Ben Camino’s Baccalaureate
[Don't start the sound file yet.] Not long ago, Ben Camino was sifting through some archives when he came upon an article about a baccalaureate address at his university delivered about a century ago. It was reported to have gone over an hour and gone over (other meaning) very well. Allowing for some possible exaggeration, the question came to mind as to the length and depth of such an address for such an occasion. The answer formulated by the learned brother was that expectations were higher. Expectations for speakers, expectations for audiences, expectations for graduates, expectations for such an occasion.
He told me when he delivered this to me, wrapped in sanitizer, for editing, (which I'm sure I've botched, since I kept falling asleep while reading it), that he was only sorry he hadn't quite matched those expectations (or length) Now I know what he meant by being "only sorry" about that. It was ironic.
Anyway(s), I hope you enjoy it (or whatever one does with such an address). It is so long that it's in two blog posts, each with a sound file. The first is 33 minutes long; the second is 13. If you haven't read Ben Camino before, I'm sorry, I can't help you. Now would be a good time to start the sound file. Read along or not as you wish.
Mr.
President, Mrs. President, Mrs. Vice President, Mr. Vice President, Mr. Miami
Vice, Members of the Bored Trustees, Dean Jones, Dean Rusk, James Dean, Jimmy
Dean, Dino, Desi, and Billy, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Seuss, Dr. Pepper, Dr. class of
whatever years this is, parents, loved ones, liked ones, merely put up with
ones, and those reading this on Zoom. Boy have you got your wires crossed. But
we get it. For twenty years, Ben Camino has waited to be asked to give a
Baccalaureate address. Why? Because he knows the meaning of the word among
other things. Also because he has things to say. Good things. Things that hurt
good. Things that goad good. Ironic things. Things to say.
So, Ben
decided to wait no longer. He decided to keep referring to himself in the third
person, to take the bull by the horns, to make use of the miracle of modern
technology and email Xerox copies of his speech to all the graduates
everywhere. Sort of like President Obama, but without the video.
But
seriously. The one thing you need to know before you start, if you are thinking
that you might start, is that Ben doesn’t feel sorry for this year’s graduating
class. He gets that they are sad to not have a real graduation ceremony in May,
sad that they had to say goodbye to their friends a couple of months earlier
than they should have, sad that they had to be socially isolated like 2/3 of the rest of the human race.
The other third is trying to kill the rest of us, in case you didn’t know. Don’t
try to kill the rest of us; sorry if that hurts. If you were still huddled in
the dorms on campus until . . . Saturday, you would have done some damage. So
think about it.
I know,
I know. Another grandpa getting all in our face about how tough he had it way
back whenever it was and I should be thankful that I have Taco Bell because he
didn’t. Well, that’s not what this is about. It’s about great-grandpa. My dad. He
was just 19 when he had to leave his friends for awhile. Some of them he never
saw again. He was hoping to start university but didn’t do that either. They
did have one heck of a party to say goodbye though, so he was lucky that way. He
and 999 of his closest friends met in downtown Houston on May 30, paraded
through the streets, took the Navy Oath, and marched immediately down to Union
Station to catch the express train to beautiful Southern California. San Diego
to be exact.
He was
lucky enough to come home eventually. But not before mastering a new kind of
education. Still, he did all right, he even won the highest honors. Not a
summa, but two Purple Hearts, one wound from Japanese shrapnel and another from
a Fascist bullet in Italy. Like I said though, he was one of the lucky ones.
And he knew it. And he never forgot it.
Anyway,
or as all the Jennifers say, anyways,
I may be the only Baccalaureate speaker in 2020 who doesn’t feel sorry for you.
Maybe that alone is reason enough to listen.
Speaking
of the war, two weeks ago week we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Allied
Liberation of Europe from the demonic system of Nazism. Liberation. Freedom. A
new beginning. Freedom from the terror of the past. It became, immediately, a
time to plot a new course, a new future. Celebrations. Reunions. Marriages to
sweethearts back home. Well, you get the picture. So many connections to make
between graduation (the usual kind) and all that. Liberated from your wicked
professors, you stand today free to make a new start, ready to embrace a bright
and better future, not to mention embracing that sweetheart I mentioned four sentences
ago.
