commencement Archives - 51��Ƶ

The Rt. Rev. Daniel Gutiérrez: May 25, 2022

Keela.Vaughn — Wed, 25 May 2022 17:12:00 +0000

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The Very Rev. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge: May 24, 2022

Keela.Vaughn — Tue, 24 May 2022 18:48:00 +0000

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The Rt. Rev. C. Andrew Doyle: May 19, 2021

Keela.Vaughn — Wed, 19 May 2021 16:05:44 +0000

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The Very Rev. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge: May 18, 2021

Keela.Vaughn — Tue, 18 May 2021 15:29:00 +0000

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The Rt. Rev. Carlye Hughes To Speak at 68th Commencement

GabeC — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 20:10:06 +0000

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Bishop Jeffrey Lee’s Commencement Sermon

nancy — Tue, 31 May 2016 21:26:23 +0000

I heard a great story. I heard it from the pastor and author Lillian Daniel, who pretty much seems to be the person who made “spiritual but not religious” part of our common vocabulary. The story was in a sermon she preached to an ecumenical gathering of church communicators we hosted in our cathedral, a story about a conference she attended in Amsterdam. It was her first visit there and she wanted very much to take in some of the sights. It was hard though she said to find any local folks who seemed to share her excitement very much. Maybe the Dutch are just kinda staid, she thought. “Where’s your favorite place to go?” she’d ask again and again. The answers came back, “Well, some people like the art museum” or “I had a cousin who enjoyed biking the river.” That kind of fairly lackluster thing. Finally, though, she found a local guy who perked right up when she asked. “Oh,” he said, “we have a festival that everyone should see. It has dancing and music and all kinds of wonderful food,” he enthused. Great! Lillian thought. At last. “Yes,” he said, “This festival is the greatest thing … but … it is over.”
To a room full of professional church communicators, Lillian held out that story as an image for how we behave too much as church. We’re too often spending time, energy and considerable resources answering questions that no one is asking. Or at least not asking much anymore. A lot of what we have always done is over.
In the Diocese I serve I am thankful to say we have more than a few congregations, agencies and pastoral care ministries that are not over, that do seem to be answering questions people are really asking and these ministries are bucking the religious decline trend, thriving by several different measures. And they defy easy categories. There’s a parish in the city awash in incense whose principal Mass every Sunday ends with congregational singing of Hail Holy Queen Enthroned Above that threatens to take the roof off (this is the Diocese of Chicago, after all) – the place is packed with all sorts and conditions of people, who besides singing over-the-top Marian hymns band together to meet the needs of folks in prison and on the streets. I think of a congregation in a neighborhood not too far away whose Sunday eucharist involves popping champaign corks at the Offertory under fluttering Tibetan prayer flags. The leadership of this parish is dominated by frighteningly young adults, its feeding ministry welcomes over 300 guests a week, and at my last visitation a young lesbian couple came to me to say that they we’re staying after only their second visit because, they said, “No one ever told us you could be Christian like this!” There’s a fierce chaplain at Cook County hospital who almost single handedly got the county to reinstate a pastoral care department in the public hospital that receives most of the gunshot victims in our wounded city. Or there’s the group of folks whose congregation was part of the Diocese of Quincy now in what we call our Peoria Deanery. There was an acrimonious split there and faithful Episcopalians we’re told to get out of their historic downtown building. They are now in a rented facility on the college campus in their town and have an impactful ministry focused on students from abroad. At my last visit there, a woman, a life-long member of the congregation in her 80s came up to me and said “You know, Bishop, we are so much healthier today than when we were saddled with that damn building.” I could go on.
