Transcript
Cry out with joy to the Lord all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness. Come into God's presence with singing. For the Lord is a gracious God whose mercy is everlasting and whose faithfulness endures to all generations. Let us worship God.
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Let us listen now to these words from God's word as they come to us from Isaiah chapter 50, the first nine verses. Thus says the Lord, Where is your mother's bill of divorce with which I put her away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? No, because of your sins you were sold, and for your transgressions your mother was put away. Why was no one there when I came? Why did no one answer
when I called? Is my hand shortened that it cannot redeem, or have I no power to deliver? By my rebuke I dry up the sea, and I make the rivers a desert, their fish stink for lack of water and die of thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness and make sackcloth their covering. And then the servant of the Lord replies to these words of God. The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that
I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens, wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear and I was not rebellious. I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard. I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord God helps me. Therefore I have
not been disgraced. Therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame. He who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. It is the Lord God who helps me, who will declare me guilty. All of them will wear out like a garment. The moth will eat them up. This is the word of the
Lord. Thanks be to God. Summa Mater And in the sun of the world We fear and we love God And in the sun of the world We fear and we love God And in the sun of the world We fear and we love God In the house of Jesus Amen upon the recommendation of the faculty president has elected the following person to the rank of professor. Dr. Maxman Stackhouse, Dr. Elsie Anne Heath, Dr. Charles Anthony Risen
III. The Board of Trustees of the Princeton Biological Seminary upon the recommendation of the faculty president has elected the following person to the rank of associate professor, Dr. Dennis Farrell Olson. Professors and associate professors share a foyer with their colleagues in teaching, research, and planning, and in addition, have special responsibility in providing for success in the scholars to participate in the educational work of the institution. We now proceed to give formal recognition to these colleagues placed
among us. And that's all the floor is going to become. I'm going to turn it over to you. The Board of Trustees, responsive to the requirements of the final seminary, specifies that every person elected to the professorship or associate professor in this institution can answer affirmatively the following question. One, do you believe in the one God, Augustine, Holy Spirit, and do you confess the news of the Lord Jesus Christ and the good Savior on board and
acknowledge him, head over all things of the church, which he did right? I do. Do you accept the scriptures of the Old New Testament to be unique and historic as it was in Jesus Christ in the church Catholic? And by the Holy Spirit, God's word be with you. I do. Will you perform the duty of a professor in this seminary in a reading and in each record under the authority and restriction? I will. Have you been
induced, as far as I know, in your own heart, to accept the call of the doctors and the police who are now leading the government with a sincere desire to promise the glory of God and the gospel of design? Are you willing to undertake the work of a professor in this seminary and be prominent in this charge and duty which are incumbent on you in this character that God shall be your strength? I ask you now,
other than Dr. Rogers and the glory of God, to step forward in this rod your name is in the book with the direction and signature of generation to trust me as a professor who has been elected to serve in this institution. Let us join in prayer. God, the greatest of proof, we thank you for this seminary and we thank you for these teachers who we have installed in their hall for us. We thank you for the
gifts they do have given to their lives to them and to all of us. And we pray for your complete blessing in their lives. Grant them a ear that is open to you. Grant them the tongue of the teacher. Fill their presence as students and colleagues with your grace and their inspiring minds with your truth. That your word may be known. That your name may be praised. And that we all may enter into your love for
your work through Jesus Christ, our teacher and our crucified and risen Savior. Amen. Louise Lawson said to me yesterday, that's a mighty strange passage of scripture you have asked me to read in chapel tomorrow. In the presence of Dr. Olson, I readily concede the point. I want to focus on the part that's not so strange. The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher. The Lord God has opened my ear and I was not
rebellious. The Lord God has given you the tongue of a teacher. But it has been a gift you have had to acquire. I sometimes wonder how much people appreciate what those who are our teachers have gone through to reach this point in their vocational life. There is the baccalaureate degree representing all the hard work that goes into that achievement. Ordinarily there's the master's degree which follows, often the master of divinity degree. Then comes the doctoral program
where people disappear into the night and don't reemerge for six or seven years. There are all those doctoral seminars and the papers and then the great hurdle, the comprehensive examinations. I remember walking out of the library at Claremont Graduate School one day as I was preparing for my comps with a stack of books from down here under my chin and that was just on the Deutero Pauline literature. And I ran into my faculty advisor James M.
Robinson and he started to laugh. And I said, oh Dr. Robinson, how does one ever know it all? And he smiled in his southern drawl and said, no one ever does. But the fear is that you're supposed to know it all or as professors are wont to say, to master the data. And then the dissertation, a creative piece of research where by and large you are on your own with people looking over your shoulder telling you
it's not good enough that it needs this, that, and the other thing. And finally comes the day when you receive that degree. And then in God's providence an appointment to teach. And all the work that goes into creating here at least eight courses on a two year cycle. That's a lot of work. And then the years of interchange with students and the reading of papers and trying to stay abreast in one's field as best you can
under all the pressures that are upon you as a faculty member. So that when the prophet says God has given me the tongue of a teacher, you could say that too, but God has given it in a very demanding way. The second part, however, is the most difficult. The Lord God has opened my ear and I was not rebellious. It's so easy for preachers but also for teachers to want to do all the talking. After all,
that's what you're paid to do. That's what you're expected to do. That is your vocation, to teach, to put the material out for students, to make it accessible, to bring people into the conversation, to enlist their interest in the subject matter, to bring them along, to do the talking, but what about the listening? And who do teachers listen to? You often listen to each other. You listen to the guild, to your part of the guild. You
listen to each other through the journals and through the books and the manuscripts that are written. You engage each other in critical conversation. But the prophet is not talking about that kind of listening. He's talking about the listening for the word of the Lord. That there is someone else who speaks, not the voice of your peers, not the voice of your students, but the voice of the living God who speaks to your ear so that your
teaching comes out of your own relationship with this God, your own obedience to this God, your own attentiveness to God's will and way with the world. You know that I have enormous respect for each of you. I know what you've been through. I know how difficult it is to be appointed at Princeton Theological Seminary. I know how difficult it is to be tenured at Princeton Theological Seminary, all of which is a wonderful tribute to your own
personal gifts and your own long walk in your vocational way. But I would simply challenge you this morning on the day of your installation here to continue to ask God for the gift of a listening ear that amid all the voices that you hear, you may hear that voice who speaks the word of truth. God bless you in your continuing labors among us. Amen.
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And now go in peace and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
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