President’s Baccalaureate Address 2019

Graduates, this is a big day, isn’t it? One of the major milestones in your life. Right up there with being born, getting married, having a baby. Maybe landing your dream job. Yep. The final episode of the Game of Thrones. One of life’s really big days.

Seriously, I am so pleased that you and your family members chose to begin this important day here, in this place. The Chapel of the Resurrection. A place built to celebrate Christ’s victory over death and the grave. A place of worship and prayer. A place of peace and hope. A place that promises newness of life.
Maybe you are Lutheran and this Chapel has been a regular part of each week at Valparaiso University. Maybe you are Christian, but not Lutheran, worshiping or attending events here sporadically. Maybe your faith tradition is not Christian, or you have no faith tradition. Maybe you lost your faith, or your belief in any organized religion. And maybe you do not believe in the concept of God.

Regardless of your beliefs, your presence here today is symbolic in several ways. It is symbolic of our collective acknowledgement that, in moments like these, we ought to stand before the presence of our Creator, a force that we cannot fully know nor comprehend. And it is fitting that we should gather together to sing songs of faith and praise and thanksgiving, and to pray with and for one another.

For Christians, this gathering is symbolic of a return to our baptism, a reminder of God’s Spirit poured out on all who believe, and a re-dedication of our lives and our futures in service to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Our presence here today is also symbolic of Valparaiso University’s commitment to faith and learning as a University under the Cross, to be that nexus where Athens and Jerusalem meet, to prepare graduates who will lead and serve in church and society.

These, of course, are some of the theological and symbolic reasons for why people gather here this morning. Maybe there are other reasons you are here. Perhaps it’s because you are grateful for God’s grace and having made it across the finish line with your GPA and sanity intact. Perhaps it’s because your parents or grandparents are here and you want to honor them and their faith experience. Perhaps it’s because Baccalaureate is a University tradition and you want to soak in one final Valpo experience before heading off to new adventures.

And, of course, you are here to celebrate what you have achieved. With cords and tassels and words like magna cum laude lauding your accomplishments. With Bible verses and inspiring words and images on your caps. With cell phones capturing the day and SnapChat sharing photos of smiling faces in graduation robes, many of them in front of the Victory Bell, or here with the Christus Rex, Christ the King, in the background. Victory. Success. Achievement. Fulfillment. Celebration. Happiness.

Days like today can take on greater significance when we reflect on those times when the obstacles were the greatest and when failure, rather than victory, was the outcome. So, in that spirit of the day, I have a few questions to pose for you this morning. As I pose each question, I’ll give you a little time to reflect before moving on to the next one.

• When did you experience a personal failure of epic proportions while you were at Valpo?
• At what points during your time at Valpo were you embarrassed by something you did or said?
• While at Valpo, when did you experience humiliation at the hands of others?
• When at Valpo were you rejected by someone or some group or made to feel unworthy?
• When at Valpo were you gripped by an almost paralyzing fear?
• When at Valpo were you so consumed by anger that you made a fool of yourself?
• When at Valpo did you let someone down, or some group of people, or perhaps even let yourself down?

Now, how did you respond in one of more of these situations? (BTW, there’s no right answer.) Did you do one or more the following in response?

• Text or call a parent or relative and ask them to resolve your situation or intervene in some way on your behalf?
• Apologize and ask for forgiveness?
• Confront the person and demand an apology?
• Seek revenge?
• Give someone the benefit of the doubt and continue to invest in the relationship?
• Avoid any future contact or interaction?
• Hunker down until you got your emotions under control, could think clearly, and gain some perspective?
• Look to scripture for wisdom and pray for guidance?
• Use the justice system to resolve the matter?
• Forgive and forget.
• Send an email of text to let someone know how you really felt.
• Seek professional help in order to manage your response?
• Confide in a trusted friend or mentor and seek advice?
• Pick yourself up and re-commit to the effort?

Given your response, what did you learn? What did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about other people? And did your responses to these situations change over the time you have been at Valpo?

Failure, falling short, responding poorly to a situation may be a bitter experience, but that experience can be an essential part of learning and growing. We sit together in this chapel called Resurrection on the fourth Sunday after Easter, recognizing that there could be no Christus Rex, Christ the King victorious, without betrayal and rejection, pain and suffering, and a humiliating, naked, lonely, public death on a cross. We cannot have Easter without Good Friday.