These ministries are not alone. What I can’t give you is some kind of formula that has been the magic key to their vitality. They are all radically different. I’ve puzzled over it with my staff. What do they have in common? The best we’ve been able to come up with is this. Three things stand out.
#1 Each one of them is crystal clear about its identity. Within about five minutes of being with them – on a Sunday morning, at a vestry meeting, feeding homeless guests, praying with teenagers, organizing for gun safety legislation, walking the hospital floors – very quickly you pretty much know what they’re about, what they focus on.
The second thing is that these are places and people having conversations about things that matter – not wasting a lot of time on arguments about the color of the napkins, they value and foster conversations about life and death, serving and challenging injustice, what it might mean to follow Christ in the office on Tuesday morning.
The third thing – and I don’t know how to measure this – the third (and probably most important) thing is that these ministries have heart. Leaders – ordained and not ordained – leaders at every level are all in. There is engagement. There is confidence in God. There is obvious joy. There is the unmistakeable whiff of the gospel. The proclamation at the heart of each of these churches is the death-defeating love of God in Jesus. And that is the only answer that will ever really satisfy the questions the world is asking.
I believe these congregations and individual ministers have made their priority the work that Jesus gives to his first friends. They’re making disciples. They’re helping people to make the worship of God real in their lives, helping one another to follow Christ in transforming this world just a little more into the world that God surely wants to see. They are helping people to take up the cross and follow Jesus. What they’re not doing is inviting people into an obsessive little religious subculture, as if fascinating tidbits about Henry VIII and the colors of the church year were ever going to change anyone’s life. They’re not preaching church. They’re preaching Jesus. They’re presenting Jesus and the vast mystery of his dying and rising. They understand that the good news of Jesus, the life-changing, world-changing good news Jesus lived and taught becomes a pale shadow when it is reduced to some reports about Jesus, and even more pallid when it morphs into an instruction manual on how to perform the institution’s secret handshakes.
So what’s all this got to do with us? Well, here we are, ready to get out of here to go love and serve Christ by leading the church and serving God’s People in all kinds of ways. As you go, I ask you to join together in listening to the needs and hopes and heartaches and longings of the world we live in. Listen. Listen and lead.
Here are three things I am learning from listening to people inside and outside of the church where I live. I’m trying to practice them. I commend them to you.
Help the communities you serve get clear, focused on what it is you can do more effectively than anyone else to make the Good News of Jesus real.
Lead in ways that will foster among people conversations about things that matter. Redirect them with love and patience from inconsequential church chat. Let there be real conversations that lead to real actions that will change the real world.
Give it your heart. Remember what it is you fell in love with in the first place that led you to today and beyond. Or rather remember Who it is who loved you and chose you first. Nurture your relationship with the Risen Jesus who is with us always. Nothing is more important than that.
Then go. Take up the cross. Heal the hurts, bind up the broken hearts, and make disciples of everyone. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

