Transcript
[gathering music]
Let us worship God. O God, light of the minds that know you, life of the souls that love you, strength of the thoughts that seek you, help us so to know you that we may truly love you, so to love you that we may fully serve you, whose service is perfect freedom, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
[congregational singing]
The reading comes from the Epistle to the Ephesians chapter 2, verse 11 to 22. So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called the uncircumcision by those who are called the circumcision, a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands. Remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were
once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ, for he is our peace in his flesh, he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross,
thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near, for through him both of us have access in the spirit to the Father. So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as a
cornerstone. In him, the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple, in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. Here ends the reading.
[music]
Join with me in the prayers of intercession, if you would. Following each intercession, if the community would join me in saying, Lord, hear our prayer, let us pray. Gracious God of wonder, God of awe, and God of new birth and new beginnings, we
confess that we have bent your will and broken your heart, and that's just been since lunchtime. But we come before you tonight because you've made possible the fact that our gathered community in the name of Jesus Christ can dare to ask your presence in our journey that stretches before us. Because at one point when you said, whom shall I send to do this work you can't possibly do, and to answer this call you can't possibly answer,
and to live a life you can't possibly live, and to change a world that can't possibly be changed, whom shall I send? And with the power of the Holy Spirit every one of us in this room has said, here am I, Lord, send me. And so tonight here we are. And we dare to pray in the name of Jesus Christ for the impossible task of ministry that you've laid ahead for us. For a new beginning, for
turning around and turning toward you as we start this academic year together, Lord, hear our prayer. We pray for our community gathered here tonight, for the incoming class, and for those returning to find friends and plans and ords waiting for them, for the calming of nerves and the quelling of uncertainty and the fueling of passion. Lord, hear our prayer. For our faculty, and tonight we especially remember the Ryerson's, safe but stunned after the fire yesterday. We
pray for our administration and for our Board of Trustees, direct their discernment, guide their decisions, and make clear your presence in all of the decisions that lay ahead this year. Lord, hear our prayer. For all of the families who have been left behind, especially the ones overseas, for those who have sacrificed more than we will ever know in order to be here to follow your call, we thank you and we ask your mercy while they are
apart. Lord, hear our prayer. But Lord, there are those whose needs are much greater than scheduling classes. And for these we also pray. For those who struggle for peace and survival, whose pain is measured in lives lost in parts of the world we know by the news and sometimes firsthand, we pause silently to name those communities on our hearts. Lord, hear our prayers. For the victims of violence, violence at home, violence in the streets, violence in
the schoolyards, we pause silently to name those victims we know or have read about or since need our prayers. Lord, hear our prayers. For people who struggle openly or quietly with difference, with illness, with difficulties we will never know, for young people we know and for those we don't, the ones whose parents aren't home tonight, and whose parents aren't coming, and for our national leaders, political and religious, for the First Family and especially for Chelsea Clinton,
let them remind us how frail we are too, despite our professed convictions. For all of us, Lord, hear our prayer. And finally, for the unity of your church, that here and around the globe we may be one body of Christ, one with you who can make us, one with one another. Lord, hear our prayers. Lord, we don't know each other, we don't know what lies ahead for us, but we do know you. And so it's with
the confidence of the children of God that we pray the prayer your Son taught us. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the
glory forever. Amen. What a pleasure it is to look out and see so many new faces and to look out and see so many familiar faces. A welcome to all of the entering class and a welcome to all of you who have returned from what I'm sure is a very busy summer season. And now we begin our new academic year for 1998-'99 and we begin it together in this place before the Living God. It is
our custom at the annual convocation to make certain announcements that pertain to our institutional life. I would announce the installation of two new trustees to the board, the Reverend Dr. Todd Jones, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Spartanburg, South Carolina, the Reverend Dr. Thomas Erickson, pastor of the Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona, the alumni trustee in the class of 2001. Secondly, I announce faculty and administrative appointments. It is a pleasure to welcome Dr.
