Graduate Commencement Address: "Because You..."

May 20, 2023

It's a privilege to be here this morning, among our graduates, and your friends and families, to offer this message. This is a special day, and it is a testimony to your achievements.

I trust that a Whitworth experience has been good for you. I want you to know that your presence has been good for us. I hear that from our faculty and staff, over and over again. You are graduates incredibly well-prepared for being sent into a world that needs your intelligence, virtue, skills and talents, personhood, dedication, and impact. Every single one of those things. We have been deeply blessed through you.

This is a ceremony where we celebrate you and we send you. In that spirit, let me offer you a word of blessing about your gifts, some words of perspective, and a charge. When I close, I'll insert the noble word "Because" at the start of each clause. I'll do that because "Because" is a word packed with meaning. I like it so much that the word "because," that singular, subordinating conjunction, was the one-word title of my installation address last October. I added "you" for today's title.

In Scripture, the word "because" asks us to recall and then compels us to respond.

Psalm 115:1 - "Not to us, Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness."

2 Timothy 1:9 - "He saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of His own purpose and grace."

"Because" offers more than other transitional words. The conjunction "but" signals a shift is coming. The conjunction "and" simply says more is coming. The conjunction "because" connects the past with the future. In fact, it credits the past for the future. It is a cause and effect conjunction that requires us to remember and then respond.

And about that Scripture reference to salt and light that you just heard. Salt is a substance that provides flavor. Salt acts as a preserving agent. The presence of light amid darkness is unmistakable. Light illuminates. Light allows us to see things more clearly. Light helps us to ensure good footing. Salt and light. In the vocational lives before you, there will be opportunities to add salt and light to your work communities, adding the flavors of grace and truth, of humility and consideration; adding the effects of light, bringing intelligence and hope, wisdom and clarity. You have been equipped to do all of that.

I will come back to "because," salt and light, together, when I close this address.

The great theologian Martin Luther wrote this about our work, about how you have been equipped for whatever that vocation becomes. The word "these" at the beginning of the quote references your vocation. "These [your vocations] are the masks of God, behind which He wants to remain concealed and do all things." In other words, all the work that you do, in all the ways you contribute and serve, God is in disguise, behind you, through you, at work. So when you teach and counsel and preach, when you balance the accounting ledgers and help run a good business, however this education has equipped you, there are greater purposes behind that work. You have all been gifted in meaningful ways. All of your work matters. It matters to others and it matters to God.

Our work becomes a calling when it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely your own interests. If our work is only for the purposes of self-fulfillment, that will slowly eat away at us and eventually undermine society. Your smarts and talents and degrees are best used to create a culture that enables both you and others to thrive. You are stewards of the vocational talents with which you have been gifted. Use them as a good farmer would: Till the ground, work the soil, plant seeds, water and tend, and experience the harvest. There will no doubt be seasons of drought and storm. At all times, in all seasons, make your work a participatory work in what God is doing in the world.

In the fulfillment of your degree, you have already considered well the things that interest you, how you have been equipped. May these next chapters in your lives provide you opportunities to which you gravitate—keep an eye out for those things that stir you, that help you to see your work as something more than about just yourself, places where there is a need for which you fit incredibly well, and maybe not so well. May you be open to surprises and new interests you may never knew existed.

Pay attention to the important ways in which you have not only been given gifts, but places where you know you have limitations. Honesty with oneself is a virtue. An awareness about each of your gifts is essential, as is the awareness about where you need a strong team about you. No matter where your degree takes you, there will be some reliance upon others to assist with areas that are not your strengths.

Ephesians 2:10 informs us that we are God's workmanship, created in Jesus Christ to do good works, which God prepared for us in advance to do. Your life has not been a series of random events. Your family background, education, and life experiences—even the most painful ones—have all served to equip you to do some form of work that no one else can do.

And a word of perspective.

JRR Tolkien, whom you know as the author of The Lord of the Rings, apparently experienced writer's block in the late 1930s and couldn't figure out how to finish that trilogy. And then he had a dream, about which he wrote a short story based on that dream. The story he wrote and The Lord of the Rings trilogy are only connected because the dream freed Tolkien's mind to complete the trilogy. It's this short story about an artist who works very slowly that offers perspective for our lives and what we might accomplish.

So, this artist lived in a society that didn't value his work. But he loved to paint, and he had a vision of a beautiful tree, a grand tree, which he then set out to paint. The artist put up a huge canvas and began to work. Years go by, and again, I remind you that he worked very slowly. Life's distractions begin to creep in, ones that divert him from his painting. His neighbors are particularly needy; being meticulous worked against him, too. And so this man died with only one leaf painted. One, single leaf. As he died, and as death comes to take him, he says, "I can't die now. I have so far to go. I've only completed one leaf." In Tolkien's dream and story, the death train takes him and others up through a mountain, where people go in this short story world of the beyond. And the artist sees something off to the right. A tremendous and glorious tree. He jumps off the train, runs up to the tree and sees what he had always had in his mind. The tree, complete, in all its glory and fullness, just as he had imagined.

What was Tolkien saying to us? "You are graduating today with your degrees so that you can minister well, contribute to good business, rehab sprained ankles and torn ACLs, and teach and counsel. At the end of your life, you might not get more done than a leaf. Maybe two. There may be so much more left to accomplish at the end of your career. Have I done enough? Could I have made more of an impact? But there is a tree. And that trunk you painted, and maybe a leaf or two, matters to the vocations for which you have been prepared and for the people you will serve. There is, by God's sovereign grace, a hope in that story for each of us. Your work will contribute to a vision, one that exists and is known only to God, and which will, in time, reach its fullness. And the leaves you will paint are a part of that vision. Be assured of that.

And now back to that subordinate conjunction, which comes in the form of a charge:

Because you:

• Are the salt of the earth, season the spaces you occupy, enhance their taste and help preserve what is best in those work communities;
• Because you are empowered and equipped in new ways through your Whitworth degree, contribute to your vocational lives in ways that add a metaphorical light to your places of work and to your colleagues;
• Because you chose an area of interest and expertise, be good stewards of the gifts given to you by God. Use them fully. Share them freely;
• Because you are loved by a God who first loved us, behind whose mask we do our own work, sow seeds of grace and peace, of shalom, building and restoring relationships;
• And, because you will never know but a thimble-full of the impact you make through your gifts and talents and personhoods, know that the leaves you are painting are part of a stunning tree in all its glory, in which you play a key role, to bring about its fulfillment.

Amen.