavoidable. Yet what people of our faith and this religion believe is that suffering and dying are not problems to be relieved; but that they are a sign of the kind of world we live in, either a world that ends in, and is ultimately about the betrayal of our hope; or a world that is about the hope that transcends this suffering and these limits.
I have read that when the great church historian Jaroslav Pelikan was dying he said: “If Christ is risen, then nothing else matters.” then, after a pause, he said, “And if Christ is not risen, then nothing else matters.”
There is a choice for you, the elect. It is a choice between hope and hopelessness. The meaning of your lives is not found in the experiences of the moment, and experiences you can understand and control. The meaning of your life will be found when you surrender, let go, and fall headlong into the embrace of God who made you, calls you, and waits for you. When that happens, there will be no fear in you and no suffering you cannot endure. To that truth we say: “Amen” because Christ has risen, and so must we. If you want that gift and seek to be identified with him, move forward now into the mystery.