Graduation Speech 2002
Brian was asked to speak at Westminster's graduation. Here's the hard copy:
I’d like to thank you, graduates, Mr. Marsh, for the honor of standing here this evening. It means a lot to me to be able to stand here, and as I reflect back on my six years here at Westminster—the same number of years as most of you—I see a history of love and respect and joy and graciousness that only comes from God. And I thank you for being his liaisons to me and to Susan…and to baby Max.
I played junior high basketball in a very small school in a very small town in Alabama—We were the Warrior Academy Braves, and we ….stunk.---now this was a team where our best defensive move was making armpit noises during fast breaks to try to distract the opposing team…We wore the jerseys left over from the Varsity –they were so baggy on us that when you subbed in you and to pull your shirt up out of your shorts so that the officials could read the number. And yet we had this kid Pete, who was just astounding. He could dunk, he could jump, he could shoot from the perimeter—he was so big we called him the twin towers, even though there was just one of him. Well, we all went on to become teachers and farmers—actually most of us became farmers]]], but Pete went on to play at Chapel Hill and then played in the NBA. I moved away soon after that year, but unfailingly, whenever I’d see somebody from that team, they’d tell me about Pete—his latest feature in Sports Illustrated, his stats for the year before. I don’t know for sure, but I think, when Pete goes back to visit our little hometown, he must get a pretty rowdy welcome.
This evening I’d like to talk about growing up in Jesus’ hometown—not a literal, physical hometown—and I don’t mean Westminster Christian Academy, exactly—but I do mean growing up knowing Jesus or knowing about Jesus for most of one’s life. You have just finished your time at a place where you heard about Jesus’ miracles and exploits and adventures everyday, and many of you have heard about Jesus since you can remember—many of you have made that faith your own. Some of you have not, but all of you have been familiar with Jesus in one way or another for some time.
I think we who have known Christ for a long time are incredibly blessed. We are witness to God’s great creativity and his miracles over and over and over. And yet, sometimes we act bored, or we underestimate Christ’s powers in ways that people who are outside of the faith or new to the faith don’t. We always don’t give him the hero’s welcome.
Neither did the people in the passage I am about to read.
I’m going to read from Mark 6. Now up to this point in Mark, Jesus has traveled all around the countryside, to villages, to cities, back and forth across the sea of Galilee—and he’s healed sick people, given blind people sight, brought a dead girl back to life, quieted terrible storms, fed thousands of people from one kid’s lunchbox, and now he comes back to his hometown of Nazereth—where he was educated, where he grew up, where people have known him since he was a child, and since some of them were children Let’s see what transpires….]]]]]]]
[Mark chapter 6.]
There are two places in the New Testament that mention Jesus’ amazement—here, regarding his amazement at the lack of faith in his own people, and in Luke, when Christ is amazed at the faith of an outsider-- at the Centurion whose servant is sick—Christ says “I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.”
Over and over through Mark it’s the outsiders who understand his message—not the insiders. Not the Pharisees, not the Jews as a whole, sometimes the disciples themselves sit around going “huh?”--- Over and over Jesus has to tell the disciples—don’t be afraid, , “where is your faith?” uh no, bring the little children to me;
And the outsiders—the prostitutes,, the tax collectors, the centurion, the blind and the poor and the widowed and the sick—they swarm him, they understand grace, they get the benefit of his healing. Over and over he tells them “Your faith has healed you.” “By faith you are saved.” Because of your faith, your sins are forgiven.” Then what happens when he goes to his hometown? He’s amazed at their lack of faith. Mark says he couldn’t do many miracles because of their lack of faith—he heals a couple sick people. That’s about it, says Mark.
Does that mean Jesus literally and physically couldn’t do the miracles? Probably he could have, but he chooses to use our faith as the basis for his miracles— his nature demands that he not perform the miracles in an atmosphere of unbelief. It only takes this much, he says, and even that comes from me, but it’s that faith that moves mountains.---
We need to foster among ourselves an atmosphere of belief, of faith.
It’s not that the people here didn’t believe he COULD do miracles, or that he was wise—Their questions---Where did he get these things? What’s this wisdom that’s been given him? –prove that they knew he had power, but they STILL chose to ignore them because of their familiarity with him. They didn’t believe that someone could come from such a humble place –their humble place—and be that Powerful. But that’s the whole point—truth and power from God always start with humility.
