The Difference is Jesus
This past weekend I graduated from Providence Theological Seminary with an MA in Systematic Theology. I had the great honour of delivering the valedictory address at the convocation. Thanks to all my friends and family who were in attendance and who have supported me along this long journey. Below is a copy of the speech I delivered on Saturday:
Dr. Johnson, chairman of the board, honored guests, faculty, staff, friends, family, students and graduates. Greetings.
It is fitting that our graduation from seminary should be in the season of Easter. Graduation, as you well know, is a time for celebrating, giving thanks, and listening to vain platitudes from those who are appointed to give speeches. I’m afraid I do not have those things on offer for you today. But what I do have is an Easter vision of hope that makes certain the future that graduation promises but cannot deliver.
St. Paul begins his epistle to the Romans in the most inflammatory way possible:
In these few verses, Paul launches the first shots in a battle that would ultimately bring the Roman Empire to its knees before the crucified and risen Christ. Notice how Paul declares that Jesus, not Caesar “was declared to be Son of God.” While Nero had cynically declared his predecessor divine upon his death, St. Paul declares Jesus divine by virtue of his resurrection from the dead – a resurrection that shattered and left impotent the fearsome Cross, the most powerful and savage instrument of power and control the Empire had available to it. As a corollary to this claim regarding Christ’s divinity, Paul announces that the Romans to whom he writes are no longer known as Roman Citizens, but as “God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints.” Of course it would not be long before those saints would be killed for these claims. But try as he might, Caesar could not stop these saints from insisting upon speaking the truth about who is divine, and who is not. Rome would fall several centuries later, but not before the Church had so radically changed the social order of the empire that here, in the 2017th year of our Lord, as inheritors of a post-Christendom world, we continue to enjoy the freedom to speak the truth about who is Lord and who is not.
It is fitting that our graduation from seminary should be in the season of Easter. Just last week, the week of the Passion of our Lord, we saw the empires of this world try to establish and maintain their rule through the threat and application of violence. Our televisions were filled with images of poison gas, Tomahawk missiles, suicide bombers, and the Mother of all Bombs. These images stand in stark relief against the story we acted out last weekend. The story of the
God-man who took on our sufferings that they might be redeemed. The story of the Living One who trampled the power of death with his own death. We went into our churches and told this story, lived this story, while on the other side of the world, our Coptic brothers and sisters were martyred.
There is a very real dissonance here. It is a dissonance that many of you may have already experienced studying here at Providence and many more of you will experience as you go forth from this place into your ministries.
Counselors, as you sit in your practices hearing stories of horrific trauma, or complete relational collapse, you may find that reality too difficult to bear.
Pastors, you will faithfully preach the gospel, week in, and week out, and yet it may be that nothing seems to change; budget fights are still painful, elders meetings are exhausting, and nobody attends your prayer meeting. You may be tempted to think that these difficult realities are too much, there is too much hurt, you can’t make a difference.
But I’m here to tell you with Saint Paul that all of these difficult realities that I have described, from the geo-political to the mundane frivolities of ministerial life, have been transformed by the Lord Jesus Christ when he was declared Son of God through his resurrection from the dead.
Graduation is the occasion upon which we give thanks for the time that we have been given to prepare for a life of service in God’s Kingdom. We thank you, our teachers, for passing on your wisdom and learning to us. We thank you, our families, for bearing with us through the stress of paying tuition, meeting deadlines, and getting lost in strange and esoteric stacks of books for days on end. We thank you, our friends, both new and old, who are here today supporting this achievement in our lives and as you have supported us along the way. We have truly seen the face of God in your beautiful faces.
We can get overenthusiastic in these kinds of thanksgivings and begin to believe that through our effort, and the support of a few friends and family, we have somehow earned a future for ourselves. This would be a mistake.
Luckily for us, the events of these past weeks, contrasted with the message of Easter, has shown us that if there is to be a future, it is only through the resurrection of the Son of God.
It is fitting that our graduation from seminary should be in the season of Easter. Graduating in the season of Easter reminds us that our time here has been a gift, and that the hopeful futures that lay before us are also a gift. We can go forth from this place of knowledge and character building into futures of leadership and service because we are confident that what is really real is the resurrection of Jesus. Caesar tried to guarantee a future through the threat and application of violence, but Caesar failed. Jesus has guaranteed a future through his resurrection, thus proving his faithfulness to us, emboldening us to leave this place as saints who walk by grace in peace.