Before
the eighth of May, VE Day, however, came the ninth of April. On that day, a
beloved German pastor, professor, theologian, author, social justice fighter,
graduated to a new life as well. By means of the gallows. Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
author of The Cost of Discipleship, Life
Together, Ethics, and many other works, spent the last two years of his
brief but heroic 39 year life in a succession of Nazi prisons. He, along with
several of conspirators, all of them part of a failed plot to assassinate Adolf
Hitler were executed on April ninth, just weeks before Hitler’s own suicide and
just days before the liberation of those very death camps we remember with such
horror.
When Bonhoeffer, a scholarly boy wonder if ever there
were one, graduated from theological seminary in Berlin in 1930, what high
hopes were held for him not only by his family and his professors but himself
as well. And he more than fulfilled those hopes, cramming a lifetime of
service, preaching, education, writing, teaching, scholarship, pastor care, and
even, counter-espionage in to the next fifteen years of his life.
But perhaps the Bonhoeffer most of us best remember is
the man revealed in the letters and papers which were smuggled out of prison
and published in the years following his death. During this time of testing, of
separation from his intensely close and loyal family and friends (not to
mention his beloved piano), and of being taken out of the public eye in which
Bonhoeffer had always shone, there came a new reality, perhaps a new validity
to his faith and to his words.
The Bonhoeffer of the seminary, the Bonhoeffer of the
pastorate, the Bonhoeffer of the study, gave way to a new, and, he might say,
more authentic person. One who could rejoice in the face of tragedy, because he
grasped what true faith was. What the stakes always were when one said the
first two words of the Creed, “I believe.” When one said, “I will follow.” This
Bonhoeffer was not afraid to reflect honestly, sometimes critically, on his
past and his church’s past, and yet looked eagerly to the future. And he became
someone who eagerly sought to crystallize what it was that he was learning, who
it was he was becoming, and where it was that he was going.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s case is not, of course, so unusual.
But we make it so when we live the lights of our own moment only. When we
forget, that is, history. When we forget that this has always been the story of
the faithful.
Heroes on the edge, whether at the point of death or
imprisoned or suffering great hardship, call us to attention. Martin Luther
before the court at Worms, saying “Here I stand, I can do no other.” Martin
Luther King Jr. writing his now famous (to many then, infamous) “Letter from a
Birmingham Jail” to explain his action against southern segregation laws in the
service of a higher moral law. Henry David Thoreau wrote his famous “Essay on
Civil Disobedience,” based on his stay in the Concord jail for refusing to pay
his taxes to support an unjust war and for, as we remember, marching to the
beat of a different drummer. And, of course, John Bunyan (not Paul Bunyan as a
student of mine once wrote on an exam) composed his masterpiece of wayfaring
and warfaring Christianity, for the most part, during his twelve-year stay in
that now legendary Bedford (England) jail.
Who else should we add to this list of eloquent, heroic
prisoners? I would suggest a man who knew a great deal about jailed heroes of
faith, since he was personally responsible for jailing a good many of them.
Ironically, years later he was given the distinct privilege of being what he
called “a prisoner for Jesus Christ.” I mean, of course, none other than a man
named Saul, who came from a place called Tarsus, a person we now remember as
Saint Paul. His letter from a Roman prison to a band of persecuted believers in
Philippi has provided inspiration and wisdom for twenty centuries of those
preparing to graduate – whether from educational institutions or simply from
one station to another along the path of Christian discipleship.
I know, I know. I hear the queries and complaints of the
tribe of Ben, most of them named Jennifer. Why focus on prison letters and
words written by chained hands on this day of freedom and celebration? Why not,
instead sing “glorious things of thee are spoken” to the class of 2020? Why not
stick to the official guidebook for graduation speakers and use the word
achieve at least once on every page? Seriously, why prison on a day like this?