I know some of you pretty well, and some of you know me pretty well. We don’t deserve God’s favor. We’re pretty lackadaisical about our faith, we don’t serve people the way we ought to, and when we do, we often either complain about it or brag about it or both. We can destroy each other in a million different ways. Elvis Costello sings “There’s no such thing as an original sin.” We’re pretty good at repeating ourselves over and over and over. And yet, he gives us the keys to the kingdom. We shall inherit the earth! And we yawn.
There are several common responses I see to growing up in Jesus’ hometown. I see myself in every one of them from time to time. Maybe you do, too.
1. The first is that we just don’t accept it—we try to relieve our own guilt and it overwhelms us. Again, I’m not necessarily talking to those of you who don’t believe. I’m talking to those who believe, but aren’t taking full advantage of his grace and his power to overcome.
I knew a young man named Allen--about your age, a year or two into college, red hair, goatee, he had a couple tattoos, wore combat boots all the time. He was blessed with hope and the gift of salvation, but had trouble believing God’s promises. He had trouble looking past his present circumstances, past his guilty heart, --Allen didn’t understand God’s grace—his immense and powerful love and forgiveness,-or maybe he thought he understood it and in fact didn’t realize the depth of it and the power of it. He bounced around here and there, not really sure what to do with his life, but he knew he wanted to serve others. One time, when he was a kid, he took flowers from his mother’s flower garden and walked around the neighborhood, placing them in the mailboxes of widows And when he was older He spent summers in the Appalachian mountains working with the poor. But one night, He took a friend’s .38 caliber pistol and shot himself through the heart. Allen was my brother, and In his suicide note he quoted U2’s song “The First Time”:
He gave me the keys to his kingdom
Gave me a cup of gold
He said, "I have many mansions,
And there are many rooms to see,"
But I left by the back door
And threw away the key
The song, inspired by a Brendan Kennelly poem, is written from the perspective of Judas, or of the Prodigal Son, who has received the great gift—knowing Christ, blessings overflowing, and yet says “Mmm…no thanks.” Bono, who is a Christian, said about the song that he wondered what would have happened in the parable if the Prodigal Son, after the feast with the fatted calf, had decided to leave again.
Well, this is the prodigal son—look at me, look at the graduate next to you. We’re welcomed back over and over and over, because Christ’s blood never runs out.
2. The second response I see that we have to growing up in Jesus’ hometown is that we’re bored.
Have you ever sat at home on a Friday night in St Louis and said “There’s nothing to do in this town.” Everybody complains about his own hometown like this. Do you do it about your Christianity? It’s boring being a Christian. There’s never anything fun to do. If you feel this way about your faith, then you’re missing the point. And this leads to….
3.And this leads to my third response which is that we don’t think Big enough. WE think we have him figured out, and we want to play it cool. Not get too excited about it all.
I came across this passage in Mark around the time that my little friend Audrey was sick. Some of you know Audrey Parker—she’s two, and this spring she was very sick with what the doctors had concluded was probably Cystic Fibrosis. She some very specific symptoms, had lost weight, and her organs didn’t seem to be performing correctly. The doctors were waiting on some test results to confirm it.
As I prayed for Audrey I noticed the way I prayed. Dear Lord, Heal Audrey if it’s your will, and if you elect not to, then give her family peace, keep her comfortable, etc. etc..etc….
That’s all fine—but I spent the first sentence of my prayer asking God for healing—and the rest of my 10 minute, I’m sure very eloquent prayer, hedging my bets. Okay, God, if you decide not to do what I know you can do, then make her comfortable, give her parents and the doctors wisdom, ….Why didn’t I just pray that she would be healed, and of course, God knew what to do if he didn’t heal her--Was I scared to look foolish? What if I prayed this radical prayer for healing and then God didn’t heal her? Wouldn’t I look kinda silly? My students, as we prayed, did the same thing.
Why? Was it because we didn’t want to look too extreme? Was it because we thought we knew the way Jesus works? “Well, Jesus tends to do this and this, but not this…”
I’ve known Jesus as long as I can remember—I’ve seen him work in a gazillion different ways….Healing people, changing lives, providing for my family, calling people to him who had been adamantly opposed to Christianity for years, and yet I still hedge my bets.
