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Out of darkness the light shall shine! God's glory shining in the face of Christ. Yet we who have this spiritual gift are like common clay pots.
-- 2 Corinthians 4:6-7 (paraphrased)

Here's the scene: Two women are sitting together at a table in an inner-city shelter. One is a street person, quite drunk, in torn layers of tattered clothes, unwashed hair in disarray, talking loudly to the other woman about something that seems to the speaker to be of critical importance yet seems like nonsense to the casual observer. The second woman is Dorothy Day, who at this point in her career is quite famous, as a founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. Day sits with the other woman and listens carefully to her story. They are soon joined by a man, a reporter, who stands there, impatiently, waiting for a pause in the alcoholic ranting, to interview Day. It was all quite obvious, the purpose of his presence. After a while, Day politely asks her companion if she may please interrupt their conversation for a moment. Day then looks at the man and asks, "Are you waiting to talk with one of us?" With one of us. Not to "me" but to one of us sacred human beings -- bag woman or famous, educated social reformer. Are you waiting to talk with one of us in the equality of our capacity for pain or joy, for disintegration or loving balance? Do you wish to speak to one of us?

The God who said, "Out of darkness the light shall shine!" is the same God who made this light shine in our hearts -- God's glory shining in the face of Christ. Yet we who are offered this spiritual gift are like common clay pots, like earthenware vessels -- fragile flesh and blood and self-realized, finite beings, yet to whom has been offered good news -- a final word that holds no finale, offered to us, such fragile humanity, in the freedom of our decisions -- earthenware, yet sacred.

"Do you want to speak to one of us?" Common clay yet so uniquely valuable. What is it that forms that kind of a perception so grounded in both humility and respect? Life that so easily flows into servanthood and accountability?

The baccalaureate sermon is traditionally the final word of the school's pastor to the graduating class. It is my final, formal prayer for you -- a hope that you will easily and knowingly hook into eternal reality.

Dorothy Day once said, "Accountability means that one has lived in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist."

In addition to being baccalaureate weekend, it is also my reunion weekend at Wittenberg -- a twenty year class reunion; and as I composed this homily for our seniors, it has become not only advice, hope, and a prayer for you who are about to graduate, but it also has taken the form of an introspective interrogation, an asking of myself if I have followed my own advice and hope for you. I see myself twenty years ago in you seniors, and I wonder about my own faithfulness in terms of accountability over these past twenty years.

I was given a new wallet for my birthday this year. The old wallet was beginning to crack at the creases and rip at the seams. It probably would have had its twentieth anniversary this year, too, but it didn't quite make it. It has been a faithful wallet. It never lost itself over the years, never allowed itself to be forcefully taken by anyone else. It was there when I needed it. It traveled with me, close to the hip, through good times and bad. Gathered up each morning off the bureau in a blurry-eyed routine, it went to the office with me and into hospitals and classrooms, and through customs into other countries, and stayed skin-close through soaking rains, and while bicycling and hiking.

Clothes would change, shoes would wear out, pens would disappear, but this wallet remained faithful. Sure, once in a while I would prune it, updating cards and photos. It never did hold on to money very well. But one's wallet is more than an accessory. A wallet is a container of one's life and values and priorities, holding snugly symbols and images of self and hope and pretension.

After the new birthday wallet was presented, all stiff and arrogant and new, the old wallet had to be emptied in a solemn ceremony one evening -- its contents laid out with formality on a clear surface. It was like some mystical autopsy, like dying and having the contents of one's soul, the interior of one's living, exposed on some heavenly bureau for final examination. I mean, what is it that I kept so close to me, to identify my being? What were the essentials in such a tiny, finite container held so intimately? What pieces of paper and plastic give testimony to who I am or wish to be?

I found hidden in my old wallet a membership card to a New Jersey tennis club that expired in 1978. How did that card survive? Why did it remain? A reminder of past locations and experiences now not to be forgotten? I do vaguely remember thinking to myself that this card will remind me that I should play tennis again. I need the exercise. It would be good for me -- mind, soul, and body. This card was to be a constant reminder. But I haven't played tennis in ten years. Am I trying to deceive myself? What other promises have I not kept? What promises to yourself are you not going to keep, seniors? What more important promises of personal integrity, not to be kept?

There was a short stack of credit cards to stores I never get to, and bank cards with three dimensional eagles flapping their wings, representing a credit status that sets me apart -- that distances me from so many others, a wedge between me and their struggle for the necessities that I too often take for granted. A stack of plastic cards in good standing to meet my reasonable wants, but do I want a decent life for these others, for all others?

