Scripture:


Psalm 139: 1-11 Lamentations 3:22-24, 31-32
Revelation 21: 2-4
Isaiah 61:1, 3, 10-11
Revelation 22:13



It is a great honor to stand before you, and before our Sovereign God, in this beloved Chapel. Beneath these vaulted ceilings countless ones of us struggled with the ultimate questions of life as we confronted them in our precepts, our dormitories, and on the playing fields. Were it not for the comfort and challenge which I heard from Dean Earnest Gordon in this pulpit, and were it not for the wise teaching and sage advice which I received from Professor Mal Diamond, I would not be standing here. My life was transformed during my four years as an undergraduate, and the same is true for many of you. Princeton offered a safe place where we could voice the questions of our restless souls: a community of caring where the authenticity of the questions mattered more than the recitation of the answers.


Today we return, seeking comfort in the community which God creates by calling us together. It is not a common religious heritage that has drawn us here today. What we share is love: love for a person whose memory we hold dear. And love for this University which we, and that person we love, both called home if only for a few years.


Thanks to this person we love -- and I use the present tense intentionally -- we have been treated to unrepeatable experiences. Thanks to this person we love, we carry in our hearts the emotions he or she inspire in us: joy, exhilaration, warmth, and admiration, as well as sorrow, grief, anger, and emptiness. Because our hearts have been touched by this person in both life and in death, we now have an opportunity to enter ever more deeply into the great unnamed mystery in which we all participate.


Some of us approached this mystery when, on a mid-April afternoon during our 18th year, we found in our mailbox a thick letter with an orange and black return address on it, and with a sense of deep joy shook our heads, unable to believe that such a gift had come our way. Others of us touched the mystery of life when we were notified that in fact we would be graduating after all.


Yet however pivotal these experiences were in helping to make us who we have become, they are but trivial examples of what each of us has come to contemplate today. While we may have left the gates of Nassau Hall unaware of life's mystery, today, as we passed through the great entrance to this chapel, the power of that mystery descended upon us all. Because the mystery of life is brought into sharpest relief by the reality of death. My 11 year old son captured this truth a few weeks ago. As I was preparing to see an elderly member of my congregation who was near death a woman who had poured her life out for others, in the most giving of ways, for 85 years my son smiled and quietly said, "I guess she still has one more gift to give." When I asked him what he meant, he said that perhaps her death could be her final gift. If life is the great unnamed mystery, death can become for us our greatest gift(1). In contrast to the usual way in which we experience death as an enemy, I would like to lift up three ways in which we can befriend death as a gift.

Bound to those we love

Let us begin by recognizing that death is the common destination of each person's life, both rich and poor, generous and selfish, faithful and agnostic. We are bound together in its embrace, and it is our choice as to whether we are bound in fear of a common enemy, or in solidarity with all others who either have already, or will in the future, make this journey with us. Thinking of this, the Catholic mystic Charles Peguy said that when our loved ones get to heaven, God will ask, "Where are the others?"

The answer is: we're right here -- still caught up in the mystery of life, still caught up in the desires of the flesh. And if our time spent at this great institution has any say in it, still committed to marshalling our gifts in service of something larger than our selves.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian whom the Nazis martyred only days before his concentration camp was liberated, had this to say about how death binds us together:

Nothing can make up for the absence of someone whom we love, and it would be wrong to try to find a substitute; we must simply hold out and see it through. That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time, it is a great consolation, for the gap, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bonds between us. It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap; God doesn't fill it, but on the contrary, keeps it empty and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other, even at the cost of pain.(2) Each of us here today has experienced that pain, but each of us has also been blessed with a bond to the one we love a bond which is eternal.

Fruitfulness fully revealed

In addition to binding us together, there is a fruitfulness to life which is fully revealed only in death. Without a doubt, the death of those we honor today marked the end of their ordinary and extraordinary accomplishments. Indeed it marked the end of much of what this institution taught us and them to value, including productivity, success, fame and importance. But we were taught to value something more than these qualities: we were taught to lead lives of fruitfulness.

In just over a year's time, I have lost both my father as well as my spiritual mentor (who was a second father to me). Both died unexpectedly, without warning. Over these months, I have spent much time feeling empty and glum, full of regrets and inconsolably sad. But I have spent more time much more time delighting in the recognition of their continuing presence in my life. My young boy loved his grandfather so much even as many of you loved the one you grieve today and still speaks of him daily. My son's comments offer me new insight into my dad. His recollections enlarge and deepen the legacy left by my father. These are fruits which extend beyond the limitations of death. Each of us has spent time ruminating on some detail concerning the person we grieve. The special presence of our loved one's spirit in our life is a fruit brought about by their death. And what we do because we are inspired by their vision, emboldened by their courage, made vulnerable by their compassion what we undertake is further testimony to their lives, yet more fruitfulness, extending well beyond their death.

Gratitude for God's gift of life

Finally, we come to gratitude. While we were attending Princeton, were any of us as grateful then as we are now for all that Princeton meant to us? In the same way: did any of us have a full appreciation of the life of the one for whom we grieve while he or she was alive? Abraham Joshua Heschel said, "Our greatest problem is not how to continue but how to return. How can I repay unto the Lord all his bountiful dealings with me?'" (Psalm 116:12)(3) Each of us is already rising to the challenge of returning thanks. We offer a small expression of our gratitude through our presence at this service. But we can go higher. Annie Dillard suggests "that the dying pray at the last, not please', but thank you,' as a guest thanks his host at the door."(4)

Let us not leave to the end of our lives the fervent expression of appreciation. Let today's service of remembrance, and every encounter with death, catapult us into a new world of gratitude. Let us not be resigned to the eventual victory of death, for death can have no victory over a grateful heart. Instead, let us ask with the Apostle Paul, "Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?"

This is why we gather today: not only to grieve, which we can do quite well on our own. But to give thanks. The God who so graciously gave to us the lives of those we love, welcomes our grateful hearts as the surest sign of the kingdom come. Amen.

Footnotes:
1. Some of the ideas which follow originated in Henri J. M. Nouwen's book Our Greatest Gift (San Francisco; Harper, 1994). I dedicate this sermon to his memory. It is my attempt to work though the enormous loss his death, and the death of my father, represent in my life.
2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison.
3. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man is Not Alone (NY; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc; 1951)
4. Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974)