Choose Life! A Farewell Sermon to the Class of 2002

I cannot pretend to know what is in your hearts and minds as you come to this holy place to worship for the last time as students. But I will venture to guess that you will leave this place this evening with some of the same questions you had when you first came here. Who am I? Who is God for me? What is my relationship to God? These questions are related to another set of questions that you have struggled with these last few years and with which you will struggle again from time to time, namely, what am I to do with my life? How will my life have meaning? What choices should I make about relationships, career, where to live, and so on?

The passage from Deuteronomy seems especially relevant to your situation. Listen to this passage earlier in the 11th chapter and see whether you think it might apply to you as you leave Princeton:

Did you catch where it says, "The land that you are about to enter to occupy is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come"? No kidding! You are heading into the wilderness just as the ancient people of Israel were. But they were not prepared for it. It was unfamiliar to them. Just as Egypt was a comfortable place, even though it was a place of captivity, so Princeton has been a comfortable place for you, shielding you from much that you will now have to face.

What do you have to go on? What will guide you? What is certain and reliable amidst so many changes and uncertainties? The writer of Deuteronomy is clear about this. It is the law of God to love God and put all your trust in God. This writer makes it clear that the future boils down to a choice between death or life and we are called upon by God to choose life.

Choosing life is about finding in the Bible and in the Church those things that promote and sustain life and not using the Bible or the Church as a club to make others do what you might want them to do. It is about a dignified life that makes all persons fully and completely human.

Choosing life is remembering that there is a difference between a career and a vocation, and that a job is not necessarily a calling. Choosing life in this context means heeding the desires of your innermost being when that means turning down a job that you only wanted in the first place because the money is good. Choosing life is following your heart instead of your head and following your heart's desire instead of following in the footsteps of the great horde pursing the world's values and the world's hollow rewards. Choosing life means its okay to use your expensive Princeton education to become a midwife or a teacher, a mother or a soldier, to become an artist or a musician and not to care when others tell you you'll never make a decent living.

Choosing life is always putting others before yourself - making choices that strengthen the bonds of family and friendship even when sacrifices must be made to do so. Choosing life means working hard to maintain relationships that bring you and others joy and an inner peace instead of those relationships that are based on avarice and pride and on getting ahead in the world.

The admonition in Deuteronomy to choose life is a kind of preparation for the people before they head into the wilderness toward the promised land and so it is for you. The gospel of Matthew puts the case a little differently where Jesus says:

Jesus makes it simple for us by reducing the whole law to two coequal elements: Love God and love everyone else as you love yourself. John's version of this summary of the law holds pride of place in this Chapel in the inscription at the bottom of the window right behind me: "A new commandment I give unto you that ye love one another as I have loved you."

If you ever get to Macon, Georgia, be sure go to Len Berg's Restaurant just behind the Federal Courthouse downtown. It has great southern style home cooking and during the month of June they always have home made peach ice cream that is the best I've ever had. Hanging on the wall near the cash register is a sign that says: "Lovin' don't last, cookin' do." This makes us chuckle because we know it's really the other way around. A love that is from God and based on God will outlast anything and will sustain us through anything.

It is out of God's love for us that God promises to sustain the people of Israel as they go through the wilderness toward the promised land and promises to do the same for each one of you. It is out of God's love for us that Jesus said in last week's gospel "I will be with you even to the end of the age." God makes a solemn promise never to abandon you.

So, you are about to leave the comfort of your own Egypt and head into the wilderness and you don't know whether or not you will make it to the promised land. Feelings of comfort and security will be sustained for a couple of more days by the excitement of Class Day and Commencement, but will soon give way to apprehension and maybe the occasional knot in the stomach. But you'll survive. You'll thrive and flourish if you just trust God and keep your loving God at the center of your lives. You'll get the feeling of comfort and security back again when you remember that God will never abandon you in your wilderness, that God will always be with you wherever you go. And whether you're aware of it or not, there will always be someone, indeed many people, associated with this place who love you and who will remember to pray for you asking God to let you know you're never alone and that you will always be part of this community of faith.

May God bless and keep each one of you!

Amen.