I still try not to get my hopes up. Christ says—Get your hopes up!
Look at disciples—they watched him work miracles over and over and over, and all sorts of different ones. Crazy ones--- Last week he told a guy to get up and walk—the week before that he told a blind guy to look around—this week he spit in the guy’s eye and he was healed…he did this thing with loaves and fishes, he yelled at the storm and it ceased…And yet they always thought they knew what to expect from him. Every week they were completely flabbergasted—by what new thing he did, and yet the next week rolled around and they expected the same old thing again.
It’s in God’s very nature to be creative—In the beginning God created, it says—why should he stop being creative? Can you expect a bird not to fly? A fish not to swim? A highschooler not to drive fast? Then don’t dare expect God not to be creative.
Pray for healing—if God answers no, there’s time enough for praying for the other stuff later. One of your teachers said she started praying— Dear God, Please heal Audrey. Amen.
Whether she had the disease and was healed, whether all the indications were false, and there was never any risk, whatever it was, Audrey does not have Cystic Fibrosis and is healthy. We know God is powerful, we know he heals, we know he answers prayer and that he blesses our faith—why do we doubt so much?
The last response is this, and I hope that if you find yourselves falling into the other traps, that this response is still the one that overwhelms all others.
4. And that is that You believe him with all your heart and that belief has been nurtured and is growing inside of you like an oak tree. That when you meet your Christian friends later, after you’ve left here, that you talk about Christ. That when you go out into the countryside, you go out as a member of God’s Covenant Family. That when you meet people, they know that you know Jesus personally and intimately.
And that when you feel the presence of Christ in your life, that you give him a hero’s welcome.
I graduated from high school about fourteen years ago and my best friend was named Dave. He grew up in a Christian family, heard the gospel all his life, attended a Christian high school and Christian College, and it never really sank in. He called me recently to tell me he’d become a believer. He said he was in a Bible study on Romans and couldn’t believe what was in there. “Have you read this stuff??” he asked. “Somehow I missed it,” he said.
Class of 2002, don’t miss it. When you go out in the culture, out into the world, go out as a member of God’s Covenant family—You have been given the keys to the kingdom
This is God’s world—you shall inherit it. Now go act like it’s yours.
I’d like to thank you, graduates, Mr. Marsh, for the honor of standing here this evening. It means a lot to me to be able to stand here, and as I reflect back on my six years here at Westminster—the same number of years as most of you—I see a history of love and respect and joy and graciousness that only comes from God. And I thank you for being his liaisons to me and to Susan…and to baby Max.
I played junior high basketball in a very small school in a very small town in Alabama—We were the Warrior Academy Braves, and we ….stunk.---now this was a team where our best defensive move was making armpit noises during fast breaks to try to distract the opposing team…We wore the jerseys left over from the Varsity –they were so baggy on us that when you subbed in you and to pull your shirt up out of your shorts so that the officials could read the number. And yet we had this kid Pete, who was just astounding. He could dunk, he could jump, he could shoot from the perimeter—he was so big we called him the twin towers, even though there was just one of him. Well, we all went on to become teachers and farmers—actually most of us became farmers]]], but Pete went on to play at Chapel Hill and then played in the NBA. I moved away soon after that year, but unfailingly, whenever I’d see somebody from that team, they’d tell me about Pete—his latest feature in Sports Illustrated, his stats for the year before. I don’t know for sure, but I think, when Pete goes back to visit our little hometown, he must get a pretty rowdy welcome.
This evening I’d like to talk about growing up in Jesus’ hometown—not a literal, physical hometown—and I don’t mean Westminster Christian Academy, exactly—but I do mean growing up knowing Jesus or knowing about Jesus for most of one’s life. You have just finished your time at a place where you heard about Jesus’ miracles and exploits and adventures everyday, and many of you have heard about Jesus since you can remember—many of you have made that faith your own. Some of you have not, but all of you have been familiar with Jesus in one way or another for some time.
I think we who have known Christ for a long time are incredibly blessed. We are witness to God’s great creativity and his miracles over and over and over. And yet, sometimes we act bored, or we underestimate Christ’s powers in ways that people who are outside of the faith or new to the faith don’t. We always don’t give him the hero’s welcome.
Neither did the people in the passage I am about to read.
