Sermon: Confirmation, 2007

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Confirmation, 2007

May 6, 2007

By Charles Rush

[ Audio (mp3, 4.9Mb) ]

few years ago, I had an anxious parent ask me, "How do you know if you are getting through to the Confirmation class?" The answer, of course, is "I don't"… but… I said, 'they ask better questions.'

I got a few good ones this year. "Why are humans the biggest killers of humans?" Right… a profound question. It reminds me of St. Augustine, reflecting on his own personal life, why he did what he did, why he couldn't seem to be free of certain vices. He finally said, "I have become a problem unto myself?" We are our own biggest problem.

"Will the world ever end, and if so, how- Do you have a plan to save it?" It is would be comforting to know that the Almighty at least has a plan. Of course, in some sense, the whole gospel story is the plan, summarized in the phrase, "God is love". That means that we can trust God in life and in death, that ultimately, things will all work out. In the words of Tito's burritos downtown, "It's all good". The end/end we don't know how that will work out, so we have to trust in the goodness and the justice of God, that however it works out, it will be okay.

One of you asked this, "Have I been a good person?" Let me tell you something. By the time you get to be my age, you will have something happen to you, something big that makes you really think about your life, and that question will keep you awake most of the night. Integrity will be all that really matters. Trustworthiness, being faithful, being able to live with yourself.

And this one from Ms. Hansen. I've been waiting for two decades to hear this question, "How can we make world peace and cooperation work?" That is the hope.

And this from Mr. Previdi and Mr. Vigilante, "Why am I on this earth? What central purpose do you want from me? What do you want me to contribute back?" That is the fundamental spiritual question. I think I will print up some T-shirts for you with that question written in reverse, so that when you wake up in the morning, first thing you see when you look in the mirror is the question, "Why am I on this earth? My purpose? What should I give back?"

But I'm going to answer two others because they go together and they describe the world in which you were born. The first one is from Mr. Love, "Are you responsible for everything that happens?" And the second one is from Mr. Rupkey, "Do you ever regret creating people?"

Is God responsible for everything? No. God has, in fact, been blamed for way, way too much. And "Do you ever regret creating people?"

There is a saga that is told in the book of Genesis that one day God looked down and could see that humans were creating advanced civilizations. They were building high-rise buildings. And God rightly surmised, "One day they will reach the heavens." The Bible says that, God was sorry that He created humans and in that moment decided to scatter them. That is not a solution. It just buys some time to think about it. God figured out pretty early on that there would come a day when we were so integrated socially, that our civilization would be sufficiently complex, that we would become literally 'god-like' in our technological ability. And when that day came, we would no longer need God like primitive people. We would live in a 'world come of Age' to use the phrase of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We are very close to that age now.

In some important ways, that age began July 16, 1945 in the high desert of New Mexico on the Trinity project. That was the day, we first successfully exploded an Atom bomb.

That project brought together the very best scientific minds of our day, recruited literally from all over the world. It was also extraordinarily creative, dealing in a realm of science that was relatively unknown and up to that point, almost entirely theoretical. There was a great deal of anticipation and uncertainty as to what would happen for this reason. After years of round the clock work, almost all of it done in 'top secret' laboratories, the day finally came to test the bomb. Scientists, top military advisers, politicians all gathered to witness the moment. Also, there that day was the Director of the project, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer.

When it was detonated, it was several thousand times bigger than conventional bombs and it created a fireball that could be seen over a hundred miles away. My wife's grandfather worked on that project and he said that it was so awesome that people just had a kind of religious awe and wonder at the sheer power. The overwhelming power… and after a minute, they came to realize the 'terrifying power' that they had unleashed.

Robert Oppenheimer was sitting there. Later reporters asked him what he was thinking about when he saw it. Surely he was filled with a certain pride that they actually completed it, that it worked, but he said, he also thought of a line in the Bhagavad Gita, "I have become death, the destroyer of worlds".

Once you discover that power, you can't go back. The Rubicon has been crossed. And just one month later, we dropped that bomb on Hiroshima, August 6th, and then on August 9th, we dropped a second one on Nagasaki.

