It was not a sermon that went well. I spoke the words and proposed that 82 years was long enough to drive. He suggested I had not the faintest idea what I was asking him to do. His forest reverie was abruptly halted and then, in our Scandinavian Anderson family way, nothing more was ever said about it. On his birthday two months later, he told my mother he needed to go to the DMV. She drove him there with terror. He asked for an ID card, not a license. He was ready, it seems, for the transition that, at first, struck him as a loss of power, authority, mobility, strength, perhaps even more.

I don鈥檛 suggest a one-for-one parallel; you draw whatever conclusions you will. I do say, however, that I too am ready to give back my keys, my fob, my AmEx card in trade for a visitor鈥檚 ID. And I come to this moment overwhelmed with awe and gratitude that you are here. I will say no more about that because I will not be able to hold back my emotions so I鈥檒l shift into a role that I feel most comfortable with and bring a brief homily. My gratitude for the privilege of working with you is boundless. If I could I would anoint you each with oil to bless you for spending your lives in the service of this mission that matters but I start on personal goodbyes, the tears will start and I鈥檒l never get home to finish packing.

There鈥檚 a covering, I call it, a sacred canopy in biblical teachings that has power in my life, authority over my life, and gives meaning to my life. Biblical writers called it covenant; Wendell Berry uses a word that will not let me evade what it means: he speaks of fidelity. It is, he would say, membership in something that is human and flawed, but that matters in ways that shape entire generations of people. Please hear those words: fidelity shapes entire generations of people. Fidelity is a relationship; it is a membership.

Covenant for Israel was a promise God made to them and an often failed promise they made to YHWH. He would always be their God; they promised to obey. I suppose it sounds like something you do with a pre-school child but only if you don鈥檛 know the way a covenant was ratified in the era of Old Testament history. They called it 鈥渃utting鈥� a covenant. It involved a 1200 or 1500 hundred pound heifer. Two parties would bisect the animal鈥攊t sounds sanitary when I use that word but I worked one summer at Swift & Company in the stockyards and spent some days with a massive saw doing exactly that with 1000-pound hogs. It was anything but sanitary. Then the two parties would walk between the two halves of the animal to symbolically 鈥渃ut鈥� the covenant. It was as if they said in their steps taken together: 鈥淚f either of us break this covenant, may this happen to you.鈥� In the American culture of 2017, I imagine we see it as violent, brutal, and harsh. PETA would certainly not approve. But, sadly for us, most of our covenants have simply become transactions, our priest鈥檚 attorneys and our agreements financial.

In my wedding in August of 1970, I made a covenant with Wendy in the name of Jesus. In my ordination in the fall of 1975, I made a covenant with the church in the name of Jesus. In both cases we did something that was grounded in a practice that sits uncomfortably for many of us today. I certainly know my failings in my marriage. I certainly know my failures in ministry. But in both cases, something happened between me and her and between me and the church because it was not a contract but a covenant which demands something more than, protects something. 47 years later, I have now walked through all of my days with the woman who let me stand beside her in a Seminary Chapel in Minnesota. 42 years later, I remain ordained鈥攊t鈥檚 not that I can鈥檛 just shake it, I can鈥檛 uncut the covenant.

It is not based in fear or threat and it is not based in mere sentiment or nostalgia. I do not look like I did at 21 and 26. We are not those people we were in the 1970鈥檚. The pastor who married us is long gone, the pastor who guided my ordination council died just recently at 95, those who laid hands on me in a sanctuary on Mark Street in Pontiac, MI are mostly gone and the sanctuary now bears the name of an all-Black congregation, no long American Baptist Bethany Baptist Church. Still, something happened to me, in me, with me, around me, with her and with them and I cannot change the story. I married Wendy Lee McJunkin. I cannot erase that reality. It marks me in ways that brings grace and delight and scars and sadness and the deepest possible fulfillment. I took the vows of ordination as an American Baptist clergy. I cannot erase that reality. I no longer function in a role as a minister of word and sacrament in a local parish but I am always ordained. Which is why I take ordination to be so sacred, not to be treated frivolously. It too is sacred and holy work. It is a declaration of covenant with the church.

Something happened to me that I cannot undo. I entered into covenant with Jesus in those moments, just I had as a ten year old in my baptism. I knew far less then what I was getting into but I also had a heart that longed that every word they spoke over me could be true. In that moment too something happened to me. I was baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the Anglican Church we say that baptism marks us with the Spirit forever.

And so I tell you, I testify to you that I entered covenant at 10, 21, and 26. I have sometimes failed my part of the covenant but I cannot wander far from a life-long realization that the one with whom I entered covenant has not failed his part. This one has confused me, troubled me, startled me, caused me sleepless nights and placed me in situations I never wanted to go but told me in covenant,

鈥淚 will never leave you or forsake you.鈥�
鈥淚 will be with you always even to the end of the age.鈥�
鈥淵ou are my beloved in whom I am well pleased.鈥�

I wish I believed that every day and felt it in a visceral way every day and in the dark nights of the soul. I may not always feel it, but somewhere deep inside I know it to be the truest thing there is in this universe. If I give up on covenant, then I am left alone in a world populated only by humans as flawed and failed and finite as I; then the world of enchantment, spirit, principalities and power and the unrelenting otherness of the creator is gone or dulled or muted.

