On
behalf of the class of 2012, I would like to welcome all of you to today’s
commencement. I would also like to say
thank you to all of you. Many of you are
family and friends, spouses and siblings who have tirelessly supported each of
us throughout these years of seminary.
You have put up with our absence due to reading books, or learning Greek
or Hebrew, or writing intimidating long papers for Bill Witt or Erika Moore or
intimidating short papers for Rod Whitacre or Phil Harold. You have dealt with us wanting to share new
words and concepts with you that we don’t even understand, and have patiently
listened for hours on end while we talk about real presence in the Eucharist,
or the importance of the Greek participle in the Great Commission, or the often
fuzzy and less-than-glorious history of the Church. And many of you have supported us in very
tangible ways, either financially or by feeding us a meal when we have shown up
at your door with our best effort to give you puppy-dog eyes. In short, thank you for all of the patience
and love which you have given us. God
has used you to provide for us in so many ways.
Thank you.
If
you turn to the very back of your bulletin, you will see the class verse for
the class of 2012. Isaiah 61:1, “The
Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because
the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the
brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the
prison to those who are bound.” On
hearing this, one may think that this is a rather pretentious job description
that we have given ourselves, or that we have high hopes for our ministry. However, I would like to take a few moments
to look at this verse together, in order to discern what it means and why it
came to be our class verse.
The
original promise of Isaiah 61 was given to a people who were facing exile in
the hands of the great foreign power of Babylon . They had a long hard road ahead of them, of
road of imprisonments, of living in an impoverished and decimated land. The jobless and the homeless wandering the
countryside of Israel
seeking hope. What’s worse is that they
would be cut off from the Lord God because of their sins. It is in this context that the great hope is
proclaimed in Isaiah 61. To a people who
are the poor, God will come to bring good news, healing, liberty, and
freedom. If we were to read on, in verse
2 God declares that he will initiate the day of the Lord’s favor, when all sins
will be forgiven, and execute justice on the wicked. That is a great day to look forward to.
Many
of us will find ourselves in similar situations. I know that for me, Trinity has been a
wonderful place of God’s presence and transformation. Now, we will be far way from this place,
although I hope not because of our sins.
Wherever we are we will find the poor, materially and spiritually; we
will find the broken hearted; we will find the captive and the prisoner. In those circumstances we must remember these
promises of the Lord and be his mouthpiece to declare the Good News; that God
has indeed come to bring healing, liberty, and freedom. We know this because we are the poor,
brokenhearted, prisoners who have been freed by his grace. So, in one sense, I believe that this is why
Isaiah 61:1 came to be our class verse, because it is a promise that has
transformed us and one that we can proclaimed as fulfilled in the life, death,
resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ.
However,
I would not be giving an address at Trinity
School Galilee proclaiming good news, healing,
and teaching, and John gets disappointed.
He expected someone who would bring judgment, but Jesus didn’t seem to
be doing that. So he sends the messenger
to Jesus. “Are you it? You are don’t quite fit my agenda.”
Jesus
responds in a way very similar to our verse.
He sends a message back to John that “The blind receive their sight and
the lame walk, lepers are cleans and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up,
and the poor have good news preached to them.
And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” Jesus does not engage in a discussion on when
the big judgment was going to happen, or rebuke John for his lack of
faith. He does not tell him to tough it
out, to deal with it. He does not even
offer an explanation of his missionary strategy. Rather, he graciously points to the things
that he is doing and then points to himself.
He knows that an explanation will not help John in the long run. Instead of an explanation, he offers
something far superior; himself. John
had his own agenda which Jesus was not satisfying, but in the end he had to
drop his agenda and hold on to Jesus, because blessed is the one who is not
offended by Christ.
In
seminary, we have all had our share of disappointments, either in a paper that
we hoped to do better on, or a relationship that had hoped to develop but
didn’t, or a job that we thought that we would have at the end of this, but now
we do not. We have failed plenty of
times, and I’m sure that more than one of us has reconsidered our call. We came into seminary with a set of
expectations and hopes, our own agenda, and for many of us that agenda has not
been met.
And in the future,
we will meet with success, but we are also sure to meet with failure and with
disappointment. That youth group we thought
would start up doesn’t, the homeless ministry doesn’t yield fruit, and the
parish that seemed so happy to have us has all of a sudden turned into a mob
crying for our execution. In the face of
this disappointment, it is helpful to remember this exchange between John the
Baptist and Jesus. Even though we have
great promises of Scripture, which include Isaiah 61:1, we must remember that
it is God who fulfills them, in God’s way, not our own. In the face of disappointment, which is sure
to come, God does not offer us an explanation, he offers us himself. He came to this disappointment filled world
and died on a cross for the sins of the whole world, that we might be raised
with him to new life. In that moment, we
face the choice of holding onto our own agendas or holding on to Christ;
remembering that he is the one who said, “The Spirit of the
Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to
bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the
brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the
prison to those who are bound.” In his
time, in his way, he who promised is faithful in the face of our
disappointments.
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