Davison's Doodle

Baccalaureate

Tis the season for commencement and baccalaureate services.  Yesterday, I was humbled by the opportunity to speak for the baccalaureate service at Perry High School, Perry, OK, .  I took some words I’ve used for congregational preaching and adapted them for this service.  I’ve heard a few baccalaureate sermons over the years.  I was determined to respect these soon to be high school graduates, many of them will vote this November, by not speaking in platitudes, using sentimentality, or “Chicken Soup for the Soul” stories.  Life, nor religion, is not nearly that neat or cute, and bumper sticker Christianity mostly annoys me.   Just the day before, Saturday, Dr. Brandon Scott, a New Testament professor at Phillips Theological Seminary, noted in his reflection at PTS graduation that “right now truth was in short supply.”  While polishing up my words for the seniors at Perry I decided to try some “truth telling.”  During the Senior Breakfast at First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Perry that morning, I assured the seniors that I would not be long-winded.    The seniors and their families were attentive and polite.  A few nodded off, but that is to be expected on a Sunday afternoon when most had already “done” church once that day.  Odds are that if you have heard me preach these words may ring as familiar.  Since I’m publishing these words on my blog, I may have to retire them from congregational use.  Be well and centered Perry High School seniors and all those moving through the life passage of graduation this spring and summer.

The Great Riddle
Comments on Mark 12:28-34
Perry High School Baccalaureate
May 13, 2012

Good afternoon class of 2012.  I’ll begin with some words from the sage, Dr. Seuss, with whom we have all grown up.

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You’re on your own.  And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy (or gal) who’ll decide where to go.(1)

Perry High School Class of 2012, its your parents, extended family and friends, the teachers and coaches, counselors, principals, and boosters, ministers, youth groups, and clubs that have helped you prepare, ponder, and plan for the places you will go and the great riddle of life.  It is my honor to join the Perry Youth Leaders Alliance, and all those gathered this afternoon, to recognize this life passage, but more than that, to begin the busy week before your graduation with a blessing of stillness and presence.  Baccalaureate is said to have begun at Oxford University in the early 1400‘s.  The first baccalaureate services required each student to deliver a sermon, a speech, in Latin, as part of the academic requirements.  I’m glad that requirement was not part of my high school graduation.  Principal Vandeburg, has that requirement been waived for this class?  Brought to this land and evolved over time, the baccalaureate service has taken on several meanings, but most often it has remained a religious experience.  At its best, our time this afternoon recognizes, claims, the spiritual and religious nature in each of us.   Theologian Paul Tillich calls it, the “ground of our being.”(2)   It is that which draws a breath of gratitude in moments of overwhelming joy.  It is the “ground of our being” that comforts when grief knocks the wind out of you.  It is the “voice of the divine” that provides a moral compass for the choices that are inherent in living.

The biblical story we heard is a familiar one for many us.  I think that, during this second decade of the 21st century, the familiar has the greatest potential to help us change as individuals, as representatives of our faith traditions, and as a nation.  Typically, the familiar serves to comfort, to heal, to reassure that everything is going to be alright.  But, after this last decade the one in which all of you grew up, I think the familiar will be challenging.  Our world is living through a time when the familiar stories, traditions, and rituals will confront the speed of change by holding up a magic mirror.  Mirror, mirror on the wall what does compassion mean in the 21st century?  Mirror, mirror am I more than my label?  Am I more than my place in this free trade economic caste system?  Mirror, mirror who works for justice?   Who welcomes the stranger.  Mirror, is freedom just another word for nothing else to loose?  Mirror, show me a living memory so I do not repeat mistakes of the past. The 13th century poet Rumi says it like this, “Do not be satisfied with the stories that come before you. Unfold your own myth.”(3)  These familiar stories, traditions, and rituals can help with the great riddle.