And so I find as I come close to fourscore and ten that I claim fidelity in the very core of my bones. I claim there is truth in the one with whom I entered into covenant and there is truth in the book he left to help us find our way. It is not a truth for a time long since forgotten because we are more sophisticated in our hermeneutics or more educated in our psychology or more knowledgeable in our neuroscience or more adept in our organizational strategies. It is often considered a very narrow truth to still believe in the incarnated truth of the person of Jesus. It is almost pass茅 in our culture to even call it truth as if truth could exist on its own. As if God is more than just my idea of God. As if Jesus is more than metaphor but existed in human flesh and walked among us. I see it in our culture and I see it at times in our building. What we once held with conviction has changed into something less clear and sharp.

But it is truth that led our partner in the covenant to a cross where he practiced his faithfulness to our agreement, where he practiced his fidelity to his word, where he did precisely what he said he would do. And, in his resurrection, the Father of all creation did the same as he raised the Son to resurrected life through the power of the Holy Spirit as an act of faithfulness to the covenant. This is more precious to me than anything: we stand in the face of this culture today and say, we declare, we testify, we claim a stake in the ground. We say at the start of every single year: 鈥渨e believe鈥︹�� We believe in something, someone that matters. Not in just a kind of balance that will make everyone feel good. Not in the kind of tolerance where we鈥檇 like to have everyone agree with us or at least to not be offended because we know where we stand and on what we stand; not everything weighs the same. Not so afraid to declare our conviction in what some see as the narrow truth of Jesus. Not only is that kind balance and that kind of life boring, it is dishonest. Our DNA in this place has taken stands. We have driven stakes of belief in the ground. Belief requires courage. Balance require only compromise.

I don鈥檛 know the future of 天美视频, the church, or any of us in the end. But, in my final words to you as your President, I call you to the raw courage of covenant; I call you to fidelity as I did in my inauguration鈥攖o live unashamed of the gospel of Jesus in whose name I now hand over the keys to the leadership of this school. We鈥檙e all aware of the challenges for that in our culture today. We鈥檙e all aware of how much easier it is to soften our commitment to the convictions of our faith. I love the way our Trustees have put their intentions in sharp and unmistakable conviction: A Trustee at 天美视频 is 鈥渁 woman or man of well-articulated faith in Jesus, able to tell the story of their own faith journey.鈥� It is the requisite for leadership at all levels in the mission of 天美视频. We are, first of all, people who believe. We are, first of all, people who profess faith in Jesus. We are, first of all, people who declare our faith with our words and then practice our faith with our work. It has been the heartbeat of my life in ministry which I place before you as I prepare to leave.

I saw Harrison Ford interviewed by Charlie Rose the other night. He said what I want you to hear: 鈥淚n all of my roles and in all of work, whatever good has been accomplished is because of collaboration. Everything I鈥檝e done has been done in collaboration.鈥� I鈥檝e said it and I say it again: what we have done, what we have created, what we have built, what we have accomplished is the work of all of us. It is not the work of one person now and will not be in the future. But it does take the breath away from this man. The words to describe our journey together are many: resilient, courageous, innovative, fiercely committed to mission, costly, graced, sacred, holy, anointed, trusted work. My friends, we have much of which we can be proud. We鈥檒l soon be 21. No longer in our childhood or early adolescence. Not yet fully grown up. And may we never get there. But hundreds of lives have been informed, formed and transformed. Oh yes, we have much of which we can be proud. I am ever grateful to have walked alongside you in this profound and sacred journey. I met recently with my pastor who said to me, 鈥淢y best advice is simply to leave with grateful and open hands.鈥� That I do now.

In the Anglican tradition, when the rector finishes their work in a congregation she or he takes the stole, the pectoral cross, and the vestments of the sacrament and places them on the altar as they walk out in a simple white robe, still ordained, still within the covenant, but no longer authorized by the local community for leadership. I experienced this as our rector, Dennis, retired some months ago. I didn鈥檛 see it coming. I didn鈥檛 know to expect it. The visual imagery was almost too much. He took the outer vestments he had worn and used and that we all had come to know and expect and placed them back in the hands of the congregation. He didn鈥檛 leave having lost his ministry; he moved forward to something next. As did the congregation. The mission, the ministry, the sacred and holy work did not change because one leader walked out the door. The conviction, the mission, the ministry, the sacred and holy work remained where it always is to be found: in the hearts and minds, spirits and souls of us all in fidelity to the covenant.

We have no such tradition here but in my inauguration as President in 2009, I was given a symbol that I give back to you now that you may place it in the hands of a new president with whom you will create a new covenant. The sextant is a symbol of leadership that looks ahead, to read that which is to come and to see what helps to guide the ship to its destination. I look forward to the ceremony when you will place it in my hands again so, on your behalf, I can give it to the next president on behalf of our covenant.

I pray that you will be will be as gracious, forgiving, kind and caring to one another as you have been with me. I pray that you will continue to speak the truth in love and I pray with tears in my soul that you will remain people of fidelity in the name of Jesus, always for the sake of the Kingdom. AMEN.

