Virtues for a University Ministry

From Paul's Letter to the Philippians: Rejoice in the Lord - always... Don't worry... In everything by prayer... with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds - in Christ Jesus.

One of the great challenges facing Christians today, I think, is to speak and act in ways distinctive to the good news about Jesus, while at the same time honoring the truth and goodness embodied in those who do not center their lives in the One we name as Lord and Christ. This is hardly a new problem. The earliest church grew up in a pluralistic culture, partly borrowing from it and partly seeking to transform it. But today, if I'm not mistaken, we believers in Christ need to meet our sisters and brothers of other faiths (or no faith) with a new honesty and openness, with a new humility that is unprecedented in church history. This situation has emerged not just because of the relativism of our age, or the enlightenment, or post-modernism, or the rise of great universities like this one whose business it is to offer critiques of all systems and ideas. No, the new call to openness, I believe, arises chiefly from within our faith itself. We know now, more than ever before, how indebted we are to other traditions of the world, especially Judaism. We also know, having survived what is the probably the bloodiest century ever, that the kingdom and peace of God announced by Jesus have not yet transformed the world in any final sense and that many who have called themselves Christians through the ages really brought more pain and sorrow than redemption to the human family.

And yet. And yet. This faith in which most of us here tonight share continues to inspire a hope and confidence that the prophet from Nazareth, who daily calls us to discipleship, is even now leading us toward the beautiful, the true, and the good, and in such a way that we can dare to be agents promoting the multiplication of these blessings for others.

Which is where you come in, Stephen; for tonight you are receiving the special grace of priesthood so that you may become, even more effectively, a source of blessing for others, particularly here in this university setting, where every possible mix of ideas and practices calls out for attention.

St. Paul knew a thing or two about pluralism; and though he apparently didn't fare too well in his debate with the philosophers on Mars Hill, one of the great university classrooms of his day (Acts 17), his thoughts about God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and humanity, crafted in his letters, have stood the test of time better than the systems of those who laughed at him that day in Athens.

So it's to Paul that I turn, Stephen, as I try to speak with you and with all of us here tonight about what a Christian mission in the university might mean these days. To be specific, I want to talk about what we can perhaps best call "virtues for a university ministry".

Nowhere does Paul sound more like a Hellenistic popular philosopher than in the closing verses of our appointed reading from Philippians: "Beloved," he writes, "whatever is honorable... just... pure... pleasing... commendable - if there is any excellence, anything worthy of praise, keep your minds on these things." Those lines could come straight out of Aristotle. And my guess is that they're inscribed on the walls of more than one college classroom here in the U.S. These words remind us that the New Testament isn't just a counter-cultural document. It doesn't simply attack what people outside the church hold to be beautiful, true, and good, but often builds on these ideals. Especially as Anglicans, I think we want to point up this feature of the gospel message to the university. And our rich tradition of literature, and music and art, including the liturgy, helps us immensely in that task. For us, the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God of Jesus, delights in the creativity of all humans.

But back to Paul. The apostle's language of virtue, affirming what Christians have in common with every person of good will, comes linked with a prologue. And that prologue sets out a number of attitudes and affects and behaviors that are closely associated with Jesus. Here's where we go when we need to articulate what's distinctive about our ministry as Jesus' disciples.

We can start with two of Paul's more outrageous commands: "Rejoice in the Lord always," and, "Don't worry about anything." He can't be serious, can he? In our age of cynicism and anxiety, what could these two imperatives possibly mean? How can we even begin to conform our emotional lives to these standards? And the answer of course is that we can't. Not on our own. Someone else must help. Someone else must take the initiative. Paul says: "Rejoice in the Lord." He means Jesus. And it's almost as if Jesus for him becomes a place where we can rest, a place in which we are given freedom to take in the good and rejoice. By virtue of his resurrection, Jesus navigates through our present world and the age to come at the same time. He is always opening up new times and spaces, offering new vistas of God's mercy. And he calls us to follow him there. That is how joy becomes possible, even in the midst of our griefs. It is the joy of discovering that something greater and more powerful than our hopelessness surrounds us even now. As for anxiety, it has to do with narrowness, constriction, the inability to breathe deeply. Jesus counters this by becoming our atmosphere, our pure oxygen, in whom we live and move and have our being. "The Lord is near," Paul writes. Yes, nearer than the molecules of the lifegiving air we inhale.

I don't pretend to say that constant rejoicing and the giving up of worries is easy or automatic. It's a discipline. We have to do our part, make our choices many times a day to cross that little threshold that separates gloom from glory. But because we live in Christ, in the new creation, we can make a start.