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Dean Kittredge’s Commencement Evensong Homily

nancy — Wed, 25 May 2016 15:28:35 +0000

Homily Commencement Evensong May 23, 2016
Cynthia Briggs Kittredge
Mark 10:35-45

Greetings and welcome on this occasion of Evensong in Christ Chapel before the graduation of the class of 2016.
James and John were the valedictorian and salutatorian of the graduating class of disciples. Or they were senior sacristans.
“When you take your throne, reserve us seats right next to you.”
“Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”
Jesus’ question to James and John is ours tonight. “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
“You think you get this? You’ve got to be kidding? Do you know what you’re asking?”
Drink the cup means to take the cure, drink the Kool-Aid.
Take it in both hands and drink it, the cup of grief, the bitter taste of betrayal and shame.
To be baptized with Jesus’ baptism is to get soaked. Your security flooded away.
To be baptized with my baptism means to go whole hog, be all in, sign up for the whole program, the Whole Enchilada.
It’s not sipping, not dipping. Drink ‘er down, bottoms up. Take the plunge into the deep water.
“Are you sure you’re up for it?”
Like you who will graduate tomorrow, these disciples are well into their formation process; they’ve traveled a long way along the road in the gospel of Mark.
They have believed the Good news of the Kingdom of God. They left their nets.
They witnessed Jesus cool fevers and repair withered limbs and animate the paralyzed and cast out the demons of madness and self-destruction. They have been rescued from the storm and eaten bread in the desert. They have hiked up the high mountain and seen him dazzling.
It’s no wonder really that they are excited, eager to get it all over with, allied with a winner, wooed toward power, glimpsing glory. It felt like it had been a long time since they had begun.
Do you remember when you began your formation?
Maybe you don’t even remember. Was it when you got baptized as a baby, a little water, trickled on your forehead, wiped away before it touched your white christening gown?
Or when God worked within you, when you were a child playing, a child in wonder, a child hurt? Or later when you knew yourself damaged and healed by Christ?
You assented. You committed yourself to discover the way of Jesus. You stepped into the water.
You were hopeful, full of zeal, like all those Jerusalemites, confessing their sins by the Jordan. You were ready for God to be here, make things right. The kingdom of God is at hand.
Preach the good news, heal and feed out there where the cross is outside the chapel walls.
You said, “Yes, I can do it!” “We are able.”
You wanted to learn about, to live the lives of the saints and pour over the pages of scripture. You wanted to learn how to chant the office, how to diagnose and heal, how to listen, how to know your own feelings and feel them, but not let them run amok and keep you apart from others or hurt them.
You entered into community. You recommitted, renewed your vows. You remade the covenant in a new way.
And you signed that matriculation book at evening prayer just like this.
Then you discovered that theology was more complicated than you thought. Church history was full of villains as well as heroes. And the Bible! As one of my students said about Paul, “The parts you understand you don’t like, and the parts you like you don’t understand…”
That’s just the past.
Then there’s the present. Your classmates are complicated. You saw weakness in strong ones and strength in the weak, wisdom in the fools, and idiocy among the wise.
And the faculty is admirable, amazing, and frustratingly human.
Christ Chapel, the same space that offers solace and strength, is felt as repetition, obligation, boredom, fury.
You saw the Mexican American border, the cycle of abuse and addiction, the persistence of depression.
There is so much suffering. They call formation “immersion” for a reason, formation as death.
Strange thing and remarkable thing: Jesus’ baptism, Jesus’ beginning, implied his end — it had his death wrapped right inside it: the trial, the torture, the tomb.
Did you know you were going to have to die?
Did you know there would be loss of certainty, loss of identity?
You brought experiences of death with you, and there were deaths you encountered right here and mourned in this chapel.
“Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
Strange and remarkable thing: Jesus’ baptism, Jesus’ beginning, had his resurrection, his life wrapped right up inside it: the rolled away stone, reunion in the garden, meeting on the road and eating together again.
So tonight your answer to Jesus’ question is the same as James and John.
“Yes we are able.” You can go the whole hog. You do sign up for the whole program, impossible as it sounds!
You are recommitting again, renewing the covenant with God, living Christ’s life and making life known in a noisy, violent, struggling world.
You live into the whole thing, step-by-step, re-committing, re-beginning, ordination, licensing, learning, being shaped and remade.
The bitter cup of betrayal and shame is the sacramental cup of Christ’s blood of the new covenant, the whole thing, all in one sip. In the sip is the whole thing.
The baptism with which Christ is baptized is the water from the font splashed over the heads of the babies and children at the Easter Vigil. A dip conveys the whole thing; the whole thing is contained in that fateful and wonderful dip.
Yes, you are able. We are able.
And the glory, the glory of Jesus–haven’t we seen it all along the road? Don’t we know it now?

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Seminary celebrates sixty-fifth commencement

nancy — Tue, 24 May 2016 21:42:42 +0000

Friends and family of 51��Ƶ’s 24 graduates and three honorary doctorate recipients celebrated the seminary’s sixty-fifth commencement on Tuesday, May 24, 2016, at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, Austin. The Rt. Rev. , bishop of the Diocese of Chicago preached at the Commencement Holy Eucharist.

