Rise, Let Us Be On Our Way

One year ago I graduated from Boston University School of Theology with a Master of Divinity degree. This was my valedictory address, prepared for the convocation and hooding ceremony. Given at Marsh Chapel, Sunday, May 18, 2008.

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I would like to share with you a poetic meditation based on the Gospel according to John, chapter 14, verses 25 to 31. Before he was arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and executed, Jesus shared one last meal with his friends. Jesus knew this could be the last time he would be physically present with his disciples. And yet during this meal he promised them that they would never be left alone, for God’s presence would remain with them always. Jesus promises his friends that God will send them the Holy Spirit. Jesus also leaves them his peace and bids them to have courage, for he has already overcome the worldly powers opposed to God. And then in verse 31 he says, “Rise, let us be on our way.”

Rise, let us be on our way.

We are a people on the move. We were made to be sent.
For this we have been taught. For this we have received the Spirit.

Now sense the Spirit ringing your mind with light and coursing your heart with warmth. Feel the Spirit harden your hands for the work to be done.

Rise, let us be on our way.

I am going away, and you are going away. The place you are going to is not here. This place is not your home. It is your time to go. It is your place to go. The world can little afford the absence of your presence.

Now break out of bare ruined choirs and locked upper rooms where you sit with closed hearts and closed minds behind closed doors, and break into life and confound this bounded world. Bear God, bear soul, bear peace. Bring the sanctuary into the street.

Encounter and transform; be encountered and be transformed.
May our love for God humanize us. May the love of God sanctify us.

Rise, let us be on our way.

Do not say you do not know where we are going.
We are going; heaven knows where we are going,
but we’ll know we’re there.
And we’ll get there; heaven knows how we will get there,
but we know we will.
We will. I may not get there with you, but we as a people will get there. We’ll know we’re there. Some call it the Promised Land. Some call it the beloved community. Some call it the reign of God. Do not say you do not know where we are going. Lift up your eyes to the hills and behold the presence of the mountains.

Be well and be at peace, for God is with you.
Do not fear, and do not cower. Who has power over you?
Jesus says, “You have power with God.
So walk with me. Walk with me. You want me to walk with you.
Will you walk with me? Do not say a word, be the word; let there be less talking and more walking.”

Rise, let us be on our way, and we will dare as the world watches us make a place out of no place and turn over every sinful certainty. We will see the circle widen. We will have no small God. We will have a beautiful Jesus. We will have a Spirit that witnesses with our spirit but blows wherever it wills. We will reach out to our cultured despisers who scoff at the Spirit and show them that we are delighted by diversity, unbothered by relativity, and intoxicated by glory. We will risk our life with passion.

Rise, let us be on our way past threats of death, past the idolatries of ideologies, beyond the godless fundamentalisms of the believer and the unbeliever. We will stop telling and selling violent stories that cannot save.

Be on your way, you loyal rebels. Disobey the command to go to war, the command to protect your privilege, the command to shun the stranger, the command to be afraid. Disobey the world so that the world may know how much you love God, who loves the world more than we can ever know. Disobey so that you remain in the world but not of the world, but disobey because you are always for the world. Disobey the world because you obey the Spirit of life, the God of love. Disobey the world because you are the world’s greatest lovers.

Will you love with me? Will you rejoice with me? Will you go with me?

Rise, let us be on our way.

It will be hard, I know, and the road will be muddy and rough.
It leads to heartbreak, it leads to hunger, it leads to rags and spare change on surly streets, it leads to burning sun and freezing moon, it leads to prison, it leads to the hospital, it leads to the gates of delirium, it leads to shattering insanity.
And it leads to the grave.

And still we rise!
Be on your way, you nation of priests, you school of prophets,
you children of Dr. King.
Rise, you young seminarians, let us be on our way.
Rise, you children of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe, let us be on our way.
Rise, all you glorious children of precious dignity and sacred worth, show your beautiful, different, natural colors to the world.
Rise, all you thirsty ones, and cause justice to roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. You know that truth is served when truth is done in love. And when you do love, you, too, are in the way and in the truth and in the life.

Be on your way to see the sick and the poor and the pained and the lost and the lonely and the loveless and the captive and the shut-out and walled-in, raced-in, sexed-in, gayed-in, and all the tired, tired, tired people, and see yourself inside their homeless skin and see reflected in their sad and broken eyes the incorruptible, indestructible image of the God who made both of you and never cease to cry out far and forever, “Rise!”

But we remain for a while. We exist between the times. We have seen Thursday’s joy become Friday’s tragedy. Now we are a people of Holy Saturday longing for the dawn of Sunday all over the world. We believe Saturday does not last forever. Saturday is a book we write between death and life.

Soon we will close the book of Saturday. And we will not remain here.
We will rise. We will rise. Rise. Let us be on our way.