What do joy and the renunciation of worry have to do with university ministry? A great deal, I think. At least the communities of learning I'm familiar with seem all too often fueled by anxiety, by competition and suspicion, rather than the joy of discovery. Stephen, as a priest of the church, you are being placed here to show us a better way.

And Paul tells us more about this better way. "In everything by prayer... with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God." We've said that rejoicing and giving up worry is a discipline. So is Christian prayer; and its distinctive mark is the offering of thank For this reason we call our chief service of worship "eucharist," the Greek word for thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. Despite our national holiday by this name, it's not the most natural of human impulses because we so often operate from feelings of scarcity and deprivation and perceptions of limited resources. Thanksgiving presupposes abundance and overflow, even when we can't directly sense their presence. Here's where the wager of the gospel comes into play. Does God really give us more than we need? Is God really magnanimous - to us? The resurrection of Jesus and the gifts of the Holy Spirit stand as pledges that abundant life flows through us here and now - for all people. The act of thanksgiving, along with our prayers of supplication, and especially when we feel lost in neediness, means taking up the divine challenge, mapping out the events of our days as if God's promise of overflow is really true. And Stephen, I think you know from experience that the discipline of thanksgiving does in fact train our affections so that rejoicing and giving up worry become ever more genuine. Stephen, in this university setting, be a man of thanksgiving, and people will beat a path to the community you lead.

Finally Paul says: "And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." The peace of God. Here's the great shalom of Judaism and the Salem of Islam. Not just private tranquility, but a world-embracing power for harmony and justice. And one thing all three of our faiths can probably agree about in Paul's words is that such peace surpasses all understanding, which means that it comes to us even in the midst of conflict (and not incidentally also defies scholarly analysis).

Way back in 1983, Desmond Tutu served a term at the General Seminary as a visiting professor. All of us there knew that our guest was a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize that year, and on one day in particular the rumors ran high that an announcement was imminent. I remember walking home from my office that night - it was already dark. On the walk through the seminary courtyard I came face to face with just one person, our guest. "Peace, Desmond", I said. "Thank you", he said, and smiled. I knew exactly where he was heading - to the chapel where he often spent hours by himself in front of the altar. Well, not really by himself. Early in the morning of the next day, the Norwegian ambassador to the U.S. stepped into the seminary lobby carrying a bouquet of flowers. We all recognized the signal, and the whole seminary community immediately joined in a procession to the chapel where we spontaneously broke into the hymn "Now Thank We All Our God".

Since that fall of 1983 everyone knows what Desmond Tutu has had to live through, and how he has emerged from the years of turmoil with gratitude and a remarkable sense of humor, and above all with the conviction that God's peace can overcome the worst of human violence. South Africa is by no means a success story in every respect, but it continues to stand out among the nations as a place where miracles of peace occur.

Stephen, you don't have to be a Desmond Tutu. God doesn't require that. But, like him, please be a public man of peace, a leader of peace in the university. Let the peace of God, which is so bound up with rejoicing and thanksgiving and the letting go of anxiety, stand guard over your heart and your mind, so that those very natural impulses to get back at those who oppose you or the causes of justice for which you stand, may be screened out. Live in Christ so that the peace of God can live in you and radiate outward for everyone to see.

The Charge

Stephen, please stand. I'm well aware, my friend, that one of your favorite scripture passages from tonight's readings didn't make it into my message. Until now. You've told me that you've lived with our OT reading for a very long time. You probably know it by heart, but for the benefit of others here, let me recall it. It's about Isaiah's vision in the temple. He is overcome with, terrified by, the sight of God's heavenly throne and the seraphim hovering around it. Holy, Holy, Holy, they cry. Isaiah feels himself altogether unclean and unworthy in the presence of the Almighty. "I am lost", he says. But then one of the angelic beings places a live coal from the altar on Isaiah's mouth and pronounces him free of sin. We must imagine this as a wound. Only when Isaiah suffers it can he respond positively to God's plea: "Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?"

Stephen, you've told me more than once that God's calling to priesthood is not new to you. It came to you repeatedly, starting at an early age. But, if I may use your words, you managed for most of your life to answer the summons with, "Here am I; please send someone else." Well, tonight, and long before tonight, your time for demurral has run out. My guess is that you have been able to say yes to God now because of the purifying wounds you've received from the divine altar and because you have sensed, gradually, the grace, mercy, and peace of God mediated through those wounds. Tonight we celebrate with you as the wounds and the grace come together into a fresh form of ministry.

At the end of this service, you will pronounce over us your first priestly blessing. On the theory that you just can't have too many blessings, let me anticipate that great moment by speaking a benediction that closes many of our eucharists. Stephen, this is for you, but really it's for all of us.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God and of his Son Jesus Christ, and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always.

Amen.