The seminary awarded master’s degrees in divinity, religion, counseling, chaplaincy and pastoral care and spiritual formation and diplomas in Anglican studies and in theological studies.
Honorary degree recipients were Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop and Primate ; Secretary of the Diocese of Texas Canon ; and educator, worker for justice and founding member of Austin’s St. James’ Episcopal Church, .
Monday evening, May 23, the seminary celebrated Evensong in Christ Chapel on the seminary campus. Dean and President Cynthia Briggs Kittredge preached and presented each graduate with a seminary cross which was designed many years ago by prominent Texas jeweler, James Avery. A reception honoring the graduates followed the service.

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Homily for Choral Evensong before Commencement

nancy — Thu, 21 May 2015 22:44:19 +0000

Ezekiel 36:24-28
Mark 10:35-45
At Commencement at Harvard University, the minister at the Memorial Church renowned preacher, Peter Gomes, used to tell the graduates this famous bible story:
“As they were being driven out of Eden, and at the east the flaming sword barricaded the tree of life and blocked the way back, Eve turned to Adam and said, ‘My dear, we are entering a time of transition.’”
Unlike undergraduates leaving college, those who graduate from 51��Ƶ tomorrow do not romanticize their time here nor do they imagine this campus, beautiful as it is, to have been paradise. However, there may be some regret tonight,
some sense of loss, of these friendships, of this intense time of formation that will never be exactly replicated again.
Really the “transition” you prepare for tonight is one episode in an ongoing transition.
It is a transition that those who leave share with those who remain here to teach and lead and welcome the new class in August.
In our tradition this is the transition of a lifetime, and it is called, “drinking the cup that Jesus drinks and being baptized with the baptism with which Jesus is baptized.”
The scripture of Israel tells the story of testing and of trial, of suffering, of repentance, and restoration, of a people, scattered and sinning, whom God washes and brings back to their land.
The gospels tell the story of a Jesus, tested, pursued, tortured, and killed, whom God raises from the dead, bringing a whole people back to life and giving them a role, a job, a task, marching orders, an agenda.
In this transition we undergo, enact, perform this story.
Your education has enculturated you into that story, socialized you, made you into a person with a certain kind of character, equipped with knowledge, so that you can carry out that agenda given by God.
First, this transition is A Losing.
Gosh, how much you have had to lose!
Arrogance.
Certainty that you knew it all.
Superiority.
Fantasy about how holy and special and superhuman a counselor, chaplain, priest, spiritual director is. (James and John had to lose all this too – those seats at Jesus’ right and left hand – seemed just within reach…)
Control. (“You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross”)
Centrality.
Perfection.
At the same time, this transition is A Gaining, A Getting, A Saving —
Receiving Life from the stone cold tomb.
Gaining companionship, classmates, friends, belonging to a body, taking a role in the economy and ecology of the body of Christ,
Becoming Friends.
Purpose and connection with the deep, high, wide, broad mission of God.
Receiving Joy – deep joy.
This transition is A Sending –
Martha Horne, dean emerita of Virginia Seminary says that seminary is academy, abbey, apostolate. This transition is the apostolate.
He is not here – go to Galilee – there you will see him.
World beyond Eden.
Austin, Alabama, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Virginia…
According to the story – People of Israel are not just supposed to hang out in the land, at ease in Zion, but get to the work of obeying the commandments and being a light to the nations.
According to the story – People of God are not just supposed to enjoy the liturgy, but head out into Galilee where there are still human beings mentally ill, hungry, abused, thirsty, naked and poor and there are still plenty of tyrants, arrogant, greedy, and dangerous.
Whatever our job… we are trying to live into our baptism into Jesus’ death and resurrection.
You see this transition, this losing and gaining, is a Transformation.
This is our work, whether we go or stay –
Living into our baptism into Jesus’ death and resurrection.
51��Ƶ is for sure not Eden. But it is a place of life, good work, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
At this time of transition, let us give thanks to God for the friendship, company, joy, wisdom, we have gained, the renewed sense of purpose, and insight into the mystery of God.
Amen.