I'm not going to review the complex moral question of whether or not we should have dropped those bombs here today. I only want to lift it up as a vivid, concrete metaphor of the world you are born into. We discovered the technology. It gave us powers, divine like powers, and now we own it. It is our responsibility as to what we do with it or don't do with it.

The question again to God was "Do you ever regret creating people?" You have to wonder what God thought that day because for the first time, we literally had the power to destroy our world. It would take a few more inventions before that came to pass but today, we still have enough nuclear bombs actively deployed with the Russians that if only a percentage of them were detonated, life as we know it would cease on this planet.

And once you have the power to destroy your world… you live in a world come of Age. That power, formerly the domain only of God, is now ours. It is now our moral responsibility. And what you will discover in the next 20 years as you grow up, is that our technological imagination is vastly superior to our moral imagination. We can build stuff, better and faster than we can figure out how to use it morally.

Today, if one of us here, God forbid, was to get hit by a car, you would be absolutely amazed at how long we can keep them alive at Overlook hospital. We have, so to speak, divine like powers. I went to see the Governor after he broke 11 ribs and his chest. They had him on a ventilator to breath for him so they could medicate him for the pain. The doctors told me that he hurt so bad that every time he breathed it moved those broken ribs, he hurt so bad that he would stop breathing rather than endure the pain. So they kept him in very sedated, on a ventilator, so he could heal. We have this incredible technological power to extend life artificially. The moral question is, when should we use it? That is much more difficult to answer. Can we do it? Yes. Should we do it? Well, that depends. How old are they? What are the prospects for returning to a full life? What would they want you to do? Very difficult, very complex. Not nearly as easy to answer.

And you know that collectively our civilization itself, our advanced way of living, either is now, or is about to be shortly, the biggest single factor in the overall ecology of our planet. Technologically, we have all kinds of power to do different things. But morally, what should we do to live with all the other nations and all the other animals on our planet? We used to leave that to God. Now, we have the power to make species become extinct. So it becomes our responsibility.

You were born into a world come of Age. This will be your life. So this year, we have tried to expose you to the Bible. It is a book written in a pre-scientific era, very different from ours. And the people then had much more of a sense that God was responsible for most everything in the world and we don't have responsibility for all that much. This is all changed too.

But we still rely on this book because it teaches us moral values. I asked you what Jesus taught us? What is it? Values you can live by: God love us, we need to love one another; we need to forgive; reconciliation that leads to peace is important; dealing with people you hate is critical; humility; integrity; understanding; compassion; showing mercy.

You are on the front end of what is hopefully a long and interesting adventure that is your life. Your parents have brought you to church for your childhood because they want to pass on to you these values that have guided us. We give them to you. It is our hope that you will stay connected to the tradition of Judaism and Christianity, that you will make these values not just part of your head, but part of your heart- that you will live them.

The moral questions before you during your life will be substantial. Just now, we are finally cracking our Genetic make-up. How shall we use this knowledge? What moral limits shall we place on what we do? You will wrestle with this, your children will wrestle with it, your grand-children will too?

We need you to become people of substance spiritually and morally speaking. We need leadership from you to address these questions. It is not just your brains; it is not just your athletic ability or how interesting you are as a person or how popular you will be; we need you to be morally and spiritually complex and integrated.

I close with a thought from Rainer Maria Rilke when he wrote "Letters to a young poet". He said, "try to love the questions themselves?" He was thinking of the big moral issues. Technological questions generally have an answer. But with moral and spiritual matters, the questions are so complex and difficult, that you will wrestle with them all of your life. Hopefully, you will develop better answers but that is the challenge. He says, "Try to love the questions themselves… live the question." Let it move from here (the head) to here (the heart). And "perhaps", he says, "you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day."

We hope that you are more profound leaders than we were. Tell the truth, we need you to be more profound leaders. You can count on me in the future to keep you pointed in this direction. I'm looking forward to watching you grow and develop, in high school, in college, and beyond. I know some of you are happy today because your parents told you this is the last obligation you have for church. You are ready to be free. But this is not the end. Truth is, this is the very beginning. We won't make you do your life, you'll have to do it on your own. Soon enough, you will figure out, this is not all that easy. It's hard. Actually, I could use all the help that I can get. That is why we are here. To equip one another, to encourage one another, to remember who God wants us to become. What are you on earth for? Amen.