When I was 14,  I bought something called a Rubik’s cube.  They are still around today. The Rubik’s cube is one of those things that is meant to educate, to stimulate the mind, to frustrate you to a point where you begin to think how you can take it apart or remove the color stickers and then put them back in the right place.  It is a cube that when complete has one color on each side. When you mix up the colors there are ways to move the cube to get the colors all back to their right places.  For about a year, back when I was 14, the rubrics cube was THE fad that anyone, no matter your age, would join.  I do everything I can to stay away from fads, but I bought a cube because it looked like an interesting challenge.  Really, I bought one because there were 8 year olds on the school bus who could work it, and not only work it, they could do it in less than 5 minutes no matter how jumbled up the cube was.  Me, I couldn’t do it.  A person could buy a cube and carry it around, finished, if you wanted people to think you had the ability or secret to work cube.  But there is always that day when you are challenged in front of people to “show us you can do it” or “show us how to do it”?  There are those moments alone when you look at it and think, “how hard could it be to work if I mixed up the colors?   There was even a hint book you could buy for help.  To work the cube you had to put in the time.  You had to look at it, handle it, twist it, and risk the frustration of not getting it right the first, second, or hundredth time.  It was up to you.  Or, you could just carry one around right out of the package already worked for you.

When I read this passage in Mark, and it’s synoptic siblings in Matthew and Luke, I think of the Rubik’s cube because it is a good image for the word riddle.  I think of the parables as riddles.  If you look up the word “riddle” in a dictionary you will find one of these definitions: “A question stated so as to exercise one’s ingenuity in answering it or discovering its meaning.  Any puzzling question, problem or matter.  At the website, Just Riddles and More, a riddle is explained like this. 
“. . . riddles are brain teasers.  A riddle is not generally answered by a fact or information found in a reference book.  A riddle often uses misdirection – some of the words are there to get you thinking about something else.”  So let’s try a few to get our brains firing.  These are considered classics and though a couple may remind you of children’s jokes, they confront the mind to think in three dimensions instead of conforming to the one or two dimensions of our culture.

What animals keep the best time?
[watchdogs]

What does an invisible person drink at snack time?
[evaporated milk]

Where is the ocean the deepest?
[on the bottom]

At night they come without being fetched,
And by day they are lost without being stolen.
[the stars]

The beginning of eternity
The end of time and space
The beginning of every end,
And the end of every place.
[the letter E]

Two words, my answer is only two words.
To keep me, you must give me
[your word]

I hear the parables as riddles.  Think about it, so often Jesus began, “you have heard it said, but I say to you . . .”  A rich person asks the teacher one day, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  The teacher responds, “Do you know the commandments?”  The person responds, “Know them, I have kept them all of my life.”  And the teacher replies, “You lack one thing, sell your possessions and give it to the poor.”  I wonder,  “What is the greatest of all the commandments?”  I wonder, “What is the great riddle of life?”  Answers are everywhere.

From Ancient China
“Is there one word that may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life?” The Master said, “Is not RECIPROCITY such a word?” – Confucius

From Ancient Egypt
“That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another.”

From Ancient Greece
”Do not do to others what would anger you if done to you by others.”

From the Jewish Sage Hillel, (Talmud, Shabbat 31a)
That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.

“Of all the commandments, what’s the most important one?”  I think this is like asking, “Who is supposed to yield at a four-way stop?”

Jesus responds, “The Lord our God, the Lord is One.  Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  And love your neighbor as yourself.”  It’s his interpretation of his scriptures, the Hebrew bible or what we call the Old Testament.  Who wouldn’t agree with that?  But that’s not the answer I am looking for.  So I respond, “Sure. So I heard you say, love God and love my neighbor as myself?”  “Yes.” Jesus responds, “You are not far from the kindom of God.”  In one of the other gospels some unnamed person has the nerve to ask, “Excuse me, could I get a little help.  Who is my neighbor?”  It is still the qualifier we ask today.  Let’s be honest, we all have people in our lives we don’t want to consider  “our neighbor”.  The evening news and local papers tell us about neighbor disputes every day.  Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhist and Jews, the great religions of this planet, have a hard time being neighbors when they blend politics with fundamentalist faith because fundamentalist faith of any kind, in it’s claim to have the exclusive answer to life’s riddles, cannot imagine that their answer is not THE answer for everyone.  Just as surely as economics and scarcity are some of the accelerants that fuel politicians and governments to make war instead of peace, so to is this religious perspective.