Especially after what this class has been through? By the way, dear imaginary
reader, I can see what you are trying to do there. You are trying to get me to
say I feel sorry for you. But I am sorry . . . to say that I’m not sorry. I have a good reason and a clear answer to all
of the above.
One reason I speak about a letter from prison and all the
difficulties that suggests is that my message is, for perhaps the first time in
Ben Camino’s life, relevant. We’ve all been stuck in our cells (of varying
kinds) for awhile by graduation day. How’s that going? How is the one basic
approach I have seen and heard so far from the experts to deal with this
problem working? I mean, of course, the one that starts, “We feel sorry for
you.” Truth be told, this too, I hope and pray, will pass. But the prisons and
dead ends and traps and constrictions will go on in different way, at different
times, to different degrees throughout our lives. How do we not know this? I
know the answer to that question too. We ignore it.
Really, inspirational speeches at graduation are usually
not really necessary, although often memorable. The audience of graduates are
fired up and ready to go. They need a job, not inspiration. The need cards with
lots of money or gift cards or maybe even some car keys. They need to pay off
their library fines. The best graduation speeches are not for graduation day.
They are for someday. The someday the graduates will, in fact, need that
speech. Or at least the message from Saint Paul, written from imprisonment.
Because, we most of us now know, imprisoning times will come. That might be a
global pandemic. I guess I shouldn’t say maybe. But ask your grandpa or grandma
if you can get them to be honest with you. They will tell you. An imprisoning
job might come someday. An imprisoning circumstance. An imprisoning
relationship. Maybe even prison, let’s not kid ourselves. As with my examples
above, in this dark world sometimes those who stand up for the light will find
themselves there. And on those days, all the “You made it!” cards, cash, car
keys, reference letters, and certificates won’t help you. The truth, though,
will help you. The words that hurt good, that goad good, that connect us
something historically and eternally true. If we have ears to hear.
Of
course, another reason for considering Paul’s letter from prison is that hidden
in it, you might say locked up in it is one of the most popular and
inspirational texts for moments like this but one often disconnected from its
context and, therefore, rendered un-ironic. And in the Ben Camino universe,
that is a sin. Here is the passage from what we now call chapter three of the
Epistle to the Philippians.
Not that I have already obtained this
[Paul probably means the resurrection from the dead] or have already reached
the goal [been made perfect]; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ
Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my
own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward
to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly
call of God in Christ Jesus.
To his
enemies, I’m sure that Pauls’ words called forth something like ridicule. “Oh
really, you haven’t reached your ultimate goal yet? You still have a ways to
go? No kidding! Wake up and smell the unleavened bread, apostle man! You are in
prison. You are nowhere and you are going . . . nowhere!” I suppose his
boastful sounding “I can to all things through Christ who strengthens me”
(4.13) would have evoked even louder laughter and further derision. I don’t
want to put some of us in that category of Paul’s mockers, but we might
consider how he might respond to us when we say, as soon as this crazy crisis
is over, I will be able to get going again on all those dreams and plans,
utilizing the abilities with which I’ve been gifted. Until then, I’m just
stuck.
You might wonder why Saint Paul would respond to you at
all, and I would say, well read the letter, he already has. Because Paul’s
letter was meant specifically for the church in Philippi and their very
specific situation. This church, the first he had established on the continent
of Europe, had always been close to the apostle’s heart. They were good people,
dear people, faithful people, and yet despite all that, they were going through
a very rough time. From the beginning they had faced significant opposition
and, as Paul clearly expressed in his letter, they were now undergoing
persecution and suffering. Hard times? Yes. Unusual? Hmmmm. So Paul writes to
offer himself as an example of how to live when our external circumstances have
become painful, when it becomes difficult to understand why we have given our
lives to an invisible Lord who promises abundant life and joy and love, yet our
visible situation looks more like a bleak and hopeless prison cell.