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As President of 天美视频, I condemn it wholeheartedly and unequivocally. The Mayor of Charlottesville said, 鈥淭he nation is speaking with one voice of what they saw here and what needs to happen next.鈥� Hate speech that incites violence is not free speech that leads to discourse. 聽I remember the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he said, 鈥淥ur lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.鈥� As a student of history, I find it reprehensible and shocking to see not only vestiges but also a renewal of calls for the violence of white supremacy, racism, neo-Nazism, fascism and the deplorable movement of the Ku Klux Klan. These things can only be called evil in our culture. 聽

As we move into the beginning of a new school year, this community will choose to face the evil of this event through education, respect, discourse and commitment to the kingdom of God. May we be those who speak the fierce truth of Jesus in the fierce love of the living Christ. May we embody a spirituality of our own repentance even as we call it forth from others.

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You are the final class over which I have spoken the words which authorize the completion of your
Graduate education. It is an honor I do not take lightly. On the one hand, what are you doing today is
Ceremonial.It always has been. Caps and gowns, colorful stoles, ceremony, pomp and circumstance are
the vestiges of the past. Robes are part of the history of higher education.But in an earlier time
in history there was something pragmatic about it all too. Robes were worn for warmth and some even
suggest the arms were long to allow faculty to place cheese and fruit so they could have a good lunch
during the day.

There is talk today about whether degree in higher education are a thing of the past. It’s
a fair enough conversation especially if all we do today is ceremony. It is not. In its
truest, deepest, and most dangerous sense, what we do here today is not only ceremonial; it is
Apostolic. We celebrate you because we now get to watch you go. Today is a sending that is not only
an ending, not only a culmination, not only completion but also something much more profound.

I saw a couple of you flinch when I said what we do is dangerous. Education as we engage it at The
天美视频 is neither abstract, nor isolated from life; we dare to say it is transformational. It brings
change that is bone-deep. What was when you first walked into the doors of 2501 Elliott is no more. If
we鈥檝e done our work well, the already-formed person you were then has become more deeply
informed, formed, and transformed. But it is something more: you are the embodiment now of our
dreams for you. Today, in other words, is deeply embedded in the dreams this community has for the
future. We dare to claim it is missional.

Education, at its very best, moves from deep thinking to living justly.

The Irish Poet Yeats said, 鈥淓ducation is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.鈥� Your diploma may be the bucket, but what you do in your life is the fire.

Today, therefore, is not the completion of mission but the commencement of mission; not the ending of something only but the beginning of something next. It is another grand beginning. It is the beginning of the mission that you will carry into communities, neighborhoods and homes.

I鈥檝e been reading a biography of John Adams, our second president. As he thought about helping to lead the colonies toward independence, he recognized one thing of dramatic moment: 鈥淚n everything one must consider the end.鈥� In education, we must always look to the end, the outcome, the telos. As absolutely momentous as these diplomas are, we do not educate for the sake of diplomas鈥攚e educate for the sake of your apostolic calling. We educate for the disruption you will bring, and the grace and, I pray, for the discourse you will engender. For the respect you will embody. For the ability to bring nuanced thought and not the cheap and easy fundamentalism of either the left or the right. We educate to be people of grace and gospel. Ire say we educate you for truth. We educate you to be people of text. If you believe you have somehow grown beyond the wisdom and truth of biblical text, then we have failed in our mission. I call you to not only read the text but to live in it all of your lives.

What we do today is a harbinger of things to come鈥攁 preview of coming attractions: It is culmination but it is commencement in the truest sense of beginning. It is, most deeply an apostolic liturgy in which our community gathers in the holiest of moments to send you forth, in the name of Jesus, for the sake of the kingdom of God.

Elsewhere I have written for you graduates my vision for what lies ahead for you. I want to share only one part of that vision. Simply, put, I declare today that you are priests standing at an altar. Every job has a workspace. For some of us it is a desk. These days many in our building stand at their desks as a matter of health (or maybe as protest against the rest of us who continue to sit).

In the world of religion, the sacred desk may be a pulpit for proclamation or an altar for Eucharist. It is a holy place of liturgy, scripture, word and sacrament. For my father, the lithographer, his workspace was often in his car as he traveled to printing houses in and around Chicago to sell the artwork the lithographic plate makers created in his shop with cameras, cutting tables, and color wheels. For my mother, her workspace was our home, a kitchen table, kitchen sink, and household but it was often, ironically, also the family car as she delivered five children to activities, jobs, and events and cared for a special needs child. For some it is a surgical table, a whiteboard, or classroom, a tractor, plow, and textbooks to study agronomy and weather. It may be a laptop and computer link to the business of securities, government, finance, and commerce.

The poetry of the prophets, however, intends to proclaim that we all have our own 鈥渁ltar in the world鈥� because God is served in all of the ways we serve others. God鈥檚 house, says the psalmist is the whole earth. God鈥檚 鈥渨ork,鈥� therefore, is not limited to what a few ordained clergy do, but what we all do when we are listening, paying attention, alert to serve at our own altar in the world.

