Grace Cathedral

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Congratulations to our 12 choristers who will be vested today as full members of the Grace Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys. We always have you in mind when we preach on Thursdays but today’s sermon is especially for you.

I want to talk about a difficult subject. I am not sure that adults are completely honest with children about this. You might even say there is a kind of secret adults keep from children and that is this: it is possible to waste your life.

If you look around your school today pretty much everyone seems okay; your fellow students are mostly being who they are meant to be. But if you check in many years from now you will encounter many disappointments among your friends about how their lives turned out. In the last few years several of my childhood friends have told me that they wondered about where they had gone off track.

So what does it take to succeed? How can you be happy and have your life matter? This is a short sermon and I am going to talk about two aspects of success.

1. The Greek philosopher Aristotle called human beings the political animal. Because we achieve much greater things when we work with others, it is important to develop the skill of getting along with others. And at the heart of this lies an ability to forgive.

Joseph had eleven brothers. He was his father’s favorite. To make matters worse Joseph had dreams. In one the brothers were in the fields binding together bundles of harvested wheat and their bundles bowed down to his. In another Joseph dreamed that the sun and moon (his parents) and eleven stars (his brothers) bowed down to him. This only made his brothers more angry with him (Gen. 37).

So they decided to do something. They decided to kill him and then tell his father that a wild animal had done it. Then Joseph’s brother Judah came up with a better idea. He suggested that they sell their brother as a slave to some traders who were coming along the road. Joseph found himself in Egypt and everything he did met with wild success. The people around him recognized his talents and soon he was the second most powerful person in Egypt (and in the world).

In the midst of a terrible famine Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt to beg for food. At first they did  not even recognize him but when they did they became very scared. They had treated their brother so badly and were afraid for what he might do to them. The Bible says that Joseph, “reassured them, speaking kindly to them” (Gen. 50). He said that although they had done a terrible thing, the ultimate outcome would be that all of their families would be saved.

Speaking again to the children here, how you treat your sisters, brothers and parents right now matters. At this stage of your life most of you live with your parents and siblings. But one day you will not all live together and you will have to decide whether or not you are going to be friends. Most adults know many people who are not friends with their siblings or who do not talk with their parents. How you treat each other today will have an effect on what your relationships will be like in the future. In all relationships misunderstandings will arise. Forgiveness is the way we mend relationships.

2. A second essential part of succeeding involves service. In fact, Jesus says that life is about serving others. This realization makes him great, so great that twenty centuries later he continues to radically transform the world, so great that people call him the Son of God. This wisdom is part of the reason why many people, including me, feel his presence every day. Succeding in life requires that we find the right way to serve others.

At our old church we had a boy scout troop and each week during our meeting we would repeat the Scout Oath. “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the scout law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.” The purpose of this was to remind us that serving others is simply what human beings do when we are being most human.

Learning to forgive others, finding a way to serve, succeeding in life – these are not practices that you take up after becoming an adult. They are at the heart of what you are doing right now. This is especially true of our Choristers. There are many things that will prepare you for your future, but almost nothing else is as challenging, helpful and rewarding as singing at this very high level.

I encourage you to look up the list of accomplishments of your colleagues the Choirmen. They have won awards, made recordings, composed music, sung with the most prestigious musicians of our time. And yet as choristers you will be on an equal level with them. You will be leaders with them.

All of you singing in this choir will be learning how to be in harmony with each other, how to forgive each other when you inevitably let each other down. You will be serving God and humanity in the most tangible way. Thousands of people will be moved by your work. You will contribute to healing all of us through the beauty of what you create together. The secret is out. Human beings can fail to live into their potential, we can be cut off from the people we are supposed to love, some of us never find a way to help others in the way that we should. But those are not the kind of people you are. I want to conclude by thanking each of you for moving my heart so deeply and helping the many people whose lives will be changed because of your dedicati