Sound familiar? Are you there? If you aren’t, just
remember great grandpa and his going away party. If you are there or when you
are there, sooner or later, remember the thoughts of our imprisoned friend,
Saint Paul, who spilled his ink to encourage his good friends in Philippi and
Indiana and all around the world (even Michigan) to, as he says repeatedly, “rejoice
in the Lord,” even when the freedom promised Christ followers looks a lot like
bondage.
At first, Paul gives his usual salutations, graces,
peaces, and high fives; he even flatters his readers by calling them saints. Or maybe it’s more than flattery.
Paul has plenty of good reasons to say that “I thank my God every time I
remember you,” because they have been his most faithful friends, they never
deserted him, they kept showing their true and deep concern time and again,
even sending him the ancient equivalent of care packages. Some of your
graduates know the worth of such gifts. More important, all of us in our
present crisis know what it means to have (or sadly not to have) friends who
never desert us, who keep showing their concern, who provide care in the most
tangible ways they can.
In the next bit, though, the apostle really starts
writing with the passion we expect from his greatest passages. He boldly,
ironically, claims that his prison experience has become a liberation
(1.12-18). It has even become clear to those around him, including the
“imperial guards” that is imprisonment is “for Christ.” What do you mean Paul?
I think he would answer his hard time, his apparently constricted, limited time
has given him the chance to “shine his light” in a way and to people that he
could not otherwise. I think he would say, don’t
be sorry for me. Pray that I will take advantage of my new circumstances.
But the following passage (19-26) gives a fuller meaning
to this seeming paradox. Paul says that whether he is set from from prison or
whether he stays (I think our application is obvious), he has discovered that
“to live is Christ.” I’ve heard this a million times and it’s always been
presented as a bunch of spiritual gas. It’s not. You are now going to learn
what it really means. I hope you are as excited as I am. Paul, this most
active, busy, and extremely successful man (whether persecuting or producing
Christians, he was super busy and super successful), a graduate of the finest
Pharisee education shekels could buy, found himself . . . sitting still.
No boat trips with Luke, no camel trips with Silas, no
exciting quick exits from town just in time to escape stoning or whipping from
a frenzied mob with Barnabas. Just sitting. Still. Probably getting sick of the
sound of his own breathing. And no Zoom to keep in touch with John Mark or to
meet with the Board members in Jerusalem and Antioch.
Was it for this he was educated? Was it for this he gave
up his lucrative career as a Christian persecutor? Was it for this he became
the apostle to the Gentiles? No, I’m not saying that Paul came to the
conclusion that being stuck in prison (or quarantine) was his purpose in life,
his vocation. But sometimes prison comes. Lockdown comes. Distancing comes. And
other kinds of prisons and lockdowns await us to be sure. And Paul came to
understand and write that Christ is just as available in those places, those
circumstances, as we was in the middle of his most successful days of ministry.
Maybe even more so.
I’m sure some of his original hearers cringed, just as
perhaps some of us do today at what we think is a pretty sentiment but
certainly not something for us. But he’s not about to let us slip away. He
includes us. Whether they wanted or not, Paul “encouraged” the Philippians with
the truth that they had been “graciously granted” the same “privilege” he had
been given: “the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering
for him as well” (1.29). Ouch. And so he encourages them, in another famous
passage that we don’t really get, to
let their faith be exercised, show up for what it really can be, rise to the
occasion, in these difficult times. Not to shrink back, but to flex.
If there is any encouragement in
Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion
and sympathy, make my joy complete be of the same mind, having the same love,
etc.
In other
words, if anything I have taught you is true, if anything you have professed is
real, now is your opportunity on the grand stage of middle earth, with heaven
and hell watching. I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry. If this good news is good,
Paul reminds them and us, it has to be true now, not just in the good times and
the celebrations and the campus rituals and traditions, and staying up late playing
way too many video games; and happy chapels, and those difficult mission trips
to Daytona Beach; not just in those three days we called a revival, or those
laudations we earned for our good work.