I’m going to read from Mark 6. Now up to this point in Mark, Jesus has traveled all around the countryside, to villages, to cities, back and forth across the sea of Galilee—and he’s healed sick people, given blind people sight, brought a dead girl back to life, quieted terrible storms, fed thousands of people from one kid’s lunchbox, and now he comes back to his hometown of Nazereth—where he was educated, where he grew up, where people have known him since he was a child, and since some of them were children Let’s see what transpires….]]]]]]]
[Mark chapter 6.]
There are two places in the New Testament that mention Jesus’ amazement—here, regarding his amazement at the lack of faith in his own people, and in Luke, when Christ is amazed at the faith of an outsider-- at the Centurion whose servant is sick—Christ says “I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.”
Over and over through Mark it’s the outsiders who understand his message—not the insiders. Not the Pharisees, not the Jews as a whole, sometimes the disciples themselves sit around going “huh?”--- Over and over Jesus has to tell the disciples—don’t be afraid, , “where is your faith?” uh no, bring the little children to me;
And the outsiders—the prostitutes,, the tax collectors, the centurion, the blind and the poor and the widowed and the sick—they swarm him, they understand grace, they get the benefit of his healing. Over and over he tells them “Your faith has healed you.” “By faith you are saved.” Because of your faith, your sins are forgiven.” Then what happens when he goes to his hometown? He’s amazed at their lack of faith. Mark says he couldn’t do many miracles because of their lack of faith—he heals a couple sick people. That’s about it, says Mark.
Does that mean Jesus literally and physically couldn’t do the miracles? Probably he could have, but he chooses to use our faith as the basis for his miracles— his nature demands that he not perform the miracles in an atmosphere of unbelief. It only takes this much, he says, and even that comes from me, but it’s that faith that moves mountains.---
We need to foster among ourselves an atmosphere of belief, of faith.
It’s not that the people here didn’t believe he COULD do miracles, or that he was wise—Their questions---Where did he get these things? What’s this wisdom that’s been given him? –prove that they knew he had power, but they STILL chose to ignore them because of their familiarity with him. They didn’t believe that someone could come from such a humble place –their humble place—and be that Powerful. But that’s the whole point—truth and power from God always start with humility.
I know some of you pretty well, and some of you know me pretty well. We don’t deserve God’s favor. We’re pretty lackadaisical about our faith, we don’t serve people the way we ought to, and when we do, we often either complain about it or brag about it or both. We can destroy each other in a million different ways. Elvis Costello sings “There’s no such thing as an original sin.” We’re pretty good at repeating ourselves over and over and over. And yet, he gives us the keys to the kingdom. We shall inherit the earth! And we yawn.
There are several common responses I see to growing up in Jesus’ hometown. I see myself in every one of them from time to time. Maybe you do, too.
1. The first is that we just don’t accept it—we try to relieve our own guilt and it overwhelms us. Again, I’m not necessarily talking to those of you who don’t believe. I’m talking to those who believe, but aren’t taking full advantage of his grace and his power to overcome.
I knew a young man named Allen--about your age, a year or two into college, red hair, goatee, he had a couple tattoos, wore combat boots all the time. He was blessed with hope and the gift of salvation, but had trouble believing God’s promises. He had trouble looking past his present circumstances, past his guilty heart, --Allen didn’t understand God’s grace—his immense and powerful love and forgiveness,-or maybe he thought he understood it and in fact didn’t realize the depth of it and the power of it. He bounced around here and there, not really sure what to do with his life, but he knew he wanted to serve others. One time, when he was a kid, he took flowers from his mother’s flower garden and walked around the neighborhood, placing them in the mailboxes of widows And when he was older He spent summers in the Appalachian mountains working with the poor. But one night, He took a friend’s .38 caliber pistol and shot himself through the heart. Allen was my brother, and In his suicide note he quoted U2’s song “The First Time”:
He gave me the keys to his kingdom
Gave me a cup of gold
He said, "I have many mansions,
And there are many rooms to see,"
But I left by the back door
And threw away the key
The song, inspired by a Brendan Kennelly poem, is written from the perspective of Judas, or of the Prodigal Son, who has received the great gift—knowing Christ, blessings overflowing, and yet says “Mmm…no thanks.” Bono, who is a Christian, said about the song that he wondered what would have happened in the parable if the Prodigal Son, after the feast with the fatted calf, had decided to leave again.
