Homily

We sing it over and over: "Christ is risen from the DEAD, by DEATH He conquered DEATH, and to those in the GRAVES He granted life." Notice the words, "dead . . . death . . . death . . . graves." And the word LIFE only appears once — 20% of those words. I think one of the reasons is that we are mostly afraid of death, of course, either our own end and/or perhaps the death of other people too. I'm not ready to say I have absolutely no fear of death. As most of you know a few years ago, I lost a vital organ and I can only stand here before you today because of the grace of God and the extraordinary skill of modern surgeons. I "get" having the fear of death and I think we are all people who would generally favor a "no death" policy if it were offered to us. I think the "Christ is risen" tropar mentions death so much in order to assure us of our ultimate victory over death, in the Resurrection. So we won't be afraid. "Life" only appears once in the tropar. Sure, everybody likes "life" especially their own.

But you know I have to admit I'm also afraid of life. Not the regular, I'm breathing and moving and have to pay my taxes (this year by April 17th) kind of life. I'm afraid of the life that Jesus wants to give me. I'm afraid of divine life and not after I'm dead. I'm afraid of divine life before I die. Now to be clear I do have the gift of divine life I received at baptism, and I've never totally turned that away. I'm talking about fullness of divine life that Jesus offers to us, the life that comes with total commitment, the life that was lived by the martyrs and all the saints for the past 2,000 years, the kind of life St. Paul was talking about when he wrote, "It is now no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." It's that hard core, full embrace of a life of extraordinary grace, a life of complete submission as a fully dedicated follower of Christ. That's the kind of life that scares me. I think it's kind of like going off a diving board into the pool. When I was a young boy, like many of you, one day I decided to jump off the diving board. It was scary, it was intimidating but I took the plunge and it was okay. I did it quite a few times over many weeks. All was good. It's kind of like the life of grace I'm willing to live now.

But there's more available. There was another BOARD at the pool. The board I was jumping off was only about five feet over the water. The other diving board was about 185 feet high. It took about 20 minutes to climb to the top. And there you are, standing at the edge, and despite all the times you dove in off the other board, this one takes a much bigger commitment. You're standing there, and standing there, and all these thoughts are going through your head and all of them are telling you "Don't do it! You'll get hurt! You'll drown and then you'll really be sorry!" It's not like the little board, where a smaller amount of courage and trust is all you need. I can do that. There's a lot more fear involved in jumping off this one. You see the lifeguard — it's Jesus — and he's not only the guardian of my life, He's the giver-of-my life. He's yelling to me, "Don't be afraid, I won't let you drown."

And yet, and yet, and yet it is so very, very hard to give in with total trust and a faith that is worthy of my baptismal vocation because I'm afraid I might drown, and I'm afraid of what might be asked of me, or what could happen to me and even though I know that the fullness of divine life is to live deeply in the love of God, in my fears the nagging thought is that maybe, it's better to play it safe. You know — not too much!

What if I end up in poverty? What if I end up hungry? What if I end up in Dexter? These and a thousand other negative thoughts are constantly urging me just to leave well enough alone. Most of the time they're not active, because I'm not ready to move my mind and my heart. But any time I start to be open to that change, these fears jump out at me like a junk yard dog. And the rest of the time they're in the background, growling softly, just to remind me that they haven't gone away and are ready to come at me if I make a move. Maybe the half-life I'm living now is actually better than stepping off the board and taking that deeper plunge into faith. My rational mind tells me that of course that's not right. But my fears keep telling my rational mind to just shut up and mind its own business.

So today we're challenged to lay aside our fears about death, because Christ has conquered death and even though we're not yet in our graves, He still wants to grant us life, His divine life, the fullness of a life completely saturated with grace. And if we have any fears about that kind of total dedication, we are also invited to lay those fears aside, so that the love of Christ and our desire to love Christ overcomes the weakness of our sinful condition. We may not yet be ready to take that total plunge as disciples of the Lord but we can climb higher up the ladder that leads us to that spiritual diving board. Today is a great opportunity to commit ourselves even more closely to the Lord and surrender even more of ourselves to His gentle yoke. Let's not be afraid of death. Let's not be afraid to really live.