There’s more, I’m sorry (not sorry) to say. It gets
better or worse, depending on your interest in a little thing called reality.
Not only, Paul insists, should we understand that the truths of the faith must
be true in the bad times as well as the good, BUT (and that’s a big but) those
hard times, those imprisoning circumstances become, when we see with what Paul
calls “the mind of Christ,” a key to an authentic Christian faith, a holy
pattern that is deeply embedded in the mystery of redemptive love. To prove
this, Brother Paul (never more a saint than when singing) breaks into poetry or
song for one of the most brilliant, glorious, yet theologically significant
passages in all of literature. The canticle of kenosis. (2.5-11)
Let the same mind be in you that was
in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of
God,
did not regard equality with God as
something to be exploited (held on to),
but emptied himself, taking the form
of a slave [a prisoner would have helped my message Paul),
being found in human form, he humbled
himself
and became obedient to the point of
death –
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and give him the name that is above
every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every
knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the
earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Sometimes,
you just have to say whoa. Thank you
Brother Paul. For helping me get my mind right. Jesus Christ himself came into
a kind of prison, took upon himself great limitations and humiliations, but in
doing so he achieved a glory found only that particular pilgrim pathway, on
that specific “road less travelled.” Pay attention here if you will. Paul’s
example for living through the present moment of difficulty was not Paul back
in the good old days before difficulty and it wasn’t an imagined future Paul
after escaping from his difficult circumstances (prison, pandemic, little
brother). His example was Jesus Christ who, as they say “had been there.”
For although Jesus Christ’s suffering for the salvation
of humanity was a once-for-ever, unique event, that we can never fully imitate
or repay, it also models for us a broader truth which we ignore at our own
peril. Because then we would be ignorant. That truth is that some problems can
only be solved through suffering, through hardship, through what I have been
calling, rather loosely I know, imprisonment. Certainly, the forces of evil
must have rejoiced when they saw their greatest foe apparently crushed and
quieted forever on an ugly cross, on a little hill, outside a relatively
insignificant city, in a dusty little Roman province. But they were as wrong as
the White Witch who understood not the Deeper Magic from before the Dawn of
Time.
Another life-long lesson to draw from the example of the
self-emptying Christ (who, as Charles Wesley wrote, “emptied himself of all but
love”) in our times of difficulty is a simple but terribly hard one. Sometimes
we must be emptied before we can be filled. I don’t want to push this one too
hard on a bunch of graduates and their parents who have just invested four
(five? six?) years and thousands of dollars on an education. Hold on now Mister
Doctor Professor Speech-Maker Dude! Don’t tell me you are saying we should
empty ourselves of what we have worked so hard to obtain? New Testament Greek?
Contemporary Social Work Theory? Advanced Musical Composition? My jump shot?
Alright, alright . . . I give up. You imaginary folks ask some pretty tough
rhetorical questions. I reply, if somewhat madly, to my own questions – Christ
himself, though, is our model. Paul is our source. I am just . . . Ben Camino.
He emptied himself of his unique, divine giftedness to
become a prisoner of space and time, but, as a result, all the universe will
someday bow and sing praises to his name. Just as Christ emptied himself of his
special privileges as the Son of God, Paul emptied himself of his special privileges
as a devout Jew, as a zealous Pharisee, and ultimately, even as an apostle to
find the experience he calls “to live is Christ.”
And he admonishes his friends in Philippi, in Indiana, in
Oxford, and anywhere else where inspirited dust yearns for the fullness for
which it was formed, to recognize and follow the same pattern. All our
knowledge, our credentials, our cum laudes, our funny hats and clumsy robes,
our friendships even – all to be treasured since they are God’s good gifts too
– must always be laid down at the feet of the one who did not regard his
position of privilege to be held on to at all costs. Only Jesus Christ can make
that ultimate claim on our lives. But let’s be honest with ourselves – he does
have that right.
