BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS FOR THE CLASS OF 2002
May 3, 2002
Elizabeth Dermody Leonard, Ph.D.
Members of the Board of Trustees, faculty, staff, and administrative colleagues, parents and family and friends of graduating seniors, and—above all else on this occasion—members of the Vanguard University Class of 2002, welcome to this Baccalaureate service, the first formal occasion of this Commencement weekend and celebration. It is right that we gather together this evening to celebrate God’s goodness and to celebrate the end of a job well done. You’re graduating! You’ve finished the race; you have kept the faith; you’re about to walk into an entirely new chapter of your lives, with degree in hand. Over the next few hours, you will be looking back and looking forward. Just don’t forget to enjoy the now and celebrate your victory.
It is a humbling privilege to stand before you all tonight, to share my heart on this momentous occasion. I am here because the senior class invited me to speak and who can say no to these people? And it is to you graduating seniors that I want to direct my message. If anyone else wants to eavesdrop on our conversation, I suppose that we will just have to let that happen. But I am here for you and for you only tonight. I confess to feeling some trepidation as I seek to give you some parting counsel. I think about the 4th grader who turned in this essay on Socrates: Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They poisoned him! Nevertheless, let us proceed.
Our text tonight is John 4 where we witness a remarkable, revealing, and transformative exchange between two people: Our Lord Jesus—tired from his journey—and a Samaritan woman—tired from her life.
The woman had a practical need; she came for water but she found life-giving truth. You came to Vanguard University for education, for knowledge, for skills and training, but, in this wonderful environment that blends learning with faith, you have also found life-giving truths that will sustain you in the years ahead.
Jesus tells this un-named woman that those who worship God must worship in spirit and in truth. Worship, we understand, goes well beyond the songs we sing, the rituals we practice, or our body posture as we do these things. In Romans 12:1 Paul urges us to offer our entire bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is our spiritual act of worship. Thus, all we do can be offered up as an act of worship to God, from accountancy to teaching, from therapy (physical or psychological) to missions, all is ministry for wherever you go, Jesus goes. In his book, Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer writes, every act of the Christian’s life is or can be as truly sacred as prayer or baptism or the Lord’s supper. To say this is not to bring all acts down to one dead level; it is rather to lift every act up into a living kingdom and turn the whole life into a sacrament.
How do we worship "in truth"? I suggest that, to learn about living a life of worship, we need to look at three areas of truth—truth about God, truth about ourselves, and truth about the world around us. These areas of truth are inextricably linked and I believe that your time at Vanguard has helped you to gain increasing insight into all these areas. In your coursework, chapel services, outreach activities, jobs, athletic, forensic, and music events, and your day-to-day interactions, you have learned more about God the creator, God the redeemer, God the teacher; you have learned more about your own heart and motivations, about the lives of others, and about this wonderful problem-racked world in which we live. Tonight, let’s spend some moments exploring some truths. Of course we realize we never have all the truth while we are this side of heaven—we see through a glass darkly, as Paul describes it.
1. The truth about God
To worship God, we must worship God as He really is; therefore we must discover the true nature of God. We know that all truth flows from the God of truth. We must dare to believe everything God says about Himself; thus we must spend time in God’s Word. As we do that, we discover a God who is holy, good, compassionate, merciful, all-powerful, unchanging, generous, just, and wise, to name a few attributes. In the encounter at the well, Jesus reveals the truth about Himself—His first public acknowledgement that He is Messiah, and He does this in a most unlikely setting—in a devalued region, to a devalued person of a devalued gender and religion. What an amazing heavenly moment of truth from this unfathomable man-who-is-also God. If we want to keep up with this amazing One, it looks like we’ll have to throw out the old rulebook; Jesus is a divine norm-breaker! We see God revealed in one parable as the hopeful, patient, generous father awaiting, with open, non-condemning arms, the return of his prodigal son. God is revealed through Christ as meek but powerful, righteous but tender, miracle-working but culture-shaking. Most of all, as we see in Old and New Testament, He is a God of love. How we perceive God will determine the God we represent to others. As Brennan Manning writes, "a loving God fosters a loving people." If we do not love, perhaps we have yet to embrace the truth of God’s unconditional love for us.
