Vantage - Columbia Theological Seminary

What makes this a joke, of course, is the unavoidable truth that none of us will be around at age 170, much less in good condition. Every human life is a fleeting breath, a flickering candle, a brief moment bound by decline and death. Columbia Seminary has been graduating people since the early 19th century, class after class, and as the psalmist says, “They flourish like a flower of the field, [and then]... the wind passes over it and it is gone.” Which is not a reason for despair, but urgency. The fact that our lives don’t stretch on and on, arcing into infinity is a sign that we are not God. We are human; we don’t get unlimited do-overs. What it means to be human is a matter of how we use the shortness and urgency of time, a matter of making these decisions and not those, these choices and not others. Indeed, this is precisely at the heart of Jesus’ strange parable of the dishonest manager in the 16th chapter of the Gospel of Luke. It is the story of a man running out of time, making urgent decisions under the pressure of a world coming apart. Now, you may well have wondered why I selected a passage like the “dishonest manager” for your baccalaureate service. This is supposed to be a celebration of academic achievement, an inspiring prelude to a life of ministry, an upbeat occasion [...]

But no, for your baccalaureate the preacher has chosen a story about a man who loses his job because of mismanagement and dishonesty and then figures out a slick way to save his neck by cutting quick deals with his boss’s clients. It sounds more like the Enron scandal than effective ministry, more like “Let’s Make a Deal” than “Called as Partners in Christ’s Service,” more like the insider trading of Martha Stewart than the lilting prayer of St. Francis. Why bring such a story into a festive occasion? [....]

I think that what Jesus wanted his disciples—and us—to get out of this story can be found in the two insights Jesus names at the end of the parable: First there is a very challenging word in this parable. Jesus says, “I wish the children of light, I wish the people of God, I wish the ministers of the church were as shrewd for the gospel as the wheeler dealers out there in the world are shrewd for themselves.” In other words, there are people out there in the culture who get up every morning scheming for a buck, focusing every ounce of energy on feathering their nests, working in overdrive to save themselves and to scramble to the top of the heap. “I wish God’s people,” Jesus says, “would be just as focused and energetic for the beloved community.”

I think this is what the Presbyterian Church is getting at in one of the questions asked in the ordination service. Many of the constitutional ordination questions, frankly, are about adapting to the church’s system of order and belief. They ask if the person being ordained will be faithful and obedient and loyal to the church’s polity and authority. But then there is this one question: “Will you seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love?”

I take this question to mean, roughly translated, “Look, Jack Welch got up every morning of his career focusing all of his energy, imagination, intelligence, and passion for the bottom line at General Electric; Donald Rumsfeld gets up every morning focusing all of his energy, imagination, intelligence, and passion on making war. How dare the people of God do any less for the things of God? Will you, as a minister of the gospel, get up every morning focusing all of your energy, imagination, intelligence, and passion on the ways of peace, the paths of justice, the building up of the Body of Christ, and the hope of the gospel?”

A few years back I was preaching one Sunday morning in a church where, as a regular feature of the Sunday service, a member of the congregation would speak for a few minutes about the experience of God in his or her life, a kind of personal testimony. The Sunday I was there, the person doing this was a young woman who was a dancer in a professional ballet company. It was obvious that she was more comfortable as a dancer than as a speaker; she trembled a bit as she spoke, but she spoke nonetheless. She told the congregation that she had grown up and been baptized in this church. Then she looked around until she spotted the baptismal font. Pointing her finger in the direction of the font, she said, “In fact, I was baptized right over there. I don’t remember it; I was just a baby, but my father used to love to tell me about the day I was baptized. He would tell me with delight about the baptismal dress I wore, about all the relatives who came to the service, about the hymns sung that day, about what the minister said in the sermon, and he would always end this story by exclaiming, ‘Oh honey, the Holy Spirit was in the church that day!’”

But as a child restless in worship,” she continued, “I would wonder, ‘Where is the Holy Spirit in this church?” Now she moved her finger away from the font began to point to various places in the sanctuary. “Is the Holy Spirit in the rafters? In the organ pipes? In the stained glass windows?”

Then her voice softened. “As many of you know, I lost both of my parents in the same week last winter. In the midst of that terrible week, I was driving home from the hospital, having visited my parents, knowing that I may never see them alive again, and I stopped by the church, just to think and to pray. Sarah Graham was in the church kitchen, getting ready for a family night supper, and she saw me sitting all by myself in one of the back pews. She knew what was happening in my life, knew about my parents, and she took off her apron and came and sat beside me, holding my hand and praying with me. It was then that I knew where the Holy Spirit was in this church.”

I have thought a great deal about that word of testimony since I heard it, thought a great deal about Sarah Graham and what she did. Now Sarah Graham could have kept her apron on and kept on cooking, and she would still no doubt have been a church woman of faithfulness and obedience. But she had the discernment to sense the urgency of the moment, to know that the meal being prepared in the kitchen paled in importance before the needs of a grieving young woman sobbing in the sanctuary. When Sarah Graham took off her apron, she showed herself not just to be a Christian but a shrewd Christian, a Christian of “energy, imagination, intelligence and love.”

Jesus said, “I wish the children of light were as shrewd as the children of this age.”

Thomas G. Long is the Bandy Professor of Preaching at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. The baccalaureate sermon will be published in its entirety in the Pentecost issue of Journal for Preachers. The journal is published quarterly in time for Advent, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost. The Journal is a unique resource for the weekly task of proclaiming the gospel. For more information, go to www.ctsnet.edu. Then select Columbia at a Glance, Special Partnerships, and Journal for Preachers.