Serve This Faith: Seminary of the Southwest 2018 Commencement Speech

This is the speech I was honored to give at the Seminary of the Southwest Commencement this morning. May we all serve the faith we have been given. 

Love, Becca

As the last letter is sent off to Timothy from Rome, Paul’s disciples are passing the cross to the next generation. The cross their Lord gave to them is being given to a new community.  In 2nd Timothy picking up the cross is not about asking the new community what they are willing to die for, but to give them a new way to live. To pass our faith to ensuing generations is hard. We want the next generation to pick it up and carry cross the right way. Please don’t drag it around and for the love of God drape it in lent. So the first step in passing the cross is for those who have carried it to trust the new bearers. Paul’s disciples begin Timothy’s letter saying, "We really don’t know Timothy. But we are going to trust you because your grandma Lois and your mother Eunice were good people." 

That's how people will feel about the recent graduates of the Seminary of the Southwest as you carry your crosses from this place. People may not know or trust you, and they will critique you as being too Christian or not Christian enough. They will trust you in part because they know your people here at the seminary.  That your dean, Catherine, is a woman of profound poetic faith. Your dean assured everyone in her epistle this year that “you would be educated in the ancient traditions of the faith where you will have opportunities to observe and participate in the gospel speaking to culture, and challenging the church." In Catherine’s letter she assured you that here your education will form mature, wise, and creative Christian leaders to participate in God’s reconciling mission in the world.   

Carry the cross you have been given by our tradition with the three attributes of love, power and self-discipline given to Timothy. Don't be ashamed of what you have learned. Hold to the standard of the teaching you have received and guard the treasure that is your cross. In order to help this happen, let us be clear on what means to pick up our cross...

Bearing your cross is falling in love. It is not thinking you have an unbearable ball and chain to drag around. It is falling in love with God and one another, believing we can do this together. Cross bearing is not an individual sport, and it promises a way of life that is lived deeply and offers you a way to live into the love you bear forever. 

Finally, as Timothy is gathering his community to do some “cross training," he is told not to wrangle over words and to avoid pointless controversies. They tell him--preach the word, come visit, and give your momma our love.You are bearing your cross in hard times. You bear it as the earth splits and spews in Hawaii, as people in Texas mourn the latest school shooting, as the number of refugees hits its highest levels in more than 70 years. You are heading out into a world rife with systematic injustices so entrenched it’s hard to figure out where to walk. It's humbling work. I want to offer you three verbs in crossing bearing as you serve as pastors counselors and teachers.  

Translate what you have learned so that others can understand

You are going to have to engage the marketplace and not just speak the common seminary language. Without translation, the church life and ministry is becoming less relevant because it's not practical, and doesn't impact daily lives. Last week I was on the 700 club in Virginia, the week before I was speaking with the Texas Muslim Women’s Association. 

With both groups, I talked about how love heals, but in both I had to deviate from speaking Episcopalian. Good cross bearing requires us to be translators, unafraid to cross new ground to love the world.  Don’t just invite the public in, go out.  I have learned that a candle with the word love on it translates. There is an economy of love that influences cultures and changes politics. 

I didn’t learn that in seminary. I learned it serving women survivors, who taught me if we talk about love we have to be concerned about the economic well-being of those we bear crosses with. The violence and vulnerability of poverty requires us to learn a new languages.

Strip down what you have learned into what you can inwardly digest so you speak from your heart with passion 

I once buried a woman from the community of Thistle Farms in state custody. They gave us her ashes in a cardboard box. There was no congregation, flowers, or music. I was nervous as the funeral began thinking maybe it’s just too hard, maybe the issues are too big and we are just not up for bearing one another.  After the first sentence of the service, the six of us gathered couldn’t speak because love was so thick you couldn’t cut through it with words. 

We wept together realizing that when there is nothing else, Jesus fills the space. If her life and death represent some of the worst the world can offer--born in poverty rife with systematic racism and abusers who paved a path for her to the streets and prison resulting in disease and death--I will bear my cross gratefully, knowing Love is there when everything else is stripped down.

Serve what you have learned on the path of justice

When you can’t write a sermon, go to prison, not the library, to understand how love is borne. Whether you are offering communion, counseling, or teaching, let your hunger for justice lead you. It will solve your evangelism issues, your finances, and help you sing with joy. We must break bread with tears, and go back out into the world to love it again, and again and again until we get it right. 

As you serve justice, you will not always be inspired, not always see visions, or even believe it all. That is not the point.

The point is to keep bearing the cross knowing the distance between the wilderness and Jerusalem is closer than we think.

Translate, strip it down, and serve this faith you have been given with justice. Then you will bear the cross as beautifully as Timothy, as gracefully as Paul, and as faithfully as all those who have walked this aisle before you.  

It is a big cross. but we can bear it together.    

Getting ready to receive my honorary doctorate from The Seminary of the Southwest with the class of 2018. So grateful.