Scott Hendrix, James Hastings Nichols, professor of Reformation History and Doctrine. Dr. Hendrix has come to Princeton Seminary from Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he was professor of Church History and director of the Institute for Luther Studies. Dr. Hendrix, please rise and let us greet you. Also new to the faculty this fall is Ms. Jacqueline Lapsley, instructor in Old Testament. Ms. Lapsley is a PhD candidate in Hebrew Bible at Emory University and a graduate
of Princeton Theological Seminary. Jack, would you stand and let us greet you. Also joining the faculty this fall is Mr. J. Ross Wagner, instructor in New Testament. Mr. Wagner is a PhD candidate in New Testament at Duke University. Mr. Ross, let us greet you. Would you stand, please? New to the administration this fall is Ms. Nancy Oliver Gray, vice president for Seminary Relations. Ms. Gray is the former vice president of Development and University Relations at
Rider University. I'm not sure that Nancy Gray is here this evening. Yes, she is. Please stand, Nancy. Let us welcome you. And Mr. David Stewart, electronic services librarian. Mr. Stewart was associate librarian at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mr. Stewart, are you here this evening? We greet you as well. David, not here. I announce with gladness faculty and administrative promotions. Dr. Brian Blunt begins the fall semester as associate professor of New Testament with tenure. Dr.
Blunt, we welcome you in this new year. Reverend Jeffrey O'Grady has been promoted to dean of student affairs, and he'll be preaching tomorrow at the opening communion service. Jeff, are you here? He's way in the back. Mr. Matthew Spina has been promoted to director of admissions and financial aid. Matt, I'm not sure, is here this evening. Faculty retirements at the conclusion of the 1998-'99 academic year include Dr. Ulrich Mauser, professor of New Testament, and
Dr. Charles Ryerson, professor of the history of religions. Dr. Mauser is on sabbatical this fall, as is Dr. Ryerson. Dr. Mauser is staying home writing a book, and Dr. Ryerson is trying to straighten out things in India. Anyway, they will both be back for the spring semester. It is with sadness that I announce to many the death of the Reverend Dr. David L. Crawford, the director of student relations emeritus on June the 13th of this year.
Dr. Crawford served this institution well for over 30 years in one capacity or another. And it gives me gladness to share this special announcement, and I'm pleased to announce that Dr. Bruce McCormick, associate professor of systematic theology, has been designated the 1998 recipient of the prestigious Karl Barth Award given by the Evangelical Church of the Union in Germany for his book, "Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology". This award, which includes a prize of 20,000 Deutsche
Marks, has been given in prior years to such notables as Eberhard Jüngel, Karl Lehmann, and Hans Kung. The award ceremony will be held in Berlin on December 6th of this year. Dr. McCormick, we congratulate you. And now let us continue to praise God with song. There is a Father, Who made the world a home. There is a Father, Who made the earth a home, To give the saints, saints song. Sometimes when we wish for the best,
When we are blessed in name, And then the Holy Spirit Rejoices on us again. There is a Father, Who made the world a home. There is a Father, Who made the earth a home, To give the saints, saints song. Oh, ever we wish for praise, Oh, give us this one prayer, That we may be back for all days, This life we used to have. There is a Father, Who made the world a home, To make the
earth a home. There is a Father, Who made the earth a home, To give the saints, saints song. You can reach like the earth, You can outlive like the heart, You can help the Lord, oh Jesus, And save the earth from all evil. There is a Father, Who made the world a home, To make the earth a home. There is a Father, Who made the earth a home, To give the saints, saints song. A seminary without
walls might suggest a theological school without a campus. No classrooms, no dormitories or student apartments, no refectory, and perhaps no library. Such was the vision of the future of colleges and universities shared with us last spring by the president of a high-powered consultant firm that specializes in computer technology. The Internet and the Web will determine the future of higher education, he asserted, adding that already at his own alma mater, the University of Virginia, residential students
attend classes and take examinations without ever leaving their dorm rooms. Soon, he predicted, baccalaureate and graduate degree programs will be widely available to students who will pursue them at their PCs from home. No doubt this vision of higher education in the future will be at least partially realized. There may even emerge the theological schools of this kind, but that is not my topic. The seminary without walls I have in mind is an academic version of the
community envisioned in the letter to the Ephesians. It is a company of scholars without dividing walls of hostility. Although a seminary is a school rather than a church, it is nonetheless a school of the church, and therefore committed to that quality of communal life which God through Jesus Christ makes possible in the church. Two thousand years ago, this possibility was attested in these words and addressed to Christians in their Jewish and Gentile differences. For he is
