The first of three sermons that explore the wisdom of the ages in search of clues to life's meaning.

Once upon a time there was a much-beloved rabbi, who throughout his career had been one of the most learned rabbis in all the land. One of the most gifted teachers. He'd taught an entire generation of students, who had, in turn, gone out and taught others.

The rabbi had grown old, though, and one day the village doctor came to visit and announced that the rabbi's time was drawing to a close. He would soon die. Now the death of a rabbi was an important occasion in a community, because a rabbi's last words were considered to be the culmination of his life's teaching. So it was customary for the students of a rabbi to visit his deathbed and receive his final teaching. And that's exactly what happened in this case: the rabbi's students came from all across the land to gather at his bedside and attend to his final words.

Now in order to make sure that the rabbi's final words were properly understood and accurately transmitted, it was agreed that the students would line themselves up single file from the brightest to... well, the least bright. They arranged themselves so the brightest would be right by the rabbi's bedside, ready to hear his final words. And so the students lined themselves up and the line was so long that it went out of the rabbi's bedroom, through his small house, and out into the streets of the village, so numerous were the students of this beloved rabbi.

Finally the village doctor announced that the time had, indeed, come. The rabbi was on the brink of death. So with tears in his eyes, the rabbi's brightest student leaned close to his teacher, and said to him, "Rebbe, what is the meaning of life?"

There was a long pause. Then, mustering his energy the rabbi lifted his head from the pillow and whispered into the ear of his pupil, "Life is like a river."

The student that was second in line whispered to the first, "What did he say?" And the first said, "He said, 'Life is like a river.'"

"Ahh," said the second student.

And then the next student asked, "What did the rabbi say?"

"He said, 'Life is like a river.'" "Ahh," said the next student.

And on and on it went, each student passing on to the next the secret of life's meaning. On and on it went, until the second to least bright student spoke the rabbi's teaching to the least bright student: "Life is like a river." The least bright student thought about that for a moment and then said, "What's that supposed to mean?"

And come to think of it the second to least bright student didn't really understand the rabbi's meaning either -- none of them did -- and so the question got passed back up the line one by one to the brightest student who himself hadn't understood the rabbi's meaning. Now, needless to say, he was a little abashed at having to ask the rabbi to clarify his final teaching. And frankly he wasn't even sure if the great rabbi were still alive, but nonetheless he bent down to the rabbi's ear and asked him, "Rebbe, What do you mean, 'Life is like a river'?"

To which the rabbi responded, "Eh. So maybe it's not like a river!"

And he breathed his last.

It seems to me this story is as good a place as any to begin our exploration of the meaning of life. How many times have we gone to a guru, or a therapist or a wise friend? How many times have we picked up a book on the self-help rack or gone to church on Sunday hoping that someone would just give us the answer? Nice and simple. "Rabbi, what is the meaning of life? What is my purpose here?" And how many times have we been disappointed by the absence of easy answers? How many times has the guru or preacher or book thrown the question right back at us again? Just like the Rabbi: "So maybe it's not like a river." Leaving us to figure it out for ourselves.

The story tells us up front that the rabbi was a wise man and a great teacher and in this story of his final instruction we catch a glimpse of his genius. His wisdom as a teacher lies in his restraint. His understanding of the limits of his own knowledge, perhaps. But even more, his understanding that, ultimately, each of us must answer for ourselves the question of life's meaning. Even if the rabbi had an answer, he was a good enough teacher to know that he would be doing his students a disservice by telling it to them straight out. No one can tell us the meaning of our life. Even if they did and we accepted it, it wouldn't truly be ours until it was verified by our own experience, tested in the cauldron of our own lives.

Of course, that doesn't mean that there's nothing for us to learn on the subject. For certainly there is wisdom to be gleaned for our search. And so, over the next three weeks we're going to go on an expedition together. A romp, if you will, through the wisdom of the ages, taking note of what some thoughtful people have said on this subject. Listening to the advice of our religious ancestors. Reflecting on what our own experience has taught us. We won't shy away from difficult questions. For example, we will face squarely the possibility that life is without meaning. It would be irresponsible not to, wouldn't it? Who among us hasn't wrestled with the demons of despair, meaninglessness, nihilism? Ultimately, though, our search will lead us to an affirmation of life's meaning and purpose.