In today’s Gospel lesson from John 13, Jesus and the disciples are gathered in the Upper Room to enjoy a meal on the evening before the Passover Festival. Jesus clothes himself with a towel and washes the disciples’ feet. They overcome their embarrassment and submit to his humble act of service and love. Jesus reminds the disciples of his new commandment: “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13: 34-35, New Revised Standard Version)

This call to love one another, to love your neighbor as yourself, to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, is lifted up by Jesus several times in the Gospels: here, in the Upper Room on the night when he was to be betrayed; as part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and when tested on his command of the Torah by the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Jesus lays this commandment, to love one another, as a cornerstone of the Christian faith.

So, when you think about that list of responses to one’s failures, humiliation, rejection, embarrassment, fears, and anger, let’s consider this one: surrender ourselves to unconditional love.

Surrendering to unconditional love when we fail and when others fail us requires two things: 1) faith and trust in Jesus Christ; and 2) perseverance. Why? Because responding with unconditional love runs contrary to our human nature, our tendency to need to gain control of the situation, seek refuge, beg for intervention, avoid conflict, or exact revenge. Surrendering to unconditional love runs contrary to how the world teaches us to respond to failures—that distinctively American narrative of self-determination, pulling oneself up by the boot straps, shooting your enemy in a “make my day” blaze of glory. Yet, Christ calls on us to surrender ourselves and to offer love as our response.

Perhaps your experience at Valpo has helped you to discover that Christ comes to you, is most clearly present with you, when you hit rock bottom. When others have rejected you, when you cannot see the way out of a situation, when you feel like you just can’t go on. Christ comes to you, brings a peace to you that is beyond human knowing, opens possibilities for you that you could not have imagined on your own, accompanies you on your journey out of darkness and back into light. Christ comes to you when you surrender yourself to unconditional love.

Offering unconditional love through times of trial and failure takes perseverance, that ability to endure through the trials and tribulations that come with living in this world. Perseverance—“to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition.” (“Perseverance,” 2019)

The Bible offers insight into the importance of perseverance in our faith journey and through our failures.

• From James 1: 2-4. “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; 4 and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.”
• Paul writes in Romans 5:3–5: “3 . . . but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
• From Galatians 6:9: “9 So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.”

Perseverance also appears as a vital spiritual attribute across world religions. In his article, “Perseverance: The Gateway to Holiness,” Rabbi Yisrael Rutman writes that “perseverance is the key to spiritual success.” When considering the Hebrew translation of the English word, “faith,” Rabbi Rutman focuses on the root Hebrew word “umanut,” which means craft. He writes that “in Jewish thought, belief in God is like a craft—a skill or set of techniques that are studied and perfected over time.” Faith isn’t something you are born with, “like a beautiful voice or a great fastball.” Rather, faith is “a process [that requires perseverance], and the end-product of that process, that craft, is one’s own more spiritual self.” (Rutman, 2002)

In Islam, the term sabr has the closest link to the English word perseverance. (Badawi, 2019; “Sabr,” 2019) There is no exact corollary, but sabr describes concepts such as “resolution, fortitude, self-discipline and control” as a means to “tie down one’s uncontrolled fears, weakness and human passion,” not only during times of “calamity or disaster,” but also when “fighting for justice or freedom” or to end “human tyranny.” (Badawi, 2019) “Sabr conveys a very active, dynamic and positive quality in Islam. It is the quality of surging forward, striving, and not slackening in [one’s] purpose to purify the soul.” (“What Sabr or Patience,” 2017)

The world’s three major monotheistic religions reflect on perseverance in times of trial and tribulation as something that is active, directed forward into one’s adversity, rather than simply suffering patiently and waiting until one’s trials have passed. From my vantage point, this is vitally important spiritual guidance when we, as Christians, surrender ourselves to unconditional love when confronting times of failure, rejection, fear, anger, and humiliation. This act of surrender is an active, intentional letting go of our self-made and societally constructed obstacles to allow Christ’s love to flow into us and through us to heal ourselves, to heal those who surround us, and to begin the process of recovery. It is this love that gives us newness of life and allows us to begin again.