"Do you want to speak to one of us?" I found a tattered list of books, titles, and authors, a "must read" list for, who knows, when I might stumble upon a used bookstore, or be stuck in a city or on some distant campus while in the money and mood to do some serious shopping; and I can then whip out this crumbled list that was apparently updated sometime early last August. (It has salt water and suntan lotion stains.) There are 29 book titles, and only a few of those have been crossed off; only four from this particular list actually acquired and read since last summer. Many of the other 25 are important to me. Where does the time and the mental energy go? Will you seniors be better time managers? Time for what?

There is a sky blue Ohio Bell, "America's Calling Card" with a 13-digit international number, the miracle of modern communication, but what does one say? "Sorry, I must miss your birthday/anniversary/graduation. I just don't have the time right now," or "I want this from you"? Always, "I want this from you." Or do you say things like, "I miss you, I care, what can I do for you to help?" What does one say with a sky-blue calling card?

There was my AAA card for travel security. And my Social Security card (with a number that is impossible to memorize). But what does it mean to be "secure"?

There was my uniform donor card that has printed on it, "In the hope that I may help others, I hereby make this anatomical gift, if medically acceptable, to take effect upon my death." (One's death is easily accepted at age 21, seemingly centuries away.) Now, like my old wallet, at my twentieth anniversary reunion, I feel a little cracked at the creases, stretched at the seams. Twenty years, and look what happened to my old wallet, buried now, in a bureau drawer six inches under a layer of dark socks!

"I hereby make this anatomical gift, to take effect upon my death. I give any needed organs or parts for the purpose of transplantation, therapy, medical research or education, in the hope that it will help others."

It's an old ragged card, actually signed and dated not too long after my graduation, now confirmed on the back of my current driver's license. But at death, my body becomes a gift, if appropriate for use. A card as a humble expression of my faith, the card of an earthenware container, but, "Out of darkness the light shall shine," Saint Paul wrote.

There was my Delta Dental plan card, and my university Medical Benefits identification insurance card -- "All hospital and surgical benefits are paid directly to the provider of care," and my health plan identification card -- "Prior to hospital admission, or within 72 hours of emergency admission, notify the plan's coordinator. Failure to call will reduce your benefits." In the last twenty years, I have been in a lot of hospitals to visit parishioners and students or to study the justice of health care from the computerized, high-tech university research hospitals to primitive co-op clinics in Third World nations, and in each location talked to people who had no one to call for any kind of real assistance. They had no real benefits to reduce. How can I, or you, alter this disparity?

There, too, was my voter registration card with precinct #30, which I can also never remember, but which ties me into a system, even though, it seems, that the candidates I vote for always lose. It is often not even close. The quality of life throughout the world is deeply influenced, positively and often negatively, by the decisions made by our governmental system of which we are a part, called to be a responsible part and change agent of the system. But remember also when Jesus was walking through some wheat fields on a sabbath; he picked the wheat. When should we, too, break the custom or law to feed the hungry, for example? The sabbath was made for the good of humanity; respect for God and loving service are entwined. "Compassion and love, not the blind observation of regulations, are to form the expression of the Christian life." That is the gospel reading for this Sunday (Mark 2:23-28 reworded).

Now this is bizarre; at the time of my twentieth year class reunion, stuck between two other cards in my old wallet was my SSR form, number 2, and my old notice of draft classification. My selective service registration certificate, with my selective service number and a list of obvious physical characteristics -- height and weight and blue eyes registered with the local board, number 33 for New Jersey, third floor, Bangs Avenue, Asbury Park. "Any person who alters, forges, or in any manner changes this certificate may be fined not to exceed $10,000 or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both. The law requires you to have this certificate in your personal possession at all times and to notify your local draft board in writing within ten days of marital, family, or dependency status."

At commencement twenty years ago, that little card allowed some of us to go on to graduate schools, some to various occupations, and placed others of us on a fast tract, as Second Lieutenants, to Vietnam, a college liberal arts education making us leaders of others, leading some of us through jungles where Second Lieutenants had the highest fatality rate of any rank, shot in both the front and the back.

I went to graduate school and protest rallies against the war but never burned the card. I kept it safe in my wallet, mixing guilt and action, risk and compromise, which has not ended along with the constant stream of justice issues where lives are being belittled or cut short. How afar does one go to spill out one's conviction in action? So I write to South Africa demanding information and release for certain prisoners of conscience, and then write on the same computer disk to other officials within the same governmental structure to recommend black students for graduate school within South Africa; or to seek politely an exit visa for other black, South African nationals. But how do my dual actions in that computerized system of fear and suspicion assist in offering freedom to some and injustice to others? Does my desire for liberation cause additional pain? It's not just a matter of my personal sacrifice (which is very little), and which in some ways would be the easy action to take, but it always involves others. Sometimes that leads into an intense internal struggle, like going to rallies but keeping the card safe in one's wallet, an inner struggle, but, "God said, 'Remember this, I created you to be my servant ...' " (Isaiah 44:21 paraphrased).