Kevin Kline starred in a movie called My Life as a House. It is the story of a man who is dying of cancer, but only he knows his diagnosis. I鈥檝e seen the movie at least half a dozen times because I鈥檓 drawn in by the emotions it evokes in me. He is divorced from his wife and estranged from his self-loathing teenage son who considers his father a relic of something long since forgotten. He owns a piece of property that overlooks the California coast that once contained a ramshackle house built by his own father. He gets fired from his architectural firm and in a moment of rage destroys all the architectural models he created over this career but keeps one鈥攊t is the design for a new house he wants to build on the site of his father鈥檚 house.

After his death, he speaks to his son about life in a voice-over: 鈥淚 always thought of myself as a house. I was always what I lived in. It didn鈥檛 need to be big; it didn鈥檛 even need to be beautiful; it just needed to be mine. I became what I was meant to be. I built myself a life. I built myself a house.鈥�

What his words miss, of course, is that we not build alone. Graduates鈥攜ou did not come to this moment on your own. We do not live in a flat world inhabited only by us. We live in a house build, as Paul said yesterday, where the Risen One is alive and active鈥攚here the Risen One is at work to call and form and now to send. What that means is that our task is always to listen and look, to know what the Risen One whose name is Jesus is calling and forming and at work sending us to do—in the holy work we all are called to do. Hear me now: Each of us has an altar in the world.

This ceremony today will end as it should end鈥攚ith our Dean speaking a word of benediction in the name of God, father, son, and Holy Spirit. It will end with a ceremonial procession from this place. You came into this place alone to pursue your dreams. We leave this place together, as a learning community, which now sends you forth as the church has always done鈥攚ith words of holy benediction: Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

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As I write these words I’m somewhere in Texas on a train heading north. I don’t yet know the outcome of the election鈥攕till too close to call.

This was my 13th time to vote in a national election. My candidates have lost many times鈥攕tarting with George McGovern the first time I voted. During those elections we were at war, in recession, deep in inflation, and at each other over Vietnam, civil rights legislation, foreign policy, the draft, and social agendas that seemed destined to tear us apart.

This year’s election has revealed a schism, a great divide, deeply felt animosity, disrespect and fear in our country鈥攐ften from one group against another. This time around, middle ground seems harder to find. Platitudes don’t serve us well鈥攖he gaps are enormous and the fears are palpable. In our na茂vet茅, I suspect some thought this election would provide resolution and an ending to a long political season. We’ll see.

Platitudes don’t serve us well鈥攖he gaps are enormous and the fears are palpable.

When a nation is divided it is vulnerable. Such vulnerability highlights the need for character and skills that we hope are foundational to a 天美视频 education: curiosity in the midst of differences, discourse even in contested conversations, listening when all you want to do is walk away, 鈥渁nd offering a table鈥� in the very presence of those with whom we most strongly disagree. To be people of such character and skill is costly鈥攁nd more costly for some in our midst than others.

The election results were just reported: The theme of 鈥渢oo close to call鈥� is slowly giving way to a different reality.

Some, perhaps most, are reeling in disbelief. For some it is the joy of what seemed impossible, for some it is shock. I remember students and staff who wore black when their candidate lost, conjuring an old American tradition of grief at what seemed an impending death of hope. Some in our midst undoubtedly feel that same sense of loss, that same death. In the face of such, what is there to be said?

I suppose the right thing to say is we are called now, as always, to deep prayer. We are called to speak truth in love. We are called to serve the only kingdom that will prevail with prophetic cries for and against, to say 鈥測es鈥� and to say 鈥渘o,鈥� to act as agents of peace, reconciliation, and grace. The right thing is to remind us in the depths of our grief or fear, God is present to us all as we wrestle with life in its hardest moments.

God is present to us all as we wrestle with life in its hardest moments.

, Vice President of Student & Alumni Development, asks what I believe is one of the great questions for Christians to ponder: 鈥淲here do you wrestle with the angel of hope, the angel of despair, and the angel of blessing?鈥� Perhaps this is such a time we wrestle with the angel of despair: There is anger that is real, fear we cannot calm, and questions about the future of our democracy that do not have answers. This is a time when 鈥渞ight things to say鈥� fall on deaf ears or hard hearts or shocked and numbed minds. So we must start with the grief and fear that inhabits our bodies, the trauma which is within us and around us. Beginning there gives us choices. We must find those with whom to cry and rage and those who share our sense of gain or loss.

And, yet, if we stay there, inevitably the divide will continue to grow and the days ahead promise to express our divisions in rancor, ugliness, and more fear.

I am not oblivious or detached. Political gains and the losses are real. They shape strategies and call for action to correct, overturn, or reverse what we see as wrong, unjust, or evil. The issues are enormous, the consequences grave, and the stage, global. And yet…we will have moments with each other, face-to-face. In classes, families, households, and communities, there will be moments for us all to talk against each other or past each other or over each other or even those outside our doors. It now falls to each of us and all of us together to ask, 鈥淲hat now?鈥�

Democracy has been chosen a 13th time in my life. Each time it calls me to the only kingdom that will always prevail for even the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. We are a community of diverse political views in a divided nation. Feel your passion. Look always for injustice. Fight always against evil. And may we find ways to speak truth in love, continue to practice kindness and grace, and look for surprising evidence of the kingdom to God, the good news of Jesus Christ, to our right and to our left, behind us and before us.