our peace. In his flesh, he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall. That is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to
you who were far off and peace to those who were near, for through him both of us have access in one spirit to the Father. Today, that same possibility remains attested in canonical scripture and is addressed to all Christians in our racial, ethnic, gender, denominational, and theological diversity. And given the continuing presence of dividing walls of hostility in today's world, it should still be heard as good news. The morning paper and the evening news bear witness
daily to human hostility based upon human differences. Among the more dramatic instances are the tribal conflict in Wanda between Hutus and Tutsis, the ethnic wars in the Balkans between Albanians and Serbs, and the religious violence in North Ireland between Catholics and Protestants. Less dramatic but typical of most parts of the world is the enmity which the Scots feel toward the English, even today. Braveheart lives on. But when you visit Scotland, you soon learn that the Highlanders
and the Lowlanders don't care for each other either. And then you discover that those from Glasgow on the west coast of the island look down upon those from Edinburgh on the east coast, and vice versa. This summer, our family was in Scandinavia for the first time, and it didn't take long to realize that the Danes really don't like the Swedes. And the Swedes can't stand the Norwegians, and they all hate the Finns. Closer to home, we
face what Arthur Schlesinger has called the disuniting of America over racial, ethnic, religious, and ideological differences. But hostility toward others because of the things that distinguish us from each other is not a modern phenomenon. It was well honed by the time of the Ephesian letter. For Judaism, the wall of hostility was of a religious type. The whole world was divided into two kinds of people, us and them, Jews and Gentiles. The Jews identified themselves as the
chosen people of God, walled off from all others by the law of God. The Gentiles were literally the nations, the other nations, them, ta ethne in Greek, but connoting in Jewish parlance all non-Jews. These nations, however, refused to be lumped together under a single rubric and viewed one another through the lens of their own particular ethnicity. Thus, the Greeks also divided the world into us and them. But their wall of hostility was more cultural than
religious. For them, there were only Greeks and barbarians. The latter was a term of derision they coined in mockery of the unintelligible bar-bar-bar sounds of those who spoke a language other than Greek. The Romans, however, played the trump card on all of them. Their wall of hostility was predicated upon political power based on military might. Although Jewish religion was uniquely tolerated in Rome and Greek culture greatly admired, the Romans divided their empire also into
us and them, freemen and slaves. Political status was for Rome the principal determinant of human identity and hence of human value. Then, of course, there was the difference recognized in every religion, every culture, and every nation of the ancient world, the wall of hostility based upon gender, male and female, us and them, one more time. It is in such a socio-historical context, past and present, that the possibility of a wall-less human community is announced
in the letter to the Ephesians. This community without walls in which hostility gives way to peace is the product of the new humanity created by God in Jesus Christ. People are here reconciled to God through Christ and thereby to one another in all of their created and cultural diversity. Hostility toward others is overcome when peace rules our relationship to God. Now, the counterculture claim made in this text about the Church as God's new humanity is not
incidental to the theme of the letter to the Ephesians. Marcus Barthes, in his commentary, designates this passage the key and high point of the whole epistle. What it unlocks and points up are the human implications of that cosmic purpose of God announced in the opening thanksgiving of the letter. With all wisdom and insight, he has made known to us the mystery of his will. According to his good pleasure, that he set forth in Christ as a
plan for the fullness of time to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. This divine eschatological plan to reconcile all things in Christ captured the theological imagination of John A. Mackay, the third president of this seminary. In his beautiful exposition of the Ephesian letter and this present time, as he called it, he designated the vision God's order. By God's order is meant the essential structure of spiritual reality, Dr. Mackay explained,
which has its source in God and whose development is determined by the will of God. Further, the structure or order thus envisaged as its center in Jesus Christ. Christ constitutes its core. The development of this structure holds the promise and sets the task of the future, not only the future of human history but the future of cosmic history as well. In a word, the new humanity envisioned in the letter to the Ephesians is part and parcel