In celebrating Easter, the French greet one another, sing, and recite this phrase: L’amour de Dieu est folie!—The love of God is folly, is foolishness. Jesus, God’s love in human form, turned the world’s system on its ear. How foolish is it that the Word, through whom all things were made (John 1) comes to us in the form of an infant in a stable with four-legged creatures in attendance? How foolish is it that the light of the world (John 8) hangs out with sinners and pulls a coin out a fish’s mouth? How foolish is it that the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being (Hebrews 1) defies tradition and talks to women, teaches women, disciples women, and allows a woman to anoint Him with expensive perfume telling his offended male disciples that she will be honored for time immemorial for her action? How foolish is it that the Holy and Righteous one (Acts 3) tells His followers to love, not hate, their enemies? How foolish is it that the one in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, the one in whom all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form (Colossians 2) rides into Jerusalem on a donkey and calls the religious leaders a bunch of liars and snakes? How foolish is it that the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation (Colossians 1) allowed Himself to be nailed on a cross as just another convict to be betrayed, stripped, abused, humiliated, and put to death by the state only to beseech the Father to forgive His executioners for they "don’t know what they’re doing?" John Michael Talbot sings, why did He have to be nailed to a cross when His love would have held Him there? Yes, His love for each and every one of us was enough to hold him there to carry our sins, burdens, and wounds. We are forgiven, redeemed, and healed through this foolishness. L’amour de Dieu est folie!
My standing here before you in my University of California PhD regalia is pretty foolish as well. Leaving college after my sophomore year to care for a chronically ill father, years went by until finally I relinquished my dream of finishing that Bachelors degree—I laid it on the altar and left it there. I finally accepted the reality that it was not going to happen—no money to pay for it and not smart enough to accomplish it anyway. Imagine how I felt on June 11, 1991 (two decades late!) as I walked across the stage at UC Riverside to receive my BS degree in Social Relations summa cum laude. For me, nothing compares to that moment. The fulfillment of a dead dream—then to complete a Masters and then a doctorate in 1997! Absurd!
My work is folly-like. From the time I was little, watching my gifted mother teach her 3rd graders with such skill, until I was nearly through with my PhD, I knew beyond a doubt that I never ever wanted to be a teacher! Now I’m having the time of my life educating the best people on the planet so they too can receive college degrees! My research, first with sexually abused children—me, the one who, while adoring my own two sons, was not particularly a kid-person, has become totally enthralled with the world of children and childhood; my current research with battered women in prison for life for the death of abusive partners—me, the one who didn’t have a clue about domestic violence and had no interest in prisoners much less in anything that could be accused of being a "woman’s issue." This is whom God chooses to do pioneering research into their lives and legal cases? L’amour de Dieu est folie! Can you hear God laughing in delight? When I think of how much God loves me, how foolishly and freely He loves me, my heart overflows.
Imagine a serious, sober, non-demonstrative man whose first child comes along and transforms him. This guy may not crack a smile at the office, but he’ll make faces, babble, and blow spit bubbles just to make a toddler smile; he’ll roll on the floor and snort raisins out of his nose if it will make her laugh because the mere sound of his child’s laughter is more joyous and musical than Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart combined. In a much greater way, your heavenly Father, Abba, delights in your laughter and will move heaven and earth to bring about the best for your life. I am loved. You are loved. And more than that, Abba likes you, is tenderly fond of you, just as you are—not as you should be but just as you are. This evening, you may be confused, afraid, sad, or you may be confident, excited, and happy. Regardless, God holds you in tender affection. You are His own handiwork and He is delighted with you. He loves us ragamuffins with our dirty faces and skinned knees. He views us through rose-colored glasses, through the sacrificial love of Christ in whom we have our righteousness. Thus, truth about God leads us to truth about ourselves.
2. The truth about ourselves
As the Samaritan woman and Jesus have their "water cooler" conversation, the truth emerges about her own life. When we are in God’s presence we will be faced with the truth about ourselves and for some, that is not comfortable and they may try to avoid God because they want to avoid themselves. Here’s where it begins to get sticky. Do we really believe what God says about us or do we believe what we say about ourselves, or what others say about us? Yes, there’s more to our identity than life events. An accurate self-image is critical. Let us realize our worth in God’s sight and not our own. God thinks us so valuable that He laid down His life to save us. If we make this truth self-identifying, our whole life glows with this truth. The source of our self-esteem and confidence must be the Lord and not our own perceived level of competence. Self-acceptance is far deeper than liking ourselves—it is seeing ourselves as God’s special handiwork, custom made to His order. You see, He wanted one like you and didn’t have one, so He made one! Each of us is one of a kind like that—a designer original!
Unfortunately, for some, identity is based on the past—past tragedies, past mistakes, past labels. Sometimes bad things happen to the lovely designer original, or we do things ourselves that muddy up and cloud our value and we begin to see ourselves as a piece of junk. We may begin to act good and religious to cover up how we feel about ourselves; or we may do the opposite: act bad to live up to/down to the junk label. Either way, we are not living out of God’s image of us, but out of an inaccurate image of ourselves.