I offer my thoughts as my prayer and call us as followers of Jesus to help us heal and find ways forward together as we go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

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Well, we鈥檙e almost there. We鈥檙e in the final moments of what started back in February. At 天美视频, we call it (S)ending. It is an ending鈥攁 conclusion. But it is also, in the truest sense, a sending for the sake of the mission.

When you think of a charge to graduates you typically think of the final (S)ending out鈥攁n apostolic charge from this community to those sent in the name of Jesus. Go, proclaim, teach, and live. The charge to graduates that I wish to bring is both prayer and proclamation. It acknowledges that we alone don鈥檛 really send you; you go as you are called by the One who precedes us all into tomorrow.

So God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, would you go with these our graduates into a singular future you have in your heart for each of them? Would you go with them into the constantly changing milieu of our world and move them to deeper faith and not to the sarcasm, cynicism, and anger that pervades our social discourse? Would you be the one to charge them to remain alert and attentive as people who listen for your living voice? As your people moved from the settled faith and place of Jerusalem to an epoch of homelessness in exile, your people did not abandon faith, give in to despair, settle for the religions of the dominant culture, or retreat into escape from the battleground of courageous faith.

You are the God of revelation: would you show them the way to live as people of text? Graduates, I call you to continue to be enscripted by text. May what began here in coursework, study groups, and personal wrestling continue in a hermeneutic that is lifelong. I call you to never be too far removed from the living word of God鈥攖o study biblical text, to trust it, to engage it, to ponder what it means, even as you continue to learn what it means to listen to the living voice of God in your future. I call you to be led by text, to have confidence that we are not orphans in this world but have been given an identity in a text that is Torah for our lives. In a culture where many are without text, I call you to be scribes, students whose text is not thin or merely human or merely personal but is big enough, nuanced, dense, and rich because it is a portal to the holy presence of God at the very center.

Graduates, I pray that God will continue to pour out God鈥檚 Spirit, presence, voice, and power upon each of you and that you, animated by the Spirit, will become uncomfortable because you will be empowered to stand with those who suffer and cry out in loud lament. Because you will be able asked to engage battle for the sake of peace, suffer loss that others will gain.

That you, animated by the Spirit, will be a people of ferocious faith who live with conviction and take the risk of activism.

That you will be people who bring a third way of respect and discourse into the polarized context of June 2016.

That you will find yourselves to be people whose lives of faithfulness to gospel creates unfettered imagination for grace, mercy, peace, hope, and redemption, all in concrete, specific, small ways in your homes, neighborhoods, clinics, studios, churches, work stations, corporate offices, and, of course, coffee shops.

Finally, our God, would you walk with these our graduates as people not only of text and soul but of culture? We do not live as human persons apart from cultural contexts, and our cultures are many. Graduates, you know you leave a thick and sometimes parochial culture called 天美视频. You may even miss our in-house language, which is understandable only to a few. I call on you to both treasure your learning and to be skeptics of it as well. You are not done. Your convictions will continue to take form, and your decisions will declare your convictions to those around you. And you will decide each day to say yes and to say no, to sit back or sit down or stand up and step forward.

The prophet Jeremiah said to his people, 鈥淏ut seek the shalom of the city where I have sent you and pray on its behalf, for in its shalom, you will find your shalom.鈥� So, graduates, I call you to be people who live shalom, embody shalom, and bring shalom to the culture in which you are called to serve. I call on you to be people empowered with eyes to see and ears to hear a call not to withdraw but to engage at your own altar in the world. You are charged to be salt, agents of transformation and redemption. You are called to be light in the shadows and darkness, pain and trauma of our world.

I believe Anne Lamott got it right. She talked about the redemptive role played by a lighthouse. She said so very simply: 鈥淟ighthouses don鈥檛 go running around all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.鈥� As you will鈥攇rounded where you are in time and place.

You see, I ask as strongly as I can that you remember one thing: you are people of privilege now鈥攅very one of you鈥攆or you join less than 2% of the population of the entire earth, because you have graduate education and there are precious few of us on the face of the earth. That is privilege, but more deeply it is responsibility. You don鈥檛 get to hoard your wealth without doing harm to others. As people in culture, as people who make culture and engage it, you are a steward of your learning鈥攁lways for the sake of others.

Because Yahweh will walk with you through presence and voice, and yes, silence and mystery:

May your lives become practices of doxology
May your future be shaped by new narratives of Jesus
And may your lives become living texts co-written with the living God.

So, you鈥檙e not done. But you are now graduates whom we love and celebrate with hearts bursting with pride and joy. You came to a semi-monastic experience marked by chimes of nine, noon, and three, Anamchara, and Sacred Space. You leave as those sent out in the name of Jesus and, always, for the sake of the kingdom of God. So, I say to you one final time, go in peace to love and serve the Lord. AMEN.

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I know the corner of Snelling and Larpenteur Avenue in St. Paul very well. I lived near that corner in Falcon Heights for twenty years. I know the streets of Dallas reasonably well from travel into the train station near the shooting scene a few blocks away. I鈥檝e never been to Baton Rouge, but the painful grief for families of all victims over this past week鈥攖hat grief is common to all who have suffered loss through death. None of us can know what personal loss, pain, grief, rage, and anguish are felt by each person in their individual grief this week, but we share common suffering, nonetheless.

