A Final Address
4 August 2019
“… and I applied my mind to search and investigate
in wisdom all things that are done under the sun”
- Ecclesiastes 1:13 (Proper 13 – Year C)
Every
year for thirty-four years I have begun the academic year with an opening
address that explains why we are here; why we have been here at Purdue since
1956. We’re not quite at the beginning of the “fall” semester, but I thought I
would do this sermon one last time. It is my valedictory.
We
begin, as always, with a paraphrase of Søren
Kierkegaard. (I’m going to put the original quote in the on-line version of
this sermon.1) Kierkegaard carried out a relentless verbal attack on the Lutheran
state church in Denmark, even though His older brother Peter was later to
become a bishop in that same state church.
He complained that each Sunday the
citizens of Copenhagen, dressed in their finest, would come into church and
take the seats they had rented as though they were attending the theater. Then
as they went from church to home, they would comment on the quality of the
music associated with the performance, critique the day’s liturgical arts, the
minister’s message, and perhaps his delivery of his lines.
It was as though the speaker was an
actor.
Kierkegaard moved the religious
professional from center stage. He argued that the priest was merely a minor player,
sitting in the wings, prompting, giving a word to the real actors, those who
were sitting in the pews. They were called to act out the gospel on those
stages where they lived and worked. God, said Kierkegaard, was the critical
theatergoer. God was the theatergoer. The congregation is the actor.
That is the point of a ministry in
higher education, “the solemn charm of the art”. How do we teach each successive
generation to give flesh to the Word on the stage of the world? The endless
dilemma of how the Word is to be brought into the world is always at hand.
It is a missionary work.
It is different, not better, than
the usual work of our churches. Parishes, parochial organizations, as
ordinarily conceived and executed, focus on maintenance and attendance. Listen
to how much better the new organ sounds. Our Sunday school has swollen. See all
the people here in the pews. We have grown the staff. We have built a home. We
have arrived.
All of these are good things.
But our job is to carve out a
visible presence in a place that is NOT the church’s own. It is a missionary
work.
It is an uncomfortable place. It is
an uncertain life. Good Shepherd has
lived in five buildings; house, church, center, house, church. I have done ministry
from three of them under three Bishops. It is an uncomfortable place. It is an
uncertain life.
It is a missionary work with a
peculiar language.
It is about the journey.
Parishes speak of arrival. You came
here to start a job. You joined the choir. You bought a new house. Then there
is the arrival of the baby. The babies. “Family” is the metaphor.
Here we are all going somewhere
else. The image of the pilgrimage is a powerful one. We are between homes. “Peers”
become friends. “Friends” make truth.
It
is about the work.
There
is no “academic village”. We don’t have a home. We live above the store. We
sleep in the office. We eat at the plant.
Our
calendar is not Julian nor Gregorian but “Purduean”. Fall begins in August. Our
relationships are contractual. Self-worth depends on the utility of our field,
and our achievements within that field. No one on any campus has sufficient
moral credibility to proclaim what the better life might be other than the
security provide by a good income. The campus as moral inspiration is a
nostalgic vestige2.
It
is about an experiment in community.
Parishes
are a dependable source of consolation, which enjoy a certain discipline in
organization. They have a history.
Here,
each year is a Nativity. Can we build a mentoring community, a sacramental
community in this generation? Can we then
repeat the experiment?
Can
we combine the emerging truth of the young adult, with the example and
encouragement of a mentor, and ground both in an ideologically compatible
social group3? Or in the
language of an apostle, “can scribes trained for the kingdom bring out of their
storeroom the best of the new and the old”? (Mt. 15:32) Can there be a new home? Can there be a new
home, a new polity, and a new collective identity?
If
this is a missionary work, then who are the natives?
The
Students.
Students
as they look for love and work.
Students
as they continue to mimic their parents religion. Students as they take a
hiatus from organized religion. Students as they search, either accidentally or
intentionally, for new or renewed religious languages. Most of our church language
is a puzzle. “Episcopal”? “Diocese?”
Students
as they search for any coherent language around identity, intimacy, and
mortality; birth and copulation and death. “I’ll be the missionary”, writes
T.S. Eliot. “… all the facts when you get to brass tacks, birth and copulation
and death, birth and copulation and death, birth and copulation and death.4” Who am I? Am I lovable? What will
happen when I fail? When I am broken?
The
Faculty and The Staff.
We
provide pastoral care. We care for those who work in the educational industry. There
is no middle class in higher education any longer. Our members here have often
been migrant workers, without place or power. Post-docs, adjuncts are on short-
term contracts, with no hope of tenure. Staff positions are reduced or
outsourced. Other academics are demoralized by their lack of influence on the
business of higher education and its managers.
We
prophesy. The successful may see themselves as self-employed entrepreneurs
above the churn below. Perhaps most believers are eager for a separate
spiritual life, one apart from the corporation for which they work. We
challenge these woman and men to say how it is their faith affects their work. How
they research or teach mimes their values to the university. You don’t have to
say a word. Every syllabus is a creed. We say there must be more to this than a
contractual obligation to transfer a skill set. The core of teaching is that
the teacher lets their disciples take part in their life, and thus grasps the
mystery of their life’s work5.