Perhaps one of the most common ways we get ourselves into trouble is when we try to avoid pain—the pain of disappointment, of sorrow, of past abuse, of feeling like junk. A natural response to pain is to try to avoid it. Yet pain is inevitable this side of heaven. Many of us own a little paperback book, a Bible Promise Book that lists promise after promise from God’s word to help us through difficult times. Well, my pocket promise book is a special edition—it begins with a promise from Jesus: In this world you will have trials and tribulations, but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world (John 16:33). We are going to feel some pain. It will find us so we’d better get used to the idea. Here is our choice: Will we let God turn our earthly pain into heavenly profit so it can be used to form the character of Christ within us? Will we let Him take what might have been meant for harm and transform it into good for us?
Unfortunately, all too often we go to great lengths to avoid dealing with the pain in our lives—pain caused by our own sin, pain caused when others sin against us. Rather than deal with it, we become workaholics or alcoholics, we get addicted to drugs or sex or praise, we hook up with anyone who will have us or we refuse relationships altogether, we shop ‘til we drop, we overeat or starve ourselves, we compromise our values to gain acceptance, we go to church obsessively and volunteer for everything so we convince others and ourselves that we’re the holiest of the holy—anything that will mask or numb the pain. Consequently, we have layer upon layer of pain and mess. It may be a relief to realize that God expects more failures from us than we expect from ourselves. Our creator knows us better than we know ourselves. And our loving God will not let the pain go to waste—He will heal it, redeem it, transform it, make a monument in Heaven out of it. Further, those episodes that we count as our worst failures at times are the very the ones that God records as successes because it is in those hard times that the children of God learn to trust Him to provide their physical and financial needs, to comfort them in their losses and sorrows, to carry them through chemotherapy when they expected a miraculous healing, to redirect careers in the face of unemployment, to heal broken hearts.
In Psalm 51, David’s transparency before God serves as a truth-telling model for us. He is dealing with an ugly and painful episode in his life—he committed adultery and arranged for the death of Bathsheba’s husband—King David qualified for the death penalty twice over. And still God loved him. Rather than avoid the painful truth and cover up the sin, he prays, Have mercy on me according to Your unfailing love…Surely Lord, you desire truth in my innermost being …Cleanse me…wash me…Create in me a clean heart…Restore to me the joy of your salvation…Then I will teach transgressors your way, and sinners will turn back to you. Notice the progression here: David confesses the truth about God, about himself, then looks outward to others in need. God loves sinners, forgives and cleanses them, restores fellowship, and at that point can use His imperfect people to bring salvation to others. Not unlike the pattern we see in John 4 with the Samaritan. But we must know the truth about ourselves.
I’m a bird watcher. I admit it. I love hearing a new bird song, stealth-tiptoeing, binoculars around my neck, ducking behind bushes, just to get close enough to see the shape, behavior, and markings so I can go to my Peterson’s Field Guide and see who it is I’ve just met. One late winter day a few years ago, some little bird was singing its heart out perched on the branch of a bare locust tree. I knew it was a linnet/house finch but it seemed the wrong time of year for it to be serenading a potential mate. Yet this tiny bird threw back its head and just let the music soar. It was so precious to watch this creature, about the same value as the sparrow that falls to the ground and God takes notice. This little bird was simply singing the song that its creator placed within it; it was expressing its true nature and it brought tears to my eyes as I reflected on the beauty and detail and creativity of God’s handiwork. The early Irish Christians called nature God’s second sacred text and I can see why. He speaks to us through His creation—it’s a shame we’re not better caretakers of it. I delighted in seeing the bird be itself, celebrating its birdness, expressing itself for the simple joy of singing its song. Then the Lord began to speak to me: See how your heart soars with delight in the bird singing its own unique song, being true to what I wove into its being, unself-consciously expressing its true nature? In the same way My heart soars with delight when I see you being yourself, whether it be in work or play, when you sing your own song without self-consciousness, when you are being true to what I wove into your being as you were being formed. God has placed within each of you a unique song, a set of special gifts, interests, and abilities, and He wants you to find your own voice. Some of you have found parts of your song, but some of you have been singing someone else’s song up until now. Draw closer to God and He will awaken your own song and you will dare to be yourself!
We must know who we are and we must accept who we are. Once we know who we truly are, knowing that our identity is safe in God’s hands, then it becomes increasingly hard to take offense. It’s hard to offend someone whose sense of self is secure. Jamie Buckingham observed, Angels can fly because they take themselves so lightly. Once I understand how special I am to God, I can laugh at myself with acceptance instead of with dislike. As Brennan Manning notes in Lion & Lamb: the degree of our compassion for others depends upon our capacity for self-acceptance. So, truth about God and truth about ourselves leads us to truth about the world around us.