But now I'm getting ahead of myself. Where shall we begin? What are the origins of our search for life's meaning? Ironically, the search for the meaning of life begins with the reality of our death. Death provides the ultimate context for the discussion of life. It gives our topic a sense of urgency. For instance, the Buddha, we are told, didn't begin his search for Enlightenment until he happened upon a dying man by the side of the road and was confronted with the reality of suffering. Augustine begins his searching Confessions by noting that we come from "the darkness of the not yet" -- vast and eternal -- and that we will eventually pass into "the darkness of the no more" -- vast and eternal. In the meantime, he said, there is a flicker of light that I am trying to make sense of.

Even Emerson -- someone we think of as an eternal optimist -- began with death. A year after the death of his young first wife, Ellen, the 28-year old Emerson visited her tomb. Unable to shake his grief, Emerson entered the tomb and had Ellen's coffin opened. He needed to see for himself that she was, indeed, dead. Within months, he quit the ministry and set off on his free-wheeling, life-long search for meaning.

Now, of course we all know -- intellectually -- that we are going to die. It's really the felt experiences of impermanence that get us to pondering the meaning of life: a bad diagnosis, the loss of a loved one. Even a bad dream. Listen to this story from developmental psychologist James Fowler:

"Four a.m., in the darkness of a cold winter morning, suddenly I am fully and frighteningly awake. I see it clearly: I am going to die. I am going to die. This body, this mind... this husband, father, son, friend, will cease to be. This I, taken so much for granted by me -- will no longer walk this earth. A strange feeling of remoteness creeps over me. My wife, beside me in bed, seems completely out of reach. My daughters, asleep in other parts of the house, seem in this moment like vague memories of people I had once known. My work, my ambitions, my dreams feel like a fiction. 'Real life' suddenly feels like a transient dream. In the strange aloneness of this moment, defined by the certainty of death, I awake to the true facts of life."

The imminence of our death -- and, in the grand scheme of things, all of our deaths are imminent -- makes us take seriously the precious time we have. There's something about life's impermanence that creates in us a desire to ground our lives in the eternal. Believing that if we have invested our lives in the eternal, we will have -- in some way, at least -- transcended that impermanence. "Religion," says my colleague Forrest Church at All Souls Church in Manhattan, "Religion is our human response to the dual reality of living and having to die."

Now Freud thought that people who spent too much time thinking about the meaning of life were, well, sick. Mentally ill. In fact, he suggested that people who asked too much about the meaning of life didn't have enough appropriate outlets for their libidinal energies. And I suppose there's a way in which such reflection could become morbid or result in a kind of existential paralysis, a spinning of one's wheels. But let me suggest that we don't always have to take on this question head-on, in some overwhelming existential fashion. The question "What is the meaning of my life" is implicit in a question as common as "How will I spend THIS DAY? What's important for me to do today?" It's implicit in lots of mundane decisions, like where we spend our money. Think about it. When we're young adults, deciding what to make of our lives -- what job or career to take up, who we might spend our lives with -- we're asking questions about life's meaning. When we're at mid-life, and struggling through that passage called the mid-life crisis, what we're really doing is taking stock of our lives. Asking: "Has my life thus far been meaningful? What changes must I make to make it so? Is it too late?" The meaning of life is at once the most esoteric and elusive philosophical question, and, at the same time, as common as the decision of how to spend our day.

And ultimately therein lies the importance -- the relevance -- of the question of life's meaning. How shall we spend our days? To discover meaning is to ORDER our days. To imbue them with a sense of coherence, integrity, wholeness. It is to give life a sense of value and purpose. And if that sense of purpose doesn't make happy in the conventional sense of the word -- happy in the sense that Freud would have us be happy -- well it certainly can bring us great joy. And that's why Freud, ultimately is wrong on this subject. The search for life's meaning isn't a morbid exercise, it's a search for joy.

I've shared with you before the testimony of Dag Hammarskjold, the former UN Secretary General, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace. Hammarskjold died in a plane crash while he was trying to negotiate a peace in the Congo. After he died, his family came upon a journal that he kept -- a spiritual memoir, really -- that told the story about how had had come to dedicate his life to peacemaking. In it, Hammarskjold writes:

"I don't know Who -- or what -- put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer 'Yes' to Someone -- or Something -- and from [the moment of that 'Yes'] I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal."

Yes. I could preach a whole sermon on that word, "Yes." It's the most important word in the spiritual lexicon. The "yes" of which Hammarskjold speaks is sort of like our existential "I do." Right? It's as if we're standing at the altar with the great source of meaning and purpose in our lives, and we finally muster the courage to say, "I do." "Yes!"

To discover the meaning of life is to discover that to which we can say "Yes." A joyous "Yes." An almighty "Yes."

Amen.