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Jesus said:
This morning – and the service you will share together next Thursday– is a unique combination of people, with just the 4th and L6th here today. And I think you will acknowledge that the school has had a very strange atmosphere since half-term when your friends and fellow pupils from the 5th form and U6th have no longer been here as part of the school.
It is very much as if their priorities have changed and the school has focussed on external exams. Their primary concern has become to get the best possible exam results they can. You will have noticed that even those whose attitude to life has not generally been based around hard work and achievement have suddenly become to be a little more focussed on what needed to be done.
There is no real escape from exams as the L6th has the examination focus of AS levels and many of you in the 4th form will have already taken GCSE's. But the 5th form and U6th really are the years that will have a profound affect on your entire futures. The number of GCSE's you pass and also their grades will make their way onto university and job application forms for perhaps the rest of your life. You’re A-level grades will directly affect which university you go to and perhaps also the job you will do or the career you will follow. The responsibility ultimately lies with you for these grades. You are at a stage in life where you take responsibility for your successes and also your failures.
But, important though examinations are, this is not a careers lecture and I never want chapel to be a place where pressure to get good results is piled upon you – there are already enough places where that happens – not least the pressure you put upon yourselves. I would want us to always have different priorities when we are in chapel together.
What I want to reflect upon with you is the question of ‘how long it takes for us to realise something is important’. And the most important thing is how we live our lives. Conventional religion and belief would say that we only get one go at this. Life, as the saying goes, is not a rehearsal. And to continue the analogy, not many of us would go out on stage without a script or some sense of stage directions; and so I would suggest to you that in thinking about what it means to live a good and full life, what we have in the teaching and the example of Jesus is a good role model.
It can take a very long time to understand and really appreciate the value in what Jesus was saying and doing in through his life. It is a mark of maturity to do so. Some people never quite get to the stage of realising that what Jesus says – and the essential message behind all religions -- is ultimately the only way we can really live.
Indeed some people - at whatever physical age they reach -- never really begin to live because they are only ever concerned with mere existence at a diminished fraction of what they could ever become. It is a little bit like some of you who receive 50% in an exam and feel that you have done fine. Half right means half wrong. And maybe for an internal school exam it will not ultimately make a difference. But if you ever settle for half standards, or even less, in life then you are throwing away so much of what you could have had.
Jesus said, as we heard this morning, 'You must be perfect'. That does not mean that God will only ever accept us if we do everything perfectly. Nor does it mean that God will only love us when we are perfect. God loves us as we are: however that might be – however you are this morning – and whether or not we feel we are worthy of love.
That is the starting point – you are loved – and from being loved without conditions and accepted as we are we can begin to grow, without fear or compulsion, ultimately towards perfection: most importantly the perfection in wanting to show that same love without limits.
And the whole reading this morning is to show how easy it is to impose limits on our love and our friendship and our generosity. We all have limits and we can justify them to ourselves. We can even justify the limits our love with reference to the people and the world around us. But the standards of the world are not always God’s standards: it doesn’t mean the world and other people are wrong or evil but it does mean that the way in which many people get through life is a based on a compromise rather than a standard of perfection.
The standard of perfection is to treat others as we would want to be treated and not simply treat people as they treat us. It might sound an impossible ideal but do not dismiss it before you have really tried it.
The obvious example from the context of life at school or at work – although, it must be said, not a great problem here – is how do we respond to a bully? Some would say 'give back as good as you get' and that might have been the advice your parents gave to you when you were much younger. Yet does that ultimately, really solve the situation? It does not work at school, it does not work in wider relationships, it does not work within and between entire nations. Think about the conflict between Israel and Palestine that in the early hours of this morning has just begun another fragile ceasefire to relieve the suffering in Gaza and to stop the rocket attacks being launched from their. The cycle of violence since the re-creation of the state of Israel 60 years ago has continued because it has been simply based on retaliation.
We have to break the cycle of revenge and begin to treat others as we would want to be treated and not simply to fight back in the same way. It may not be an instant solution it can only be brought about by showing by example that our way and not their way is the one we believe in.
I said at the beginning that it may take someone a lifetime to grasp the value of what Jesus was saying. Some people will never grasp it. Others will disagree, or scoff, or point out the problems for all they are worth but, whilst we struggle against what we know to be the right way, it is really only our own lives they are wasting or diminishing. Exams and universities and careers and success and money and fun and all the experiences of life and the world are all well and good. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with any of them. But what gives meaning and value to our lives is love – to be loved, to find love and to share love. You will experience that through family and friends and ultimately through knowing you are a person who is loved and valued by God and who has an important place in this world. Sometimes it takes an event in our lives to make us realise the fragility and the value of what we have and to see how Jesus wanted people to make the most of life - for themselves and for others -- and not to settle for anything less. At this turning point before your examination years and while you are thinking about A-levels, universities and future careers, you might also think about what kind of person you want to become and what you want the priorities of your life to be.
For those who haven't taken the time to think about life I would ask that you spend some time doing so before you begin these next significant years. If you can really begin to know what you want from life then you will be in a better position to work towards it because, I am sorry to say, being a good and loving person does not come automatically: it takes commitment and practice to live by the values we believe to be important. But I hope and pray that you will place love at the heart of who you want to be.
The Revd. David Johnson Chaplain of Dauntsey's School June 2008
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Chaplaincy HomeCriteria for a Just WarThe Christmas AddressRemembrance DayThe Rich Young Ruler |
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