Amen.
Dr. Johnson, chairman of the board, honored guests, faculty, staff, friends, family, students and graduates. Greetings.
It is fitting that our graduation from seminary should be in the season of Easter. Graduation, as you well know, is a time for celebrating, giving thanks, and listening to vain platitudes from those who are appointed to give speeches. I’m afraid I do not have those things on offer for you today. But what I do have is an Easter vision of hope that makes certain the future that graduation promises but cannot deliver.
St. Paul begins his epistle to the Romans in the most inflammatory way possible:
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ,
To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
In these few verses, Paul launches the first shots in a battle that would ultimately bring the Roman Empire to its knees before the crucified and risen Christ. Notice how Paul declares that Jesus, not Caesar “was declared to be Son of God.” While Nero had cynically declared his predecessor divine upon his death, St. Paul declares Jesus divine by virtue of his resurrection from the dead – a resurrection that shattered and left impotent the fearsome Cross, the most powerful and savage instrument of power and control the Empire had available to it. As a corollary to this claim regarding Christ’s divinity, Paul announces that the Romans to whom he writes are no longer known as Roman Citizens, but as “God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints.” Of course it would not be long before those saints would be killed for these claims. But try as he might, Caesar could not stop these saints from insisting upon speaking the truth about who is divine, and who is not. Rome would fall several centuries later, but not before the Church had so radically changed the social order of the empire that here, in the 2017th year of our Lord, as inheritors of a post-Christendom world, we continue to enjoy the freedom to speak the truth about who is Lord and who is not.
It is fitting that our graduation from seminary should be in the season of Easter. Just last week, the week of the Passion of our Lord, we saw the empires of this world try to establish and maintain their rule through the threat and application of violence. Our televisions were filled with images of poison gas, Tomahawk missiles, suicide bombers, and the Mother of all Bombs. These images stand in stark relief against the story we acted out last weekend. The story of the
God-man who took on our sufferings that they might be redeemed. The story of the Living One who trampled the power of death with his own death. We went into our churches and told this story, lived this story, while on the other side of the world, our Coptic brothers and sisters were martyred.
There is a very real dissonance here. It is a dissonance that many of you may have already experienced studying here at Providence and many more of you will experience as you go forth from this place into your ministries.
Counselors, as you sit in your practices hearing stories of horrific trauma, or complete relational collapse, you may find that reality too difficult to bear.
Pastors, you will faithfully preach the gospel, week in, and week out, and yet it may be that nothing seems to change; budget fights are still painful, elders meetings are exhausting, and nobody attends your prayer meeting. You may be tempted to think that these difficult realities are too much, there is too much hurt, you can’t make a difference.
But I’m here to tell you with Saint Paul that all of these difficult realities that I have described, from the geo-political to the mundane frivolities of ministerial life, have been transformed by the Lord Jesus Christ when he was declared Son of God through his resurrection from the dead.
Graduation is the occasion upon which we give thanks for the time that we have been given to prepare for a life of service in God’s Kingdom. We thank you, our teachers, for passing on your wisdom and learning to us. We thank you, our families, for bearing with us through the stress of paying tuition, meeting deadlines, and getting lost in strange and esoteric stacks of books for days on end. We thank you, our friends, both new and old, who are here today supporting this achievement in our lives and as you have supported us along the way. We have truly seen the face of God in your beautiful faces.
We can get overenthusiastic in these kinds of thanksgivings and begin to believe that through our effort, and the support of a few friends and family, we have somehow earned a future for ourselves. This would be a mistake.
Luckily for us, the events of these past weeks, contrasted with the message of Easter, has shown us that if there is to be a future, it is only through the resurrection of the Son of God.
It is fitting that our graduation from seminary should be in the season of Easter. Graduating in the season of Easter reminds us that our time here has been a gift, and that the hopeful futures that lay before us are also a gift. We can go forth from this place of knowledge and character building into futures of leadership and service because we are confident that what is really real is the resurrection of Jesus. Caesar tried to guarantee a future through the threat and application of violence, but Caesar failed. Jesus has guaranteed a future through his resurrection, thus proving his faithfulness to us, emboldening us to leave this place as saints who walk by grace in peace.
Amen.
My thoughts tracked with yours as I preached yesterday. I don't know that we agree on the implications of what we are saying, but we agree on the revolutionary nature of the resurrection -- fundamental to living in a broken and frightening world.
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