I found an instant winner ticket for a Big Mac sandwich that is probably no longer valid but if it is, whether I eat it in or take it out, it is served in a styrofoam container that has and will, with thousands of others, wreak havoc on the environment. But I am very fond of Big Macs. So I write Ronald and ask, "Why don't you put them in a paper container, like Burger King does?" Though I write to Burger King also to remind them that their fish sandwich is supporting the Icelandic fishing industry that operates at the moment in flagrant violation of the International Whaling Commission moratorium on killing whales. I do believe that even these little pesky items speak to the "why" of our earthenware life together -- the "us" of living, rather than just looking out for "me."

So there were membership cards in the Sierra Club, Bread for the World, Amnesty International, cards that really serve no purpose in one's wallet, representing organizations of human limitation, but also, for me, symbols of the way the world should be -- in harmony. In traditional terms, they hold in my mind hope for the kingdom of God. "Shout for joy, you mountains, and every tree of the forest. I God alone stretched out the heavens" ( Isaiah 44:23-24 paraphrased).

I have pictures of my wife and children, certainly something I didn't have in my wallet at the time of my graduation; though it was, I believe, tucked away nicely in my expectations and aspirations. In my case (and there are other equally blessed arrangements), there was the hope for a spouse and children to love and care for, and to receive love and care from, as well as to offer, in all its incompleteness, my will for unity forever. I hope you know what I mean, in this age of temporary promise, when I say a will for unity forever.

I have shown these pictures from my wallet to people I meet in fast-paced inner cities or in the countryside in Nicaragua and Jordan and India, and they convey, in a way that these people pictured, this woman and these children, their well-being and future, are very important to me. Other people often show me their pictures, or their children; and I see my children and my spouse in the eyes of those they love. We understand each other for a moment and the way life should be for us all, forever; it is earthenware but something more, willing peace and resurrection.

There is a card identifying me as an ordained pastor, granting me access to strange intensive care units and emergency rooms at distant hospitals. This card that means to me vocation, grounded in a faith commitment. I hope that the card you carry in your wallet to identify your occupational status will also convey to you the same sense of vocation, accountable to the God who said, "Out of darkness the light shall shine."

You see, my baccalaureate prayer for you is that you will feel the pulse beat and breath of that which is grounded in permanent safety -- that which offers a model for living in compassion, expressed in servanthood and respect, that renews rather than just consumes.

I hope that you will be peacemakers between family members and maybe even between nations. I wish future homes and families of stability and safety for you. I wish you a setting where love can flow and there can be joy supported by trust, where promises are covenantal and, to the very best of your ability, kept. I wish for you a personal ethic of "love seeking justice."

I want from you protection for the good earth. And I want for you in the center of your being, in your living and relating, a balance that enables you to peer over barriers of relating -- a balance that enables you to peer over barriers of difference formed by language and culture, time and space, race and belief, wealth and privilege, and be able to perceive a divine will for unity, not division. "Do you want to talk with one of us, all of us being sacred?"

I want for you moral sensitivity, empathy, and a realized accountability for your intellectual and economic gifts. That life does not have to be lived as though it is a competition between some who win and some who lose; there are ways to achieve objectives that are not violent for others, but rather where all can win.

This will often run counter to the way others live and treat each other, but this is not a lifestyle determined by popularity polls. We carry with us in our body the death of Jesus. My baccalaureate hope for you is an intensified image of full humanity, earthenware containers infused with the eternity of love: a self-vision where the power of compassion in community has transcending power -- a realization that servanthood and justice, that harmony and peace are all willed and intended by a greater authority than our own self-interest or instinct.

My pastoral hope is that you can even name the source: "God's glory shining in the face of Christ...." a covenant rooted in a love that was actually lived by Jesus and that will never ultimately disappoint.

Common clay containers who welcome this gift and accept the forgiveness -- God's glory shining in the face of Christ, in the words of Saint Paul -- may be often troubled, but not crushed; sometimes in doubt, but never in despair; there may be enemies, but we are never without a friend; hurt badly at times, but never destroyed, for here is the cradle of eternity, with the fulfilled promise of unity; here is genuine joy and balance -- divine synergy.

As today's psalm put it:

... start the music and beat the tambourines ... blow the trumpet for the festival ... I, God, took the burdens off your backs; I who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Even from my hiding place in the storm, I answered you.
-- Psalm 81 (paraphrased)

Here, alone is final forgiveness -- here, alone is final liberation. So, "... start the music, beat the tambourines, and blow the trumpet for the joyous festival of your future."

Sermon delivered June 5, 1988
Weaver Chapel
Wittenberg University
Springfield, Ohio