And it is not simply the big “isms” or issues: racism, discrimination, interfaith understanding, hunger, health care, economics, OU or OSU, that keep us from being neighbors.  Cut me off in traffic or have a grocery basket full of stuff in the 15 items or less line at the store and you may not see my most neighborly side.  Who is your neighbor?  Since that first telling, followers have struggled with the great riddle.  There are  thousands of volumes written by theologians, historians, anthropologists, and psychologists all offering answers or hints.  There are volumes of “self help” books, and yes, the many sermons you’ve heard and will hear, about what it means to “love God and love your neighbor as yourself.”   It is a great riddle.  So much so that we find it in culture.  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  You’ve hear the Golden Rule, but really, in our living, it is more like a golden riddle.  Artists and prophets have helped me with hints to work the riddle.  In the lyrics of “Grace” by U2, I hear, “grace finds goodness in everything.”  That’s a good hint.  A lyric by the group Pink Floyd goes, “ashes and diamonds, foe and friend, we were all equal in the end.”(4)   The Beatles sang, “All you need is love,” if it were only that easy, but that’s a good hint.  You too have music and artists that invite you to imagine, to touch what is hard to put into word and even harder to practice.  Keep listening for those voices.  Andrew Lloyd Weber penned a lyric that is sung near the end of the musical Les Miserables,  “Remember the truth that once was spoken.  To love another person is to see the face of God.”  That is a good hint for working the riddle.  Inviting American culture into the dream, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, delivered these words that are nearer to being reality, today, because others just like you have acted on the dream.  “My four little children will, one day, live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  That is a good hint for working the riddle.  But . . .

You’ll get mixed up, of course,
as you already know.
You’ll get mixed up
with many strange birds as you go.
So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life’s
a Great Balancing Act.
Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left.

There will be times when you will look to your sacred stories as an answer book or a magic eight ball.  You’ll want to ask a question, shake it up and get the answer.  That’s not what the sacred stories, religious ones or secular ones, are meant to be or meant to do.  They are reminders.  They are mirrors.  They are a glimpse into the culture, struggles, teaching, and worship of people who, without radios, cell phones, cars, computers or 24hr cable news channels, asked many of the questions we ask today about being faithful and living in community with others.  Those are authentic questions.  Those are real questions about living no matter your culture or historical context.  You can have the stuff that says you are a person of faith.  You can even carry around the hint book, but being a religious and spiritual person of faith is more than having people think you know the answer.  I believe it means being willing to work the great riddle every day.

“Love God with all your heart, with all you soul, with all your mind, and all your strength.  And the second, love your neighbor as yourself.”  Everyone sitting around you has done their best to teach you the skills to navigate life and work the great riddle.    Here is my hint to add to your collection.  A few words from the prophet Micah translated from the original Hebrew by my companion, Rev. Dr. Lisa Davison, who teaches at Phillips Theological Seminary.

“Make justice happen.  Love passionately as God Loves.  Remember that you are not God, but you are God’s image in this world.”(5)

Class of 2012, you are entrusted with the great riddle.  It is a blessing.

You’re off to Great Places! 
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!

 

Notes
1. Dr. Seuss, Oh The Places You’ll Go, Random House, 1990.  Excerpts of this book are used three times in my text.

2. Paul Tillich, Shaking the Foundations, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948.

3. The Essential Rumi, HarperOne, 2004.

4. Pink Floyd, “Two Suns in the Sunset”, from The Final Cut, 1982.

5. Micah 6:8, translated by Rev. Dr. Lisa W. Davison, Johnnie Eargle Cadieux Professor of Hebrew Bible, Phillips Theological Seminary.