The
University and The Church.
We
work with the corporate person that is the university, to whom we are usually invisible,
as it proclaims to society’s next generation what is valuable. Is it only the
security that can be achieved by a high-paying job? So it seems. Are there any
higher obligations a student might have to the world beyond the campus?
In
1884 a friend told Cornell’s Andrew White that he doubted that any of Cornell’s
graduates could be elected to office in an America that so distrusted
expertise. White responded, “nobody expects to get a majority of the men (sic)
educated as I propose into office at first, but if we only had plenty of them
to stand outside and fire into the people, and especially into those in office,
they would certainly be obliged, sooner or later, to surrender.6” If
only . . .
We
work with the body that is the church, which looks at us with both suspicion
and lust, so that it may better know the wideness of the world into which the
gospel is to be taken and within which it is to be preached; the world outside
its aesthetic, its linguistic bubble.
In the turbulent 60’s then Presiding Bishop John Hines, a heroic figure,
wrote:
“Against
even the worst of possibilities, must be set the inescapable obligation of
Christians, that the Body of Christ must be prepared to offer itself up for the
sake of the healing and the solidarity of the whole human family, whatever its
religious or racial identities. Especially must the Body of Christ risk its own
life in bearing and sharing the burdens of those who are being exploited,
humiliated, and disinherited!”#7
Campus ministers applauded. Hines
forever changed the Church’s definition of “domestic mission” to “social
engagement”.
And Hines wrote this:
“I did say, and I still conclude, that ministry in higher education is
the last, best hope of the Episcopal Church in our time. I believe that because
I believe that the university and college chaplaincy is the most difficult, and
the most rewarding, of the responsibilities of this Church. Nowhere else, in
comparable fashion, is the clear presentation and the effective interpretation
of the Christian gospel more likely to bear fruit than on the college campus, where
ideas in conflict and embattled Truth attempt to capture the best minds of this
generation. Nowhere else is the Christian faith as likely to be seriously
challenged – or as gratefully received.”
At the same time money for higher education ministries was cut from the
national church budget. (Hines was also considered, unfairly, the chief cause of the
church’s shrinking population and the loss of confidence in its national
structure.) In my colleague Sam
Portaro’s excellent phrase, campus ministry was “dis-appointed”. #8 Good
Shepherd left its church building behind and moved into the Wesley Foundation.
That irony continues to dominate campus ministry’s life in our evolving church.
Like
St. Paul, we mark out the grace to be found in the transition of the ages.
To
the fearful and the anxious, to those on pilgrimage, we proclaim God’s loving,
faithful word. We proclaim it to those often never exposed to the vitality and
the richness of that word, particularly as it is expressed in the Anglican
tradition.
We
preach the Incarnation.
We
proclaim God’s prophetic and righteous word to those so satisfied with their
lives that they seem to have no need of God’s mercy and forgiveness.
We
preach the Cross.
We
proclaim God’s life giving and animating word to individuals and institutions,
to personalities and corporate persons. We proclaim love and friendship to each
one. We proclaim community to all.
We
preach the Pentecost.
Finally,
the next year or so will resemble, I think, Good Shepherd’s experiences between
2004-2005. Then, we moved from the Hayes St. house and Good Shepherd Chapel to
Meridian St. and Good Shepherd Church. In November 2004 Steve Shook jumped out
of his Audi and tried to sell me this building. In February 2005 the diocesan
approved buying the Frist Church of Christ Scientist. Thanks Steve Fales. On
March 30 2005 we closed on the property. Thanks Tom Wood. On May 1 2005 we
moved in and held our first service. Thanks to so many of you. On September 18,
2005 Bishop Waynick dedicated the church. Thanks Bishop Cate.
Then,
you switched buildings. Now, you switch priests. August 4, 2019 was Father Peter
Bunder’s last Sunday, and then . . . . . . .
Let
me predict that the new person you select will be younger, sleeker, and far more
pious. I bet you buy new vestments. They will stay less than 34 years.
But
they cannot think university work more important than I have thought it. All
the more important because college, and then grad school, made me very much who
I am today.
They
will not have had Ted Jones for their bishop. Ted married a co-ed. You can’t do
that anymore. Ted and Anne were the definition of grace. They cannot have the
same commitment to the community outside these doors I have had, an involvement
I thank you and Peder Berdahl for facilitating. (That’s a good story. Mayor Jan
Mills asked me to run for city council. I called the diocesan office to ask if
I could run for city council. Bishop Cate was on sabbatical. Peder Berdahl,
then Canon to the ordinary, said I guess so - just don’t put any campaign signs
on the church lawn!)
They
will not have been married to Katy O’Malley; who, as it has happened, is more
important to this larger community than I am. Katy left beautiful Lexington, VA
and swallowed all the ugly that came with mid-north central Indiana to let me
be my own boss and get a corner office with not one, but two, windows. I love
you Katy. I couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you. Thanks too to Molly
and Emily who kept me “cooler” longer than I had any right to be. Molly, thank
you for “Friday School”. Emily, who can forget our “Drink Beer, Make Love? Be
Episcopalian!”
t-shirt?
