A Sermon for Graduates

May 17, 2011

Dear St. Paul’s Family,

This Sunday the Cherokee community will gather at the high school to observe the commencement exercises for the Class of 2011. That morning, we will celebrate the seniors in our youth group and ask God’s blessing upon them as they move into the next exciting chapter of their lives.

To mark the occasion, I’m using today’s Mid-Week Message to share with you the sermon I preached last Friday night at Grace United Methodist Church in Sioux City for Mornigside College’s Baccalaureate Service. It was my honor to serve the college in this way, especially since our own Michele Witcombe was among its senior class. Having never attended a baccalaureate service, let alone preach for one, I wanted to offer a word to the graduates that was both suitable for the occasion and grounded in scripture. It was a sermon titled, “When Life Certainly is Uncertain,” based on Mark 9:14-29, the story of the father with the demon-possessed son. It captures my thoughts and hopes for all our graduates, as we journey through a world filled with conviction and chaos.

“When Life Certainly is Uncertain”
May 13, 2011
Mark 9:14-29

“Immediately the father of the child cried out, ‘I believe, help my unbelief!’” (Mark 9:24)

What a peculiar response. What a strange thing to say. The faculty of Morningside College, have, I suspect become quite accustomed to peculiar responses. Perhaps from some of you graduating seniors. Professors have the luxury of going right to the student and asking them, “What did you mean by what you wrote?” Or, “Tell me more about what you said.” Or, “I’m not clear about your point.” There is a desire for clarity and understanding.

A desire for certainty.

But when it comes to passages of scripture that are peculiar or unclear, we do not have that luxury. Because if we did, we could go straight to this man who responded to Jesus’ question and say, “What in the world did you mean?”

To set the stage, this was a man whose son was possessed by what the Bible says was an evil spirit. It was perhaps not a literal demon, but some kind of heavy, dark, emotional and mental state that had seized control of his life, rendering him uncontrollable and mute. And when the father brought the boy to Jesus for healing, he was greeted by Jesus with a rebuke: “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you?”

The man didn’t exactly catch Jesus “in the mood,” wouldn’t you say?

So, the man decides to give Jesus the whole medical history on the boy, dropping the veritable case file on Jesus’ lap. And then he said to Jesus a seemingly innocuous, pious phrase: “If you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us!”

To which Jesus said, “If you are able! (As if to say, “Really? Don’t you know who I am?) All things can be done for the one who believes!”

And so here it is. It’s at this point that the man cried out: “I believe, help my unbelief!”

I believe. Help my unbelief.

Two seemingly disparate, polar opposite ideas, juxtaposed with no reasonable connection. How in the world do we make sense of this statement? How can he both believe and not believe?

If the man were submitting this as a term paper to a Morningside faculty member, he might get docked points for a typo, and urged to proof his paper more carefully. He might get it back with a red pen in the margin, saying, “Um, you seem to be missing a word there, in between those two statements. Some kind of connecting word to help us understand the relationship between “I believe” and “Help my unbelief.”

I looked carefully at several translations of this verse to see if there was a conjunction in some version other than the one I’m used to. In fact, I looked at the Greek, and couldn’t find one. I then asked the smartest biblical scholar I know for advice.

I said, “Sweetheart…..” (To which Bruce Forbes said, “Don’t call me that.”) But we still couldn’t find a connecting word.

So rather than having the luxury of asking this father personally for clarification, we are left to playing Mad Libs with the gospels. There’s a blank there, and it’s asking for a conjunction.

So first, we try the word, “However.” That seems reasonable enough. “Lord, I believe….however….” Of course that works. It works for many of us. Yes, we believe. But, we still doubt. Yes, we live with certainty, but we still have our jitters.

This works grammatically, just as it works autobiographically. Track it through your own life. Four years ago, you went through a similar exercise in your life, graduating as high school seniors. You were at the top of your game, the king or queen of the hill, and you were convinced that you were fully formed for the task of adulthood. Your future was bright, your disposition giddy, and your enthusiasm charged.

And then came the first semester of your Freshman year.

Then, every bit of your “I believe” turned into “Help my unbelief.” Many of your foundational perspectives shifted, like tectonic plates under your feet. Your preconceived notions were challenged, the basic fabric of your identity tugged and frayed, and you were being disassembled, like a device in for repair.

All the while, this liberal arts education was doing its job.

But now you are sitting here, looking at college in the rear view mirror, having been more than repaired, but renovated, upgraded with new tools to make you think, act, and speak better than ever before. You graduated with certainty from high school, became uncertain in college, and now you are certain again.

To insert however into the man’s sentence is to suggest that belief and unbelief, certainty and doubt, are an uneasy mix, even mutually exclusive, in which we try to as hard as we can to be confident, but acknowledge that we still fall short. Is that the nature of this man’s peculiar response? Equal parts profession and confession? An affirmation of his belief, yet a repentance for his own shortcomings?

Now, if “However” is a reasonable possibility, I would like to suggest another. Maybe one that is more likely, and even more suitable for you graduating seniors ready to forge ahead with life.

How about the word, “Therefore.”

“Lord, I believe; therefore, help my unbelief.”