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Commencement Sermon 2014 by Dr. Justo L. González

nancy — Tue, 13 May 2014 21:29:00 +0000

Acts 16.6-10
Through a Glass, Dimly[i]
Congratulations! You are finally here! Your diplomas await you, and you can hardly wait for them. I am certain that for each of you there have been difficult times along the road that finally brought you to this place and this time. I am also certain that there have been times of smooth sailing, when everything simply seemed to fall into place. And I hope there have been also exhilarating times of discovery, high points that you will never forget and you will long celebrate. Certainly, no matter which of these various experiences has prevailed in your years here, you are now at a point of transition, at an end that is also a beginning.
It is with all this in mind that I call your attention to the Scripture passage that has been read. It refers to an event that took place during what is often called “Paul’s second missionary journey.” Up to this point, the book of Acts has told us very little of this second journey. In fact, in just seven verses practically the entire first journey is repeated, except that this time instead of going to Asia Minor by way of Cyprus, Paul and Silas go by was of Syria and Cilicia, that is, by land. They seem to visit the same cities that Paul had already visited, although the text mentions only three: Derbe, Lystra, and Iconium. This does not mean, however, that this was a quick trip. On the contrary, we are told that Paul and Silas—and then also Timothy—went “from town to town,” and that the churches “were strengthened in the faith and increased in numbers daily.”
Now, at the point where our text picks up the story, Paul and his companions are at what is clearly a final point in their journey. The last legs of that journey must have been frustrating, for we are told, with no further explanation, that the Spirit would not allow them to speak the word in Asia. Then they considered going east into the province of Bythinia, but this too the Spirit would not allow. (I wish I could tell you exactly what this means, or how the Spirit hindered them, but the fact is the nobody knows.) So, having completed their mission, and having visited the churches that Paul had founded in his earlier voyage, Paul and his companions are at Troas, on the Aegean, at the very end of Asia, and it is seems to be time to return home to Antioch and report on their work.
But then comes the famous vision of the Macedonian man, who pleads with Paul, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.”
There is one item in that vision that intrigues me. In Greek, it is not necessary to say “a Macedonian man,” or “a man from Macedonia.” It would simply suffice to say, “a Macedonian,” and the grammar alone would indicate that this was a male. One does not say “a Macedonian man” unless one really means exactly that, a man, an aner, a male member of the human species. In English we would probably make the same point by speaking of “a Macedonian male.”
So, on the basis of this vision of the Macedonian man, Paul and his companions take ship and cross the Aegean into Europe, landing first in Samothrace and eventually making their way to Philippi. There, when the Sabbath comes, Paul attempts to follow his usual procedure when arriving at a new city: to go to the synagogue, and there to preach the message of Jesus Christ. They go outside the city gate, to a place by the river, where they expect to find a synagogue.
But what they find is not a synagogue. A synagogue requires the presence of at least ten men. What they find is a group of women who have gathered there. The text does not even say that they had gathered to pray, although if you wish we may surmise that.