Well, this is the prodigal son—look at me, look at the graduate next to you. We’re welcomed back over and over and over, because Christ’s blood never runs out.
2. The second response I see that we have to growing up in Jesus’ hometown is that we’re bored.
Have you ever sat at home on a Friday night in St Louis and said “There’s nothing to do in this town.” Everybody complains about his own hometown like this. Do you do it about your Christianity? It’s boring being a Christian. There’s never anything fun to do. If you feel this way about your faith, then you’re missing the point. And this leads to….
3.And this leads to my third response which is that we don’t think Big enough. WE think we have him figured out, and we want to play it cool. Not get too excited about it all.
I came across this passage in Mark around the time that my little friend Audrey was sick. Some of you know Audrey Parker—she’s two, and this spring she was very sick with what the doctors had concluded was probably Cystic Fibrosis. She some very specific symptoms, had lost weight, and her organs didn’t seem to be performing correctly. The doctors were waiting on some test results to confirm it.
As I prayed for Audrey I noticed the way I prayed. Dear Lord, Heal Audrey if it’s your will, and if you elect not to, then give her family peace, keep her comfortable, etc. etc..etc….
That’s all fine—but I spent the first sentence of my prayer asking God for healing—and the rest of my 10 minute, I’m sure very eloquent prayer, hedging my bets. Okay, God, if you decide not to do what I know you can do, then make her comfortable, give her parents and the doctors wisdom, ….Why didn’t I just pray that she would be healed, and of course, God knew what to do if he didn’t heal her--Was I scared to look foolish? What if I prayed this radical prayer for healing and then God didn’t heal her? Wouldn’t I look kinda silly? My students, as we prayed, did the same thing.
Why? Was it because we didn’t want to look too extreme? Was it because we thought we knew the way Jesus works? “Well, Jesus tends to do this and this, but not this…”
I’ve known Jesus as long as I can remember—I’ve seen him work in a gazillion different ways….Healing people, changing lives, providing for my family, calling people to him who had been adamantly opposed to Christianity for years, and yet I still hedge my bets.
I still try not to get my hopes up. Christ says—Get your hopes up!
Look at disciples—they watched him work miracles over and over and over, and all sorts of different ones. Crazy ones--- Last week he told a guy to get up and walk—the week before that he told a blind guy to look around—this week he spit in the guy’s eye and he was healed…he did this thing with loaves and fishes, he yelled at the storm and it ceased…And yet they always thought they knew what to expect from him. Every week they were completely flabbergasted—by what new thing he did, and yet the next week rolled around and they expected the same old thing again.
It’s in God’s very nature to be creative—In the beginning God created, it says—why should he stop being creative? Can you expect a bird not to fly? A fish not to swim? A highschooler not to drive fast? Then don’t dare expect God not to be creative.
Pray for healing—if God answers no, there’s time enough for praying for the other stuff later. One of your teachers said she started praying— Dear God, Please heal Audrey. Amen.
Whether she had the disease and was healed, whether all the indications were false, and there was never any risk, whatever it was, Audrey does not have Cystic Fibrosis and is healthy. We know God is powerful, we know he heals, we know he answers prayer and that he blesses our faith—why do we doubt so much?
The last response is this, and I hope that if you find yourselves falling into the other traps, that this response is still the one that overwhelms all others.
4. And that is that You believe him with all your heart and that belief has been nurtured and is growing inside of you like an oak tree. That when you meet your Christian friends later, after you’ve left here, that you talk about Christ. That when you go out into the countryside, you go out as a member of God’s Covenant Family. That when you meet people, they know that you know Jesus personally and intimately.
And that when you feel the presence of Christ in your life, that you give him a hero’s welcome.
I graduated from high school about fourteen years ago and my best friend was named Dave. He grew up in a Christian family, heard the gospel all his life, attended a Christian high school and Christian College, and it never really sank in. He called me recently to tell me he’d become a believer. He said he was in a Bible study on Romans and couldn’t believe what was in there. “Have you read this stuff??” he asked. “Somehow I missed it,” he said.
Class of 2002, don’t miss it. When you go out in the culture, out into the world, go out as a member of God’s Covenant family—You have been given the keys to the kingdom
This is God’s world—you shall inherit it. Now go act like it’s yours.
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