of the world's destiny according to the revealed mystery of God's eternal purpose. This vision is not unique to Ephesians, however, in the New Testament. Consider the following examples from other letters in the Pauline corpus. From Galatians. As many of you as were baptized into Christ Jesus have clothed yourself with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek. There is no longer slave or free. There is no longer male and female, for all of you are one
in Christ Jesus. Or this text from 1 Corinthians. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. Or this verse from Romans. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. The same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call upon Him. And finally from Colossians. In that renewal in Christ, there is no longer
Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, but Christ is all and in all. Each of these texts represents a condensed version of the new humanity, the new community, that they envision more fully in Ephesians 2. They warrant the inference that this vision is both descriptive of and prescriptive for the church created and sustained by the proclamation of the gospel. Now between the canonical vision and the congregational reality, there is a certain gap,
as every pastor knows, and every seminarian who ever becomes a pastor will discover. And that's because the gospel is, as German theologians put it, both Gabe und Aufgabe, both gift and task. Its grammar includes both indicative and imperative moods. What is offered by grace must be received by faith and lived in obedience. A community without dividing walls of hostility is a God-given possibility that may and indeed must be realized among those who confess Jesus Christ
as their Savior and Lord. Even Paul had to work at this among the churches of his time. According to John Donahue, that is precisely what the Apostle is about in Romans 14. In a public lecture at Santa Clara University entitled, "Breaking Down the Dividing Wall of Hostility", subtitled "A Biblical Mandate for the New Millennium", Professor Donahue argues that in Romans 14 Paul addresses the same wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile mentioned in Ephesians. Only here
the division is taken up under the rubrics of the strong and the weak in faith among Christians in Rome. The strong are identified as Gentile believers who claim freedom from religious dietary restrictions as well as the prescriptions of a liturgical calendar. And the weak are Jewish Christians who still observe kosher meals and keep the Sabbath, plus perhaps some Gentile believers who previously attended the synagogue as God-fearers. What this passage illustrates, according to Donahue, are the
practical difficulties in realizing the theological vision attested in Ephesians 2. And the lecture concludes with a careful application of the Apostle's strategic moves in dealing with the Roman situation to that of a modern Roman Catholic university. That strategy commands neither, says Donahue, a bland multiculturalism which gives superficial recognition to difference in the hope that everyone will, in the end, turn out to be like me. Nor some bland lower common denominator, identity shared by all. Rather, the
mutual acceptance urged by Paul in Romans 14 entails coexistence with significant differences sustained by the radical new identity in Christ and by a realization of the impartiality of a God who accepts radical differences. Now note well that it is our radical new identity in Christ that makes it possible for believers to offer each other mutual acceptance amid our significant differences. It does so not by calling us to deny or degrade the reality of our racial, ethnic,
and gender particularities. On the contrary, these particularities are recognized and affirmed in Christ as gifts of God. But they are also transcended and thereby relativized by our faith in Jesus Christ. For it is that relationship with Jesus Christ which provides us with our root identity. All the rest is good, but it's not God. The gospel delivers us not from our distinctions but from our idolatrous worship of our distinctions. And this because worship is directed away from
ourselves to Jesus Christ. It is in Him that we have each other. When in 1935 Dietrich Bonhoeffer became director of the Confessing Churches Seminary in the Pomeranian village of Finkenwalde, he determined to implement this understanding of community among faculty and students. Regarding this experiment in theological education, Mary Bosanquet has written that through all of the courses in theology ran three strands of inquiry. Who is Christ? What is the nature of the church? What is discipleship? The
answers to these questions were sought not only in study and discussion, but above all in life, in endeavoring to make Finkenwalde a living cell of the church where Christ might be truly encountered existing as community, to use Bonhoeffer's words. Writing of this experience later in his devotional classic Life Together, Bonhoeffer declared his conviction that Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. This claim, he explains, entails three things. It means first, that a Christian