3. The truth about the world
The Samaritan woman got the message about the spring of living water that brings eternal life that issues from Christ, water that comes without toil, unlike well water that must be hauled up in buckets. What is her response? She runs back to her community, which likely treated her as an outcast, and tells them the Good News and they believe. She is the first evangelist!
When we gain truth about God and understand how valuable we are to God, we discover that others are of great value also and this affects our interactions with them and with our surroundings. First and foremost, let us remember that God loved the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes shall have everlasting life. So what should be our attitude towards the world? We should love God’s creation and the creatures that inhabit it. Does anyone doubt that this world needs Jesus? The unconditional love that Jesus models for us is the vehicle that grants us access to hearts. While not being of the world, we must embrace those in it and love them as they are. I like the way Manning puts it in Ragamuffin Gospel: The way we are with each other is the truest test of our faith. How I treat a brother or sister from day to day, how I react to the sin-scarred wino on the street, how I respond to interruptions from people I dislike, how I deal with normal people in their normal confusion on a normal day may be a better indication of my reverence for life than the anti-abortion sticker on the bumper of my car.
In this area of truth we hear something entirely unlikely from Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, a lesson for us in how to interact with the world. He not only repeatedly accepts and takes the side of the marginalized, the unwanted, the rejected, the disqualified, and the unlovely, He completely identifies with them. In the 25th chapter of Matthew, the Son of Man separates the sheep from the goats on the day of judgment using unexpected criteria: those who feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the needy, host the stranger, tend the sick, and visit the prisoner are welcomed into His kingdom. He proclaims: whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. This echoes the message in Isaiah 58: 6-9 on the true fast of God:
Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter-
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
David Adam, Vicar of Lindisfarne, Holy Island, which lies off the coast of Scotland, prays:
You are the caller;
You are the poor;
You are the stranger at my door.
You are the wanderer;
The unfed;
You are the homeless
With no bed.
You are the man
Driven insane;
You are the child
Crying in pain.
You are the other who comes to me;
Open my eyes that I may see.
We are called into community, called to give ourselves to others, whether we do it as social workers or songwriters, chemists or congress members. Every one of you is called to make a difference in this world and Vanguard has equipped you to do so. As time goes by, you will realize just how much you received here. Some of you leave Vanguard with a passionate and full sense of what you will and must do; perhaps because of something you experienced here. Others look forward to that discovery at some point in the future. Some of you are confident about your future; others look to the future with concern, anxiety, perhaps even fear. These feelings are quite normal. When trapeze artists let go of one bar, hang suspended in the air until the receiving swing arrives, they feel anxious too. But they know they have a safety net down there to catch them in case their timing is off. You too have a safety net—Christ. Whatever your condition, you do not walk into tomorrow alone. We who remain at Vanguard University—faculty, staff, administration—having invested ourselves in you, go with you in spirit. Most importantly, you know who holds your tomorrows in His loving hands. There is One who holds your identity, your personhood, safe in His heart—Christ within you, beside you, above you, before you, behind you.
As Christians our lives are not our own and our paths may take unexpected turns, as the Samaritan woman discovered. As I neared the end of my doctoral work, clueless at to what was coming next, my motto was: Onward through the fog! Then one day, I found myself washed up on the shores of Vanguard University, barely surviving the foggy and challenging swim—an unexpected but happy outcome. Beyond my wildest dreams, I get to work with the best imaginable group of students as well as colleagues, including my niece Tonia Collinske and my best buddy VPSA Sheri Benvenuti. I’ve come to understand that whatever plans I made and make are open to change by God’s redirection. Life requires us to be flexible, now more than ever. That flexibility allows us to respond to those surprise turns in the road that God may want us to follow; we need to be open to the leading of the Spirit.
My parting advice, Socrates notwithstanding, is this: Whatever work you do, in the home, in the workplace, in the church, find work that interests you, excites you, is meaningful, challenges you, stretches you, and allows you to be truly yourself, singing your own song. Make sure that your relationships allow you to be yourself and steer clear of those that quench your spirit, diminish you, and do not allow you to be authentic. Know that you truly are God’s handiwork; His artistry shows in you; you are custom-made to order by the God of all creation. Live your lives knowing that all you do is sacred, lifting all your actions as a gift, a sacrifice to God as your reasonable service of worship. Don’t hide your pain; deal with it. Laugh as often as possible. And stay in touch. We are proud of you and we love you.