In other words, certainty and uncertainty are not mutually exclusive, but are necessary co-companions in your journey of life. They are the yin to the yang. They exist in our lives just as light creates shadows. If you have one, you must have the other. The more you grow in your understanding of who you are and the world around you, the more you must be aware of what you don’t know, and be ready for the surprises that lie ahead.

The presence of the word therefore would therefore be a reminder to us that tension and ambiguity in life is not always a bad thing. Struggling with what we know and don’t know does not convey how weak we are, but simply how human we are. I’m reminded of the great quote by Anne Lamott, who said that the “opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.” Faith is not the absence of doubt, but the embrace of and ultimate transformation of it. Courage is not the elimination of fear, but the regular interplay and conscious choice against it.

The truth of the matter is, you and I live in a time when there is more value in the ambiguity and the shades of gray than there are in rigid, dogmatic certainty. Our world will be made better, not by the extremists on the fringe who think that everyone else has it wrong, but by those of us in the center who believe that there is value in respectful dialogue.

And if there is any group who has had to experience these lessons the hard way, it is you. Consider the fact you are part of a graduating class that was born the year that the Berlin Wall fell. You were toddlers when we engaged in the first Gulf war. When you were in elementary school, you saw the rise and burst of the dot.com bubble, the horror of the Oklahoma City bombing, and the massacre at Columbine High School. When you were in junior high, you witnessed the unfathomable tragedy of September 11, and every year of your high school and college careers has been marked by this country at war. And we are now in the midst of the greatest economic slump since the Great Depression. No generation has had to live with this kind of chaos and ambiguity shifting beneath their feet as yours.

All of this makes you uniquely equipped to understand that uncertainty is a certain part of life. And with its embrace can come transformation.

It’s interesting to note Jesus’ response to the man after he said this. Whereas in other stories, Jesus praises a person for their faith, or indicates how impressed he was by them, Jesus said nothing to the man.

Nothing at all.

Mark moves on with the story as if the man had said nothing at all. And so we are led to believe that Jesus found the man’s response to be neither troublesome or noteworthy. Perhaps it’s because he found it to be so natural. Whereas we might labor over what the man’s true motivations were deep down, it seems that Jesus knew.

He knew that the man was simply exhibiting all that it meant to be human. This, after all, would be the same Jesus that would later in his life say, in the same breath, “Let this cup pass from me. But not my will but yours be done.”

Jesus knew what it meant to be internally conflicted. So, Jesus gave this man the most salvific non-response in the gospels.

Instead of responding verbally, Jesus moved on to the important business at hand. He entered right into the midst of the man’s tension and spoke the demon out of his son’s body. Jesus’ response to the man’s response was to bring healing.

There is a lesson here for all of us, and for you, graduating class of 2011. When we are at our most vulnerable, at the point of acknowledging our deepest tensions, we need neither be judged or praised. We can simply be transformed, and then healed, to become agents of healing for a broken world. We can be brought to a maturity that neither ignores or condemns uncertainty, but embraces it for its benefit.

I encourage you, then, to insert your own therefore into this verse, and thus receive these great lessons: Don’t settle for easy answers in life. Don’t ever stop the thirst for learning, for checking your assumptions, and embracing the unknown. Don’t ever be timid in admitting your ignorance, but use the tools that you have been given by this college to test and to tease the resolutions out of chaos.

Yours is a generation that has been forged in the crucible of uncertainty. And you can lead the way for the world to embrace it and transform it.

In the name of the God who created us, redeemed us, and sustains us, Amen.


Magrey


The Rev. Magrey R. deVega
St. Paul's United Methodist Church
531 W. Main St.
Cherokee, IA 51012
Ph: 712-225-3955
http://www.cherokeespumc.org




GRADUATION SUNDAY NEXT WEEK
Join us as we celebrate this major milestone in the lives of our graduating seniors. We will continue in our sermon series “Strength for the Tough Times” with a challenge from 1 Peter on how to cultivate a mature faith anchored in Jesus Christ, our chief cornerstone.

CONGRATULATIONS, MICHELE!
We celebrate the graduation of Michele Witcombe last Saturday from Morningside College, who earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Education. We are so proud of you, Michele!

SUMMER WORSHIP TIME
Summer worship begins at 9:30am starting Sunday, June 5. Phyllis Parrot is coordinating summer coffees, so if you would like to help out with cookies or desserts, please contact her.

SPECIAL OFFERING THIS SUNDAY
This Sunday we are receiving our annual offering for Larry and Jane Kies, our missionaries to Africa University. Please be prayerful and generous in your support of their vital ministry to the students and families of Zimbabwe. All of your gifts will count toward our Rainbow Covenant Missions Giving effort for this year.

LAWN MOWING VOLUNTEERS FOR THE SUMMER
“The grass is growing, so the lawn needs mowing,” in the words of our own Rod Bainbridge. There is a sign-up sheet downstairs in front of the office for you to volunteer to mow the church lawn. All the equipment is here at the church for you to use, including gasoline. Please sign up and contact Al Henn if you have questions.

HOT DOG DAYS SUCCESS
Thanks to Jeff Blum, Kathy Simonsen, Rod Bainbridge, Darly Gochener, Korrie Waldner, and Don Henderson for their work on last Thursday’s Hot Dog Day. We distributed 160 hot dogs in under 45 minutes, and gave away over 50 flyers to kids advertising this summer’s Vacation Bible School. Thanks!