Now think about that. Paul has come to Macedonia on the basis of a vision of a Macedonian man. He goes looking for a synagogue, where there should be at least ten men. And what he finds is not ten men, nor even a Macedonian man, but a group of women! And the only one among them whom Acts mentions by name is not even a Macedonian, but a merchant from Thyatira, in Asia Minor, practically next door to Troas, where Paul had just come from!
I can well imagine Paul looking around and asking himself, where it that man whom I saw? Why did he call me here, where there is not even a synagogue? Was it really a vision inspired by God? What am I to do here, with these women by the river?
At least the answer to this last question is simple. Later Paul would write, “woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel!” So, seeing that there is no synagogue, Paul and his companions sit down and speak to the women there.
And the result is astonishing. Among the women present is Lydia of Thyatira, who is converted. She and her entire household are baptized. She is a forceful woman who according to Acts “prevailed” on Paul and his companions, forcing them to stay at her home—which was contrary to Paul’s usual practice. And Lydia becomes the seed for the best and most supportive of all of the churches founded by Paul.
But back to vision of the Macedonian man, I ask myself, why would God send Paul a vision of a man, what he would meet would be a group of women? Much of what is said about Paul’s misogynism is false, or at least exaggerated. But even if just some of it is true, I can imagine what Paul would have thought if the vision had been of a Macedonian woman: “Is this really from God? How can I help this woman in my vision? Have I simply had an erotic dream?”
And if the vision had been of Lydia herself, Paul could also ask, “Why should I cross the sea and go to Macedonia to help someone from Thyatira, which is just a few miles southeast from here?”
Paul’s vision does not tell him all that the future holds. His vision tells him what he needs to know in order to move in the right direction. If his vision had been absolutely clear, he might well have balked at it.
Something similar happens a bit earlier, in Acts 10, where Peter is given a rather perplexing and confusing vision, apparently because if he had been told that he was to go to Caesarea and baptize a bunch of Gentiles—and a Roman centurion at that!—he would have balked.
Neither Paul in Troas nor Peter in Joppa receive a clear vision of what the future holds. Their vision tells them what they need to know in order to do what God wants them to do.
And now we are here. This graduation, and all the decisions and expectations surrounding it, may well make us feel like Paul at Troas. We may have been exploring various avenues of service, various career options, and have found the doors closed, like Paul in his desire to go to Bythinia. We may have visions of serving as pastors of a church, or of practicing pastoral care and counseling, or of expanding our ministry in new directions. We all have visions of applying what we have learned in new and exciting ways . . .
And yet, two things are certain: First, not one of our visions will turn out exactly as we expect, nor exactly as we wish. Our Macedonian men will become women from Thyatira. No matter how well we prepare, no matter how well we plan, the future will surprise us.
And, secondly, it is also certain that the real future —not the one we dream, but the one God plans— will be better than all our plans, and richer than all our dreams. The Macedonian man will become Lydia of Thyatira. The church unexpectedly founded by the river, where an unexpected audience was found, may well become the crown of all our achievements.
The vision need not be clear. I would even dare say, the vision will not be clear. But beyond the dimness of the vision, beyond your perplexity, exhilaration, doubts and dreams as you receive these credentials of your study, out there somewhere in the future, the God who called Paul to Macedonia and Peter to Caesarea it calling you to meet Lydia, to meet Cornelius, to meet God!
So be it! Amen!