needs others because of Jesus Christ. It means second, that a Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ. It means third, that in Jesus Christ we have been chosen from eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity. Of these points, I wish to focus upon the second, the claim that Christian community is founded and formed by the fact that we who believe in Jesus Christ come to one another only through and in Jesus Christ. Community in
and through Jesus Christ is both possible and necessary because of what Christ has done for me, what Christ has done for you, what Christ has done for us all. What brings us together and binds us together is not merely the fact that we are creatures of the same creator, but also that we are redeemed by the same Redeemer. Writing long before our present sensitivities to gender inclusive language, Bonhoeffer explained it this way. One is a brother
to another only through Jesus Christ. I am a brother to another person through what Jesus Christ did for me and to me. The other person has become a brother to me through what Jesus Christ did for him. This fact that we are brethren only through Jesus Christ is of immeasurable significance. Not only the other person who is earnest and devout, who comes to me seeking brotherhood, must I deal with in fellowship. My brother is rather that
other person who has been redeemed by Christ, delivered from his sin, and called to faith and eternal life. Not what a man is in himself as a Christian. His spirituality and piety constitutes the basis of this community. What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done for both of us. This makes compelling sense if Jesus Christ actually is our Redeemer. What
is assumed here by Bonhoeffer is a full-blown robust Christology of incarnation, atonement, and resurrection, and this in a Trinitarian context. A wandering Jewish sage of the cynic type, as advocated by the Jesus Seminar, is not capable of creating the life together of which Bonhoeffer speaks. A community without dividing walls of hostility arises where its members find their root identity in relationship to Jesus Christ, rather than in their created and cultural differences. According to Miroslav Volf,
the author of "Exclusion and Embrace and After Our Likeness", subtitled "The Church in the Image of the Trinity", it is the failure of Christians to find their core identity in Jesus Christ that makes the Church complicitus in the incredible ethnic violence of our time. Catholics car bomb Protestant communities and Protestants fire bomb Catholic homes in North Island over their religious differences. Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats commit atrocities against one another in the Balkans because of their
ethnic differences. Hutus and Tutsis kill one another in Rwanda on the basis of tribal loyalties, even though 80% of the entire population claims Church membership. Professor Volf asks, why are churches, the presumed agents of peace, at best impotent in the face of their people's conflicts, and at worst, perpetrators of the most heinous crimes? His answer is that a confusion of loyalty, a confusion of loyalty, grips the Christians caught in these conflicts. As he explains, though
explicitly giving ultimate allegiance to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, many Christians, in fact, seem to have an overriding commitment to their respective cultures and ethnic groups. Hence, in conflict situations, they tend to fight on the side of their cultural group and employ faith as a weapon in the struggle. Now loyalty, loyalty is a matter of the heart. And a confusion of loyalties reflects a divided self that needs the balm of Gilead, the healing and the wholeness
that God provides in Christ. The point was made last July by Dr. K. James, Dean of the School of Government at Regent University. The occasion was a television special billed as a Presidential Dialogue on Race, moderated by Jim Lehrer of the News Hour and carried on the PBS outlet in Philadelphia, WHYY Channel 12. Participants included, in addition to President Clinton, eight articulate Americans with African, Asian, European, Hispanic, and Native Indian ancestry. Speaking as an Afro-American,
Dr. James addressed the issue of defining racism. From her comments, I infer that she is a Christian. For she startled her conversation partners by declaring that racism is sin. Sin. Nobody picked up on it, but that's what she said. And for that reason, she said, is a matter of the heart. When racism takes institutional form, Dr. James explained, it is properly called discrimination and can be eliminated by legislation as well as by goodwill. But racism is
individual as well as institutional. And as a matter of the heart, it requires human transformation as much as, if not more than, governmental regulation. Thorstein Veblen once defined an 'ism' as the absolutizing of something that is less than absolute. Idolatry does the same by treating something as God that is less than God. The human source of idolatry is the heart, which Calvin recognized as the factory of idols. It produces not only racism, but sexism, and ethnocentrism,
even denominationalism, and evangelicalism, and liberalism, and conservativism, and radicalism, and all the other isms you can think of as well. Whatever we absolutize that is less than God, we idolize. Whether it be our race, or our gender, or our ethnicity, or our church, or our theology. Moreover, there is community only among those who worship the same idols. That is why we have dividing walls of hostility between ourselves and those who worship at other altars. It is