Paul follows his ode to the humiliated and exalted Christ
with one of his most commonly misunderstood phrases: “Work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling” (2.12). I say misunderstood, because I so
often hear this phrase used in the controversy over whether one is saved by
grace or work or difficult-to-measure combination thereof. Again, the context
clarifies what Paul means, and I think it has terribly (sorry about that)
obvious application for the graduates. Paul says you Philippians used to learn
from me, and, in doing so, you grew in your faith. But now I am in prison,
separated from you by a number of barriers. So now, remembering me (and please
don’t forget me when it comes time for the care packages) but without my
physical presence, work out your own salvation, leaning on and learning from
Christ and his grace, not Paul and his charismatic personality. For, as he
adds, “it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work
from his good pleasure.”
Hmmm. I guess it’s no wonder that we haven’t heard this
preached more over the years. It seems to be deconstructing the role of the
pastor/teacher/senior leader/mentor in the life of a follower, a disciple.
That’s probably a little extreme, but I think it’s definitely what Paul means
(partly out of necessity) and I know it’s definitely apropos of your
circumstances (recent and future). Perhaps Paul had, I surmise the Philippians
had, and I’m guessing that we have come too easily to rely on others to prop up
our lives and our faith. Yes, we need each other, and if you ever read Ben
Camino, you know how deeply he believes in the communal nature of Christian
living. But, we must also learn to “hold fast to the word of life” (2.16) on
our own. Chapel, classes, small groups, mission trips, Centers for the Study of
Saint Paul and Friends – wow that’s a long list to be followed by the words are not enough. Prisons, pandemics, and
all sorts of other circumstances come along and knock out the props from our
faith, or what we have called our faith hitherto. That happens to some degree
when we go to college and miss all the props of home (and I don’t just mean
family). Typically, that happens again when we have to leave college and miss
all the props of . . . college. This year that happened early. And, as I said
before, I’m not going to say I’m sorry about that. It was going to happen even
though it happened earlier than expected.
One of the problems of college is the prop replacement
syndrome. We thought we had developed a whole new thing by getting rid of our
props, but often we are actually replacing one prop with another. And don’t get
me wrong, we are called to “prop each other up” in a proper (sorry) way, but I
am talking about something else. So, we exchange a parent for a Professor. A
pastor for a campus pastor. A friend for a roommate. A hometown boyfriend for a
college boyfriend. A midnight curfew for . . . unlimited video games. Paul senses that it might actually be a good
thing, a growth thing, for him to be separated from the church in Philippi in
whom he has invested so much of his life. Time for you to “work out your own
salvation” – obviously he doesn’t mean apart from Christ, but he probably means
apart from Paul.
Who are your Paul’s? You have them. I have them. We all
do. They are dear, they are significant, they have helped us in deep and
remarkable ways. This next part is hard to say, except it’s actually easier
because you have already been separated since mid-May. But it’s still hard.
They won’t be around any longer. They won’t be there to stretch you
intellectually, to challenge you to be your best self, to prop up your faith,
to cheer you on, to give you a good talking to, to bring a guitar to class to
sing Christmas carols on the last day of Fall semester. Not to mention . . .
pizza. Unless you come back to attend graduate school because you can’t stand
to be separated from people. That’s not a
good reason to go to grad school in case you need someone to give you a
good talking to, by the way.
Well, here is my paraphrase of that scary part: “You’ve
got to work it out for yourself now, in your own wobbly, trembling, messy way.”
Here’s my version of the encouraging part, though: “If any of this is true, he
will be there to help if you seek him. In fact, he will especially be there in
those prison moments, when you realize you have nowhere else to turn. If he is
Lord of the universe, Lord of heaven and hell, he is Lord of your prisons as
well.”
“Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord.”
That is not only the beginning of Paul’s conclusion to this letter, but the beginning
of mine as well. Don’t get so excited. Note that Paul’s conclusion takes two
chapters, exactly one half of the entire epistle!
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