[i]. A slightly expanded version of this sermon was preached at Garrettt-Evangelical Theological Seminary three days later.

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Dr. Stanley Hauerwas’ sermon for 2012 Commencement

nancy — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:08:37 +0000

Because It Is True

A Commencement Sermon

The 51��Ƶ

May 8, 2012

Exodus 19: 3-8
Psalm 15
Matthew 16: 24-27

            Because it is true. On this celebratory occasion, an occasion that is at once an end and beginning, my prayer for you is that in the future, when you are asked why you came to seminary, why you sought ordination, why you were willing to be a priest in a confused and compromised church, or even why you are a Christian, all you will be able to say is, “Because it is true.” That all you can say is, “Because it is true,” may mean you have had a difficult life, that is, a life stripped of what many associate with standards of success. Yet I side with the Psalmist who insists that those who would abide in the Lord’s tent must “speak the truth from their heart.” “Because it is true” is the necessary condition for such speech.
            I do not mean to suggest that if your life has been successful, or at least happy, you have failed to speak heartfelt truth. But we live in a time when Christians are tempted to make truth irrelevant for why anyone might consider being a Christian. Faced with the church’s declining membership and status, a cottage industry has developed to entice people to give Christianity a try. These strategies for church growth are designed to work in a manner that makes irrelevant questions of truth. I have no reason to deny that being a Christian may give your life meaning– whatever that may mean or whatever good it may do―may save your marriage, or even get you to work on time, but it is also the case that to speak the truth from the heart may disrupt our presumptions of success.
            Of course it is not only Christians who have given up on truth. Voltaire no longer thought he needed God as an explanatory hypothesis. In the same spirit Richard Rorty, one of our most distinguished contemporary philosophers, argued that truth is not a concept needed to sustain the work of philosophy or science. Nietzsche gave this denial of truth classical expression when he observed:
                        What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred and embellished, and which,                                 after long usage, seem to people to be fixed, canonical and binding. Truths are illusions we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.
This eloquent denial of truth earned Nietzsche the characterization “nihilist.” But ironically he was anything but a nihilist. At least he was not a nihilist if you acknowledge he was in fact passionately committed to living a life free of self-deception. As he wrote in The Gay Science the “’will to truth’ does not mean ‘I do not want to let myself be deceived’ but—there is no alternative—‘I will not deceive, not even myself’; and with that we stand on moral ground.” Yet Nietzsche knew that to avoid living free of deception must be an ongoing struggle for we so love the lie. Nietzsche is a witness Christians dare not ignore.
            Nietzsche was surely right to observe that we do not like to be deceived, but it is also true that we wish others to regard us more highly than we deserve. That is why Pascal observes that we hate the truth and those who would tell us the truth. We desire that others be deceived in our favor, that is, we want to be esteemed by others in a manner that confirms the illusions we harbor to sustain our life projects. That is why, Pascal suggests, few friendships would endure if each friend knew what was said by their friends in their absence. According to Pascal it is a fact that if everyone knew what was said of the them by others there would not be four friends in the world.
            From Pascal’s perspective human society is founded on mutual deceit because our loves, and in particular our self-love, requires that we hide from one another and ourselves the truth. We fear wounding one another with the truth because we so desperately want to be loved. We do not wish, therefore, for anyone to tell us the truth and we avoid telling it to others. These habits of deception become rooted in the heart making it impossible for us to speak truthfully from the heart.
            I fear you will find Pascal’s account of deceit all too relevant for your calling as a priest. After all you are a human being. You will want to be loved by those you serve. In particular you will be called to be present to your people when their lives are in crisis. Do not be surprised, however, because you have been present at such times those to whom you have been present will find it difficult to love you. Because you are a priest you will be welcomed by people even when they are without protection and have no way to disguise their vulnerability. In the midst of the crisis you will be loved, or at least admired, for your presence and care. But after the crisis is over you will discover the very intimacy established by the crisis between you and those to whom you were present now means they fear what you know of them. You have been allowed to see truthfully who they are which will often mean that they want as much distance from you as they can get.
            To sustain a community capable of having the lies that constitute our lives exposed, to sustain the practice of speaking the truth from the heart requires, as our Psalmist suggests, requires the creation of a people who do not slander one another. Rather they are people with a genius for friendship refusing to do evil to their friends. Nor do they reproach their neighbors because they honor all who fear the Lord. They stand by their oath even when it is not to their advantage, and they do not lend money at interest or take bribes against the innocent. The Psalmist seems to suggest these are the necessary conditions for a community of trust because without trust we are incapable of being truthful about ourselves. And if we are incapable of being truthful to ourselves we will eventually discover that we cannot be truthful to one another.