also why the transformation of the human heart is the prerequisite for a community without walls. Such transformation occurs when we look to Jesus Christ alone for our salvation, when by faith he delivers us from the need to justify our existence by the created givens of our race, or the cultural achievements of our ethnicity. Remember, the struggle in the Galatian churches between Paul and the Judaizers was over the issue of ethnicity. The works of the law, which
these Jewish Christians advocated and wished to impose upon Gentile believers, circumcision, dietary restrictions, Sabbath keeping, were precisely those things which gave Judaism its ethnic identity. Their gospel was Jesus Christ plus Jewish ethnicity as the way of salvation. But Paul called this no gospel at all when compared with the message of God's sovereign grace for all people in Christ. His Galatian answer to this theological challenge is echoed clearly in Ephesians, for by grace you have been saved
through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not the result of works, so that no one may boast. So if redemption in Jesus Christ is not predicated upon Jewish ethnic identity, it is surely not based on my Scottish ethnicity. No matter how much I love the kilt, the bagpipes, and the haggis. And it's not dependent upon yours either, whatever it may be. Neither is it dependent upon my race or
yours, my gender or yours, my denominational commitment or yours, my age or yours, my life experience or yours. Redemption is grounded solely in God's gift of grace in Jesus Christ, and that alone is grounds for a community without dividing walls of hostility. For he is our peace. In his flesh he has made all groups into one and has broken down the dividing walls that is the hostility between us. So, this school of the church is called
to be a seminary without walls, yet it is always in the process of receiving and in need of realizing God's gracious gift as we learned to our surprise last fall. I, for one, am grateful to all who served on the Racial Ethnic Sensitivity and Multicultural Awareness Task Force this past spring, as well as to all who participated in the conversation by attending forums and responding to questionnaires. The Task Force report has not only been read but
studied during the summer recess, and a number of its recommendations have already been implemented. Others will follow in due season, and we will be a better institution for that. But it is clear to me from what the report says, as well as from what it does not say, that the basic issue is more personal here than institutional. I'm thinking now of T. S. Eliot's line to the effect that we keep trying to invent a system so
perfect that no one will ever have to be good. No such system or organization or institution exist or will ever exist. Even the elimination of all discrimination will not relieve us from our personal responsibility for the quality of community on this campus. Our life together will ultimately be as good or as bad as we are. In the faculty's discussion of the Task Force report at its fall conference last week, Professor Migliore called our attention to a
recent event that illustrates what Karl Barth meant by a secular parable. It happened the night Mark McGuire hit his 62nd home run of the season and broke the long-standing record held by Roger Maris. In the wild celebration that followed, McGuire received a bear hug at home plate from none other than Sammy Sosa, the center fielder for the opposing Chicago Cubs and himself a contender at that moment for the home run record. Sosa ran in all
the way from center field to give Mark McGuire a hug. And what makes that hug parabolic is its power to demonstrate how differences are transcended by higher loyalties and higher commitments. McGuire of Irish descent, Sosa the Dominican of African heritage whose mother tongue is Spanish, opponents on the field and rivals for a coveted record, and yet friends. Why? Because of their mutual love for baseball. And the sequel is even more touching. This past weekend Sammy Sosa
hit his 61st and 62nd home run and now holds the record jointly with McGuire. And in an interview afterward he shouted into the microphone, I love you Mark wherever you are. I love you Mark wherever you are. Now if baseball can do that for Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa, how much more can our Lord Jesus Christ do that for us? In him God has broken down the dividing wall, that is the hostility between us. In Jesus
Christ God has created one new humanity in place of the two or three or four or five, thus making peace. Whether or not we realize this possibility depends upon our loyalty, our loyalty and our commitment to our one Lord who transcends all of our differences. If this God given possibility is not realized here at this school which prepares leaders for the church, it is unlikely to occur in the communities of faith that we are preparing ourselves
to serve. So let us live together then in such a manner that this can be a seminary without walls. An academic community of the church that claims the promise of the Ephesian text. For we are what he has made us. Created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
[music]
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. [music]