I started the week with an email from a black friend whose grief for the danger to young black men in our city streets is personal, palpable, and runs deep. I ended the week with a plaintive cry from another who asked, 鈥淒o we ever grieve the brutal loss of five police officers?鈥� The questions are honest, and the emotions felt in each setting is raw. President Obama said it before the Dallas murders, when he called the nation to acknowledge the role of race in many police actions and to also acknowledge the risk of those who stand in the places of risk to protect and serve.

My pastor in Minneapolis told me of the many times he was stopped as a young black man by white police officers. The most painful moment for him was the first time his young son walked home with him from programs at the church. Up against the squad car, legs spread, the patdown for weapons, a warning, and then he was free to go. Nothing like an apology or explanation. He was well known in the Park Avenue neighborhood north of downtown but that didn鈥檛 matter. He looked suspicious simply because he was black. I have spent time with one of the living saints in my world, John Perkins, who was mercilessly beaten nearly to death by Mississippi State Police because he was black. Again, on his way home from ministry with young people, he was stopped but also assaulted by white officers he would later forgive. It happens and it is tragic.

I grew up in a neighborhood in Chicago with an Irish cop next door. Bill McCabe spent every day walking his beat, driving his vehicle and eventually getting badly hurt in a high speed chase. Every day he put his life on the line. I loved him, admired him, and respected deeply the work he did. He kept us safe after all; he was a cop. Three of my nephews spent time in uniform, two in the Marines and one in the US Army. My son-in-law is a firefighter in Portland who does the same鈥攈e works in a job which can put his life at risk at any time, on any given day. In our church we pray each week for those who go into harm鈥檚 way鈥攊n the military, police, fire department, and anywhere else the job has high risk.

Seven people last week started the day as any other day but didn鈥檛 go home that night. Five of them knew they might be in harm鈥檚 way because that is their job as Dallas police; two did not. What is our response?

As followers of Jesus, we have a role to play, words to speak, and presence to bring. I think we would agree to that in the abstract. I took students to Chicago for many years for an urban immersion course in ministry and sociology. We made the case that biblical faith calls for a life committed to justice鈥攐n that everyone seemed to agree. The difficulty came when seemingly contested choices came into play: is it more just to tear down an old factory and build low cost housing, or to build a new factory which can provide jobs for the neighborhood? Is it more just to fight for civil rights for people of color or to build the case for religious freedom in our nation? Is justice better served by moving to the inner city, identifying with the poor and living in solidarity with those who are under-privileged, or to create good housing, good schools, and opportunities for our own children to grow in safe neighborhoods wherever they might be? Does Jesus care more about the two young black men killed last week or the five police officers?

As followers of Jesus, we have a role to play, words to speak, and presence to bring.

What I can say with certainty is that each of these offer what are most likely false binary opposites, what G.K. Chesterton might have called 鈥渇urious opposites.鈥� He was speaking of competing doctrines but said, 鈥淐hristianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious.鈥�

I don鈥檛 think we are invited by our faith to choose one 鈥渟ide鈥� over against another. Racial brutality is not only criminal; it is, I believe, an affront to the living God and to our common humanity. When black citizens near my old neighborhood in St. Paul are unjustly profiled and mistreated by white police officers, there ought to be a cry of outrage from all citizens. But to take up weapons against all police from a rooftop in Dallas or highway in Tennessee or wherever it will come next, ought to raise a cry of outrage from us, as well.

I do not know the pain of racial prejudice as do my friends of color. I do not know the fearful worry for the families of honest and faithful police either, who wait each night for their loved ones to return. I too have been stopped for traffic violations but never met with brutality. I have never been stopped by police in my neighborhood in inner city Pontiac, suburban St. Paul, rural Iowa, or Whidbey Island or small town South Dakota or Bainbridge.

The sin in common in all cases in this past week is the sin of accepting the opposites as somehow acceptable, just, and right. The sin is to declare our solidarity with one against another. Should I choose the young black man or choose the police? If I choose the way of violence against one perceived monster, do I not thus become party to the violence against others?

I have no adequate way to say what I believe today except this: When we choose to take up sides against another in ways that justify the violence, injustice, brutality, and murder of either, we have not taken the way of Jesus, who calls us to bring peace, to serve as reconcilers, and to pray for all鈥攅ven those whom we might call enemy. When we declare our solidarity with victims against perpetrators, we must be careful that we don鈥檛 create solidarity with those who will become perpetrators against new victims. I don鈥檛 know what happened in the minds and hearts of police officers who killed two young black men in two different settings this week. I don鈥檛 know what happened in the mind and heart of the sniper who chose to kill five cops simply because they were white.

I know one thing with certainty: we all lost something precious in the last week of our common lives in this country. We lost some part of our common humanity. We lost our ability to trust each other. We lost our ability to see the other as one created in the image of the living God. We lost community with some who are different than we are. Every time there is violence against people, we lose something precious. Was there justice in the actions of the first two police? Was there justice in the revenge of the sniper? In my way of seeing the world, vengeance is a statement of failure because it is a declaration of total despair, not of hope. In my way of seeing the world, racial brutality is always a sign of failure because it dehumanizes another in unjustifiable violence.

We lost our ability to see the other as one created in the image of the living God.

