Seek Truth, Find Love
Seek Truth, Find Love
(Baccalaureate Address to St Johnsbury Academy class of 2007 given 6/3/07)
Reading #1 Mt 7:24-27 (NLT)
Reading #2 Luke 15:11-24 (NLT)
Good evening distinguished guests, family, friends, and graduates.
When Mr. Lovett invited me to speak this evening he mentioned his appreciation for something that we had done for my son Peter last year. When Pete turned 18 last September my wife Kristie and I wanted to do something to mark the occasion in a special way. She had heard on a radio program of a kind of coming of age ceremony and we decided we liked the idea. So on a Sunday afternoon five men of various ages who had had a significant impact on Pete’s life gathered down on the St J track. I had asked each one to share words of affirmation, encouragement, and challenge to Pete to mark this transition to manhood. It turned out to be one of the great days of my life as a parent as each of them shared how they had appreciated Pete’s character, conduct, and values and challenged him to do something significant for God with his life. To conclude we gathered at the 18 yard line on the football field where Pete had competed the last four years and in fact was still competing. We first looked back at the end zone behind us kind of representing the distance he had come in his life and talked about that. Then we turned and looked down the field toward the other end zone ahead of us and the much longer distance ahead. The guys challenged Pete by telling him they were handing him the ball now on his journey ahead but wanted him to know that like teammates they would always be there for him.
This evening, graduates, I’d like each of you to stop for a few minutes for a view of life from the 18 yard line, (give or take a yard). During this commencement weekend I hope you will look back with appreciation and gratitude on those who have helped you get to this place of accomplishment in your life. And by the way it’s ok to use words to express that thanks to them. (I was touched by words of appreciation for Mr. Rowe & Mr. Moulton at the commencement concert.) I hope that you will feel a sense of satisfaction and joy in what you have accomplished and know that as family, friends, teachers and mentors we are so happy for you and so proud of you as well.
But I also want to take a look down the field of life to the journey ahead. No doubt most of you have goals, plans, and dreams for the journey ahead and that’s good. But none of us ultimately knows either how long that journey is or what will happen along the way. As John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
I would like to recommend to you today two companions, two teammates, worth taking with you on your journey through life. Those two companions are truth and love.
So my first challenge to you is to seek the truth in your life. Truth has gotten a bad rap in our postmodern world. It has been redefined, relativized, and reduced to nonreality by it’s critics. But truth by definition is reality. And there are no alternate realities, only alternate perceptions of reality. Truth by definition is an unchanging, unbending standard by which we measure what is real. And to exist at all Truth must be sourced in God. Truth is a stubborn thing but also a steadfast thing.
In the first passage from Mathew’s gospel that Sheila read earlier, Jesus Christ at the end of his Sermon on the Mount, probably the greatest dissertation on moral truth ever spoken, gives a parable or picture of two builders. One is a man who wisely built his house on a foundation of rock, while the other foolishly built his house on a foundation of sand. When the wind and rain and storms howled and the floodwaters rose the house built on the rock stood firm while the house built on the sand collapsed and was destroyed. Jesus used this picture to speak of two types of people. The first who both heard and practiced or lived out His words of truth and the second who heard but never acted on or lived out this truth.
I learned this parable as a 4 or 5 year old Sunday school kid because it was in a song we loved to sing about it. The song told how “the foolish man built his house upon the sand…and the rains came down and the floods came up and the house on the sand went CRASH! We loved that part because we got to yell in church without getting into trouble! It wasn’t nearly so exciting to sing how “the wise man built his house upon the rock…and when the rains came down and the floods came up, the house on the rock stood firm.” But I’ve discovered since then, that life can be a very tough business. And in my own life and in the lives of others I have often been called to help, I have found that when life’s troubles come pouring down on you and difficulties and disasters threaten to sweep you away and it is your life that is about ready to take a dive and collapse completely and you’re looking for something, anything, to hold on to, to stand on, to hold firm, then truth, even if it sounded boring in the song, looks awfully good.