Moving beyond religion, other lenses of human understanding offer additional insight into the characteristics of perseverance. Noted Penn psychologist and MacArthur fellow Angela Lee Duckworth has gained notoriety for her studies of high achievers and the degree to which long-term perseverance or conscientiousness—what she refers to as “grit” is one of the principle contributors to success. Duckworth’s studies have found that students who have grit—defined as “passion and perseverance for long-term goals”—are more likely to recognize that failure is not a permanent condition, but something that can be overcome by “following through on commitments and sticking with that desired future day in and day out.” (Duckworth, 2016)

Duckworth’s conclusions are informed by the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck in what Dweck describes as a “growth mindset.” She contrasts growth mindset with fixed mindset. In a fixed mindset, one believes that concepts like talent, intelligence, and creativity are things one is born with and can’t be changed, whereas a person with a growth mindset believes these qualities can be nurtured and developed through practice and discipline. (Dweck, 2016) Dweck concludes that a growth mindset helps one to remain resilient and committed to a long-term goal when the going gets tough.

Neuroscientists have investigated the psycho-biological attributes of perseverance, finding higher levels of dopamine in the brains of those who persist under adversity and lower levels in the brains of those who give up. (Bergland, 2011) Dopamine is that neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward that travels between our central nervous system and individual nerve cells. (“Dopamine,” 2019) It may be that same internal reward system that makes us “feel good” when we eat and sleep and mate and exercise, also makes us “feel good” when we endure adversity and achieve a goal. (Bergland, 2011) Psychologists like Dweck believe that, with practice and experience, we can learn to associate perseverance and accomplishing a significant goal with feeling good in ways that can actually alter the chemistry of our nervous system. (Dweck, 2016, Pollack, 2019)

So, why aren’t we just talking this morning about how great you are? Why all this talk today about failure and perseverance and grit and growth mindset in the context of Christ’s new commandment and Christ’s call for the practice of unconditional love? Because I believe loving others in the future that lays ahead of you will require a kind of grit significantly greater than that of the generations before you. It will require a spiritual conviction, integrity, and strength of character unlike those who grace our television screens, movie theatres, and news feeds. And nights I lie awake worrying that we have not served you as well as we ought in getting you ready for that future. Certainly we have given you many of the skills and experiences your future employers will seek, as if that were the sole purpose of an education. Clearly, you have gained in knowledge, both broadly and in a set of disciplines and professions. Hopefully, we have nurtured in you a personal practice of honesty, humility, integrity, and that, in turn, has honed your character. Hopefully, we have encouraged and supported your faith journey. Hopefully, we have challenged you to be your best self, your most excellent self, even with your unique talents and imperfections.

And with all of these good and noble intentions and experiences, I worry about the morally corrosive and corrupt environment into which you must now go and whether we (those of us here at the University, your K-12 teachers, your church leaders, your families) have enabled you to fail enough times to test your resolve, to question your convictions, to determine your grit, to grow your capacity to love those who may wish to do you harm or those whom you might very comfortably hate.

Have the rewards come too quickly, too easily? Have we nurtured you to be risk averse or to perhaps to settle for nothing less than perfection? Have we, in our own behavior, been too accommodating, too protective, too certain about our conclusions, too quick with our pronouncements? Have we wrestled enough together with uncertainty and ambiguity? Have we focused too much on the highest grades, the most attractive and athletic bodies, the finest food or clothing? Have we failed to model Christ’s commandment in our own response to challenges and adversity—too quick to pass judgment or ascribe bad motives or place blame, too eager to seek revenge when we are wronged, too quick to avoid the hard, but necessary conversations that come from a place of mutual love and respect?

It is not for me to answer these questions. Each of you will answer these questions in time. What I can say is that many of us who have surrounded you in this place called Valparaiso University have tried our best to educate you, within our finite limits of knowledge and experience, yet with the abiding desire to see you succeed. And we have tried mightily to love you, even when you made it hard to do so. Even as we suffered our own failures, humiliation, fear, anger and suffering. For you see, we, like you, have sought to persevere.

Now it is time for you to go. You know it and so do we. You will leave here, in the words of the Prayer of Good Courage, “to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.” (Lutheran, 1978)

And yet, graduates, it is the second half of this prayer that gives me the greatest hope and confidence in your power to persevere:
Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us. (Lutheran, 1978)

Let these words serve as my final wish and benediction for each of you as you leave this place we know as Valpo-rain-snow, Windiana.

Have faith.
Surrender yourself.
Love one another.

Amen.