I know that it probably doesn鈥檛 matter a great deal what I think about all of the pain of these past weeks. I know that, as usual, some will disagree with me鈥�on one side or the other. But I know that silence is a sin of its own kind in a week when assault has been the language spoken in the streets of our country. One biblical language that seems most appropriate today is the language of lament, the cry of Israel that says most simply, 鈥淗ow long, O Lord, how long?鈥�

And then these words of Rabbinic commentary on Micah 6:8: 鈥淒o not be daunted by the enormity of the world鈥檚 grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.鈥�

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Christmas this year has taken an unexpected turn. At the epicenter of it happens to be two coffee companies. I know them well. A few years ago, Wendy and I were given a tour of the CIA with a donor. Actually you basically get a tour of the hallway; down the hallway and behind locked doors are important things that happen; in the hallway you are pointed toward the important things behind high security doors. Come to think of it, that was the role the angels, actually a Greek word for messengers, played: pointing to where the important things were happening.

It requires a higher classification than a visitor鈥檚 badge to get behind the doors at the CIA. But, we did get to eat lunch in the CIA cafeteria where all the presidents have visited. And there it was: culture in contrast. On one side was a dark wood, green-countered, wood-chaired, subtly lit and classy looking coffee company from Seattle: Starbucks. On the exact opposite side was a diner-like space with bright lights, tile floors, diner-type stools, and a far better food selection: Dunkin鈥� Donuts from Canton, Massachusetts. That was a couple of years ago.

This year鈥攁 red cup with nothing about Christmas or a Dunkin鈥� Donuts styrofoam cup with large letters that declare Joy in red and green traditional colors? The controversy stirred by Starbucks has been intense, for some.

Thankfully, for me, those are not my only choices. Frankly, I don鈥檛 look to the American business culture for an epiphany or appearance of something revelatory. When that happens I am surprised. But the epiphany more likely comes when we gather as a worshipping community of expectation, wonder, waiting, faith, and yes, surprise.

It happens to me year after year. Even the coffee cup controversy can help us ask the deeper question: what鈥檚 going on? What鈥檚 behind this season of Advent? What does it matter, after all? It鈥檚 only about the birth of a child in a small Middle Eastern village, but that birth got people talking and wondering and Starbucks or Dunkin鈥� Donuts notwithstanding, it still does鈥攚ith more vitriol and rejection of cultural views of Jesus, I suppose, but there is still a hint of scandal that keeps us talking. This birth has mythology around it and icons of sheep and shepherds, turbaned magi from even farther east, choirs of angels and bright night skies. And, who is the daddy of this child anyway?

Advent鈥攖he word is jarring in its etiology. Advent simply means the arrival or the coming of something or someone noteworthy. The Greek word came from another word, Parousia, which takes the minds of our MDiv students to another coming鈥攁 second coming, as it were. Another arrival. But here鈥檚 the tricky part: if Advent means someone is coming, someone to notice, someone to whom we need to pay attention, then Advent is a time for us to make up our minds all over again. It鈥檚 a season when we decide if we鈥檒l join those who became convinced that God entered human history in that birth, that he arrived here鈥攊n history and geography.

I like the word particularity because it says you can鈥檛 just dismiss this child鈥攂orn in time and place, a particular moment, a particular gender, a particular ethnicity, and particular location in a particular moment. Birth is particular鈥攏ot generic. Ask any woman who has delivered a child or any parent or grandparent who has watched it happen. It鈥檚 not an idea that arrives鈥攊t is someone. And you have to decide if you鈥檙e going to get in on the celebration, and the noise, and the mess, and the life it will demand of you. Because Advent isn鈥檛 just a celebration of lights, candles, and the spirit of sentimentality.

Karl Barth had a way of speaking about this particularity. He called it a 鈥渟ummons to reverence and worship.鈥� That鈥檚 another way to say there is work to be done on our part. It asks something of us and frankly, some days I wonder if the church does that anymore.

Eugene Peterson, one of my sources for good writing, notes that 鈥淎rtists, poets, musicians, and architects are our primary witnesses because they haven鈥檛 argued the case, but our artists have painted Madonna鈥檚, our poets have provided our imagination with rhythms and metaphors, our musicians have filled the air with carols and anthems that bring us to our knees in adoration, and our architects have designed and built chapels and cathedrals in which we can worship God.

Madeline L鈥橢ngle tells us why: 聽

鈥楾his is the irrational season

When love blooms bright and wild.

Had Mary been filled with reason

There鈥檇 have been no room for the child.鈥欌��

The birth of this boy-child named Jesus has never been an easy truth for people to swallow. The world is in a mess, poverty still grips millions, hunger still haunts our city streets, violence is everywhere present it seems, terror and fear hold us captive, darkness seems to cover the earth鈥till.

So why believe any of it is good news? I can鈥檛 answer that except say this: Isaiah declared it long before Handel put music to it. God said it long before the poets did. And we need to hear it too in this season of of Advent: 鈥淯nto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.鈥�

Kathleen Norris gives me my best one-line summary of 聽Advent. She writes, 鈥漇omething or someone wants our attention.鈥� So I say, we have a decision to make: not either the plain red cup or the colorful red and green cup of joy, but whether we will look into the face of the child to embrace or ignore what God has set before us鈥nce again.