            For Christians the truth that makes such trust possible is no abstract truth. The truth that makes possible truthful speech, heartfelt speech, is a person. The “it” in “Because it is true” is a person. Truth for us is not a principle or system, not a structure of correct insights, not a doctrine. The expression of the truth may use any of these means to say what is true, but as Barth rightly insists, “Jesus Christ in the promise of the Spirit as His revelation in the sphere of our time and history is the truth.” Only in the person of Christ are we encountered by the one who can unmask our illusions without utterly destroying us. In Christ we are made intimate with God, making possible a nearness from which we do not flee.
            Jesus is the truth that judges and tests all other truths that would seek to be established independent of the love shown to us in Christ. Accordingly any attempt to judge Jesus by a theory of truth not determined by cross and resurrection can only tempt us to think we are the measure of what is true. Jesus is, as Barth maintains, the true witness who does not need to be confirmed or authorized by any other truth. Rather he is the truth from which all other claims of truth are to be judged. “He is the true Witness. He is Himself the truth and its expression. And in His existence and life as such He unmasks every other man.”
            Jesus is the heart from which the truth must be spoken. Thus the truth that must be spoken is known only through witness. Because he is the truth we can speak the truth. That speaking the truth takes the form of witness means we are confronted with this truth in a manner that does not allow us to distance ourselves from him. Any attempt to sunder truth from this the true witness, to make truth an idea about the relation between God and man, cannot be the truth. If the truth is thought to be but a symbol, no matter how exalted, it is but a falsehood. The true witness is this man of Gethsemane and Golgotha.
            Because the truth is this person, the one who endured Gethsemane and Golgotha, it is a truth that cannot resort to coercion to secure its status. The truth that is Christ, the truth that can only be known by witness, is a truth that must make its way in the world by refusing to use the desperate means of the world to force others to acknowledge what is claimed to be true. There can be nothing desperate about the witness that is Christ because what God has done through the Son cannot be undone. That is why the truth that is Christ is so compelling. It is compelling because those possessed by this truth are filled with joy.
            But then what are we to make of our Gospel for today in which we are told that any who would be a follower of Jesus must take up their cross and follow him? What are we to make of Jesus’ claim that those who would save their lives must be willing to lose their lives? I confess I cannot think of any advice more destructive for those called to the priesthood. Such advice cannot help but tempt you to think that your calling is sufficient for you to believe you are making a sacrifice of the self. Such a presumption, unfortunately, is a formula for priests to try to secure their status and power by becoming proficient at playing the game of passive aggressive behavior.
            Jesus, however, does not say that to live sacrificially is a good in and of itself. Rather he says that those who lose their life for my sake will find their life. “For my sake” means that we are invited to be a witness to the witness that is Jesus. That witness to be sure may require a sacrifice, but if the sacrifice is to be true it must not point to itself but to Jesus. It is the cross of Christ that is the sacrifice that has ended all sacrifices other than those whose end is Christ. By the grace of God we are invited to share in Christ’s sacrifice, but such a sharing makes possible lives no longer captured by our self-deceptive strategies to secure our own significance. The appropriate description for lives so determined is joy.
            Joy is the mark of lives shaped by the truth that is Christ. To be captivated by such a truth, to be as the Psalmist suggests, a heartfelt speaker of the truth, means those so determined will “never be moved.” “To never be moved” is the Psalmist’s way of saying that those whose lives are determined by Christ can be trusted to be who they say they are.   “Sincerity” and “integrity” are not sufficient to describe such people. Steadfast I think is closer to the mark. They are who they are by the grace of God.
            What a wonderful time to be a Christian. What a wonderful time to serve the Christian people. Odd sentiments if, as I suggested above, the church seems to be in a downward spiral. Yet that this is the case simply means we have nothing to lose by speaking the truth to ourselves, one another, and the world. It is surely the case that the world is dying –quite literally ― for a people capable of speaking the truth from their heart.   It is true that truth in our time is obscure and falsehood is well established, but that is no reason for us to despair of truthful speech. After all, God, through his Son, has shown us that to desire the truth requires loving the truth. For without love we cannot know the truth that moves the sun and the stars.
            So I end where I began, that is, I pray that when you are asked why you came to seminary; or later when you reflect on why you have given your life in service to the church, that is to say, why you have lived your life as a Christian, the only reason you have left to give ― and it is a sufficient reason ― is, “Because it is true.”

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