I hope you both liked growing up here.
There
are too many people to note as I close. Each gave me, and all of us, some
special joy. Let me single out Ruth Dowden who was on that search committee in
1984/85 that called me here, and is still around to evaluate what sort of
choice I turned out to be. I did well here, I think. This career, as I said in
January in my annual chaplain’s report, has been a privilege. I leave, happily,
with a sense of satisfaction, confidence. To quote Winnie the Pooh, how lucky I
am having something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
God
bless you.
Amen
NOTES
#1 What
goes on between the speaker and the hearer in a genuine edifying discourse? It
is so on the stage, as you know well enough, that someone sits and prompts by
whispers; [he is hidden;] he is the inconspicuous one; he is and wishes to be
overlooked. But then there is another, he strides out prominently, he draws
every eye to himself. For that reason he has been given his name, that is:
actor. He impersonates a distinct individual. In the skillful sense of this
illusionary art, each word becomes true when embodied in him, true through
him—and yet he is told what he shall say by the hidden one that sits and
whispers. No one is so foolish as to regard the prompter as more important than
the actor.Now forget this light talk about art. Alas, in regard to things spiritual, the foolishness of many is this, that they in the secular sense look upon the speaker as an actor, and the listeners as theatergoers who are to pass judgment upon the artist. But the speaker is not the actor—not in the remotest sense. No, the speaker is the prompter. There are no mere theatergoers present, for each listener will be looking into his own heart. The stage is eternity, and the listener, if he is the true listener (and if he is not, he is at fault) stands before God during the talk. The prompter whispers to the actor what he is to say, but the actor's repetition of it is the main concern—is the solemn charm of the art. The speaker whispers the word to the listeners. But the main concern is earnestness: that the listeners by themselves, with themselves, and to themselves, in the silence before God, may speak with the help of this address.
The address is not given for the speaker's sake, in order that men may praise or blame him. The listener's repetition of it is what is aimed at. If the speaker has the responsibility for what he whispers, then the listener has an equally great responsibility not to fail short in his task. In the theater, the play is staged before an audience who are called theatergoers; but at the devotional address, God himself is present. In the most earnest sense, God is the critical theatergoer, who looks on to see how the lines are spoken and how they are listened to: hence here the customary audience is wanting. The speaker is then the prompter, and the listener stands openly before God. The listener ... is the actor, who in all truth acts before God.
—Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart, pp. 180-81 (SV XI114-15); reprinted in Parables of Kierkegaard, Thomas C. Oden, ed.
#2 “Moral Dimensions of University Economies” – William M. Chace President Emory University Emory Magazine Summer 1998
#3 p.89 Sharon Parks The Critical Years: Young Adults and the Search for Meaning, Faith, and Commitment
#4 FRAGMENT OF AN AGON – T.S. Eliot
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: SWEENEY. WAUCHOPE. HORSFALL. KLIPSTEIN. KRUMPACKER. SWARTS. SNOW. DORIS. DUSTY.
(All PRESET IN SCENE)
SWEENEY: ....................I’ll carry you off
To a cannibal isle.
DORIS: You’ll be the cannibal!
SWEENEY:
You’ll be the missionary!
You’ll be my little seven stone missionary!
I’ll gobble you up. I’ll be the cannibal.
DORIS: You’ll carry me off? To a cannibal isle?
SWEENEY: I’ll be the cannibal.
DORIS: ....................I’ll be the missionary.
I’ll convert you!
SWEENEY: ....................I’ll convert you!
Into a stew.
A nice little, white little, missionary stew.
DORIS: You wouldn’t eat me!
SWEENEY: ....................Yes I’d eat you!
In a nice little, white little, soft little, tender little,
Juicy little, right little, missionary stew.
You see this egg
You see this egg
Well that’s life on a crocodile isle.
There’s no telephones
There’s no gramophones
There’s no motor cars
No two-seaters, no six-seaters,
No Citroën, no Rolls-Royce.
Nothing to eat but the fruit as it grows.
Nothing to see but the palmtrees one way
And the sea the other way,
Nothing to hear but the sound of the surf.
Nothing at all but three things
DORIS: ....................What things?
SWEENEY: Birth, and copulation, and death.
That’s all, that’s all, that’s all, that’s all,
Birth, and copulation, and death.
DORIS: I’d be bored.
SWEENEY: ....................You’d be bored.
Birth, and copulation, and death.
DORIS: I’d be bored.
SWEENEY: ....................You’d be bored.
Birth, and copulation, and death.
That’s all the facts when you come to brass tacks:
Birth, and copulation, and death.
I’ve been born, and once is enough.
You dont remember, but I remember,
Once is enough.
#5 p.102 Parker Palmer To Know As We Are Known: A Spirituality of Education
#6 p.85 Laurence R. Veysey The Emergence of the American University.
#7 https://episcopalarchives.org/church-awakens/exhibits/show/leadership/clergy/hines
#8 p. Portaro/Pelosi Inquiring Minds and Discerning Heart: Vocation and Ministry With Young Adults on Campus.
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