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I know I should have something compassionate, sensitive, and wise to say, but, in honesty, I don鈥檛. My immediate emotional response was, 鈥淭his, again? Again!鈥�

I鈥檓 an educator, a pastor, a leader鈥擨 should have something reflective and thoughtful to say, but in this moment I do not. I heard someone say on the ferry yesterday, 鈥淚 just want them all dead.鈥� I didn鈥檛 feel that level of rage, but that was tested as I learned of training by ISIS to kill children. 鈥淭his again? Again?鈥�

What are we supposed to do when all we feel is futility and d茅j脿 vu in the worst possible sense? I said to someone, 鈥淚f you asked me what we ought to do, I would say, mount the largest army ever and go door to door and take them out, one by one if necessary.鈥� I guess you can sense that I don鈥檛 feel like being a peacemaker at the moment. I don鈥檛 feel like being the salt or light of the world right now. I only feel angry fatigue鈥攚e鈥檝e been here before. 鈥淭his again? Again?鈥�

I wrote in my journal the most honest, visceral response I felt. 鈥淥utrage, fatigue, futility. That鈥檚 all I have鈥攊t鈥檚 all I feel in the moment. Don鈥檛 ask me for compassion. Don鈥檛 tell me to love my enemy. Don鈥檛 call me to be a peacemaker. It鈥檚 not what I feel.鈥�

In those years I pastored churches, the Paris attacks would have given me a context for preaching about Advent. I would have shown that the violence in Bethlehem was repeated on the streets and in the theater and arena in Paris. I would have shown how we are the same, we human beings, as the powerful and violent soldiers of the king who sought out and slaughtered innocent children in order to crush a future rise of a competitive political leader who might be called Messiah. In my preaching days, I would struggle very hard to find a glimpse of that Messiah in the horrific violence, in the same region as the terrorists of ISIS. But this week, I only feel anger, fatigue, and futility.

Most of my adult life has been spent speaking sacred words to congregations of people numbering 40, 110, and 1,500. Those moments helped keep me grounded in the word in the midst of turmoil. And, now as president of a theological graduate school, what can I do when my emotions are irrational anger, fatigue, and futility? Well, I go to others who preach鈥攁nd Barbara Brown Taylor is my favorite: 鈥淐hurch is not a stopping place but a starting place for discerning God鈥檚 presence in the world.鈥� And I hear my own heart beating the question, 鈥淭his again? Again?鈥� Maybe, just possibly, at the end of the day, that鈥檚 what I get and it鈥檚 certainly all I can give.

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He is the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them鈥攈e remains faithful forever. He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. 鈥� Psalm 146:6-9

God loves justice, and sets a table for food, freedom, sight, and care. The troubling and encouraging truth is that God moved into the neighborhood where we live.

The surprise of Advent is not that Messiah comes but where he comes and what he comes to do. 聽鈥淚 am the Alpha and the Omega,鈥� says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.鈥� As a child I would picture that coming one as from above and massive, grand, and fearsome鈥攂ut almighty and vast.

The writer of the psalm had a different picture of the one for whom we wait in Advent. He pictures Yahweh as the host at a neighborhood food bank and community center. In stark contrast to the powerful politicians and rulers (princes) God sets the table to give food to the hungry, to execute justice for those oppressed, to watch over strangers, widows, and orphans鈥攙ulnerable ones all who need a system that offers a new way in a context of deathliness and oppression. The new way is the dramatic picture which forms for us in Advent: Jesus moved into the neighborhood.

I was born in a neighborhood on the far south side of Chicago. It was a melting pot neighborhood of European Americans who moved into tiny bungalows on Sangamon Street鈥擲wedish, Irish, Scottish, English, Polish, and Italian. Many of us were the children of first-generation Americans. The story of my earliest years was the story of neighborhood. 79th street for church. 59th street for furniture. 95th and Halstead for groceries. Mount Vernon for Grammar School. We played ball in the street until the next car came along. We played in the field vacated by the Steel Mill located nearby. Johnson, Petkus, Galoonagus, Maher, McCabe and Anderson.

Advent is also the story of neighborhood but it comes with a problem: Jesus in the cr猫che is not the problem. Angels and magi are not the trouble. What God is doing in the neighborhood is the problem. God brings justice, and sets a table for food, freedom, sight, and care. The troubling truth is that God moved into the neighborhood where we live.

It troubles because it moves us from superficial seeing to sacramental seeing: if we have eyes to see this great mystery, we see deep into everyday reality there is something more going on. 聽That’s where the trouble starts. If Jesus moved into the neighborhood, we must ask: 鈥淲ill I follow him where he goes, learn what he does, and join him.鈥� If Jesus inhabits the flesh, he lives in flesh; if Jesus inhabits time and space, he lives where we live鈥攊n the neighborhood of our lives. And that changes everything. Advent is a troubling declaration to an audacious invitation: if you believe what these scriptures say, you are invited to see God in your homes, schools, businesses, hospitals, community centers, banks and churches. God walking the streets as you make decisions about all of the capital that you have: spiritual, financial, social, human, and intellectual. God interested in the most human parts of your life: family and work, recreation and thinking, and everything else we do.

I pray for eyes to see the living God walking in my neighborhood in this season of Advent.

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