I was reminded of this recently when I went to the graduation of a friend of mine who was receiving his Master of Divinity Degree. He had managed to turn a three year program into eight so we were all happy and relieved to see him graduate. As we celebrated that day I thought back to a number of years earlier when I first met him. At that time he was recovering from a painful divorce and had quit his job as a successful engineer to work in a ministry to troubled teens and I suspect,t to let his heart heal. I remember him telling me about his divorce. He desperately wanted his marriage to work and kept trying to figure out a way to avoid a divorce he didn’t want or believe was right. His spouse, he came to realize, didn’t share his commitment but didn’t want to be blamed for the breakup of their marriage. So every compromise and expectation he tried to meet was met by more demands and higher expectations and shifting targets. Every time he thought he would find a place to stand on and move forward in their relationship the bottom would drop out and things would get worse. Finally he realized no matter what he did he couldn’t make his marriage work and in the process he also learned a lot of humbling truth about himself. But he said, “when I finally came to the point I knew our marriage was over and why there was a kind of peace. As painful as it was I had finally arrived at the truth and I knew the bottom wouldn’t drop out again. I had a place to stand.” Though he felt his wife had rejected and abandoned him, he found that God had not rejected or abandoned him. From that place God helped him rebuild his life and now I watched him enjoying this great day remarried to a wonderful wife and blessed with two beautiful children and a third on the way. He had found a place to stand.
Graduates, you need a rock to stand on, a solid foundation to build on, that will withstand the storms of life and that rock is the truth. Don’t be afraid to seek the truth about life, don’t be afraid to seek the truth about yourself, and don’t be afraid to seek the truth about God.
My second challenge to you is to find love. There is within every one of us, every human heart, a profound need and a deep desire to be loved. I believe that need, or our reaction to it, in some way or another is the driving force behind all we ever seek or do. And age does nothing to diminish our desire to be loved; in fact it may increase it. The great question our hearts often whisper is, “Am I worthy to be loved?”
Throughout his life on earth Jesus Christ was consistently repelled by self righteous religious people who thought they deserved God’s love and attracted to real people who were humble and honest enough to admit they didn’t deserve it but still wanted it at any cost. In the parable of the Lost Son or Prodigal Son that Pete read, Jesus in one of the great stories of all literature gives us a picture of God’s unconditional love and those who come to receive it. The younger son begins the story with the world by the tail, more bravado then brains, and is ready to get outta this crummy little town and cramped lifestyle of his home and experience some life. He demands what’s coming to him now and upon getting it fly’s the coop to go see the world. (Perhaps he just graduated from the Academy). But it doesn’t take too long before his wild lifestyle leads to an empty bank account followed by a sudden departure of his so called friends. Reduced to poverty and feeding pigs for a living (not exactly resume building material) he finally as Jesus says “comes to his senses” and remembers he has a father who loved him and treats his servants better than this. So he decides to go home, carefully preparing a little speech about how unworthy he is of anything as a son but hoping to at least be taken in as a servant. In the riveting center of the story we find that while still a long way off his father sees him (perhaps he was looking?) and feeling deep compassion for his son casts all dignity aside and runs to greet him, hug him and kiss him. The son tries to get his little speech out but the Father cuts him off mid speech immediately restores him to his position of privilege and proceeds to throw a party. Having looked for love in all the wrong places, this most undeserving son finds himself receiving the outlandish love of a Father who gives it without cost or condition except a heart humble enough to come home and find it. This parable of Jesus is the great picture of God’s love for us.
On Dec 10, 1964, while still in the midst of the struggle for civil rights for African Americans and with the outcome far from assured, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his acceptance speech for the Nobel peace prize said these words, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” (That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.)”
My hope and prayer for each of you graduates, is that as you journey down the rest of the field ahead you will find the rock of truth to build your life on and the love of God that will provide a reason to live it. Semper Discens!* Always learning. Always discerning. I wish you well. May God Bless You All. Thank you.
*Semper Discens is the school motto engraved above the stage