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Southwestern University
July 2, 2008
Southwestern's 'Speech of the Month'
Go fix the world.
That, in a nutshell, was James Winkler’s advice this spring to graduating seniors at Southwestern University in Georgetown.
“I want you to shake the gates of hell,” said Winkler, general secretary of the United Methodist Church, in his May commencement address. “Because if you don’t, things will only go from bad to worse.”
Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman for Southwestern, e-mailed me today to let me know that the editors of a publication known as “Vital Speeches of the Day” were impressed. The publication, which says it strives to give readers “the best thoughts of the best minds on current national issues,” reprinted Winkler’s address in the July issue as the “Speech of the Month.”
Here is the speech, as posted on the university’s Web site.
President Schrum, faculty members, honored guests, parents, family and friends, I greet you. Students of the 2008 graduating class, I congratulate you.
It seems to me that many commencement speeches are vehicles through which the speech-maker dispenses advice and bromides such as “you are going out to make a difference in the world,” and “you have been given a grand opportunity to use your talents in a morally uplifting fashion,” or “the world is changing rapidly and you must be prepared.”
I’m going to dispense with that approach. I want you to shake the gates of hell. Because if you don’t, things will only go from bad to worse. The comedian Jon Stewart puts it this way, “I know we were supposed to bequeath to the next generation a world better than the one we were handed. So sorry.”
You know the statistics: hundreds of millions of children go to bed hungry every night, the gap between the rich and the poor grows daily, climate change threatens God’s very Creation, war remains a commonplace occurrence, and preventable diseases go untreated. Frankly, we’re counting on your generation to be the one that turns things around. You do not have the luxury of ignoring problems and difficulties in order to follow your bliss.
I’m not going to advise you to pursue your passion. What if your passion is to lead a racist movement or to develop a cigarette that will kill people more quickly or to build a bulldozer to more effectively destroy the Amazon rain forest? You’re only going to be doing a hurting world any good if you truly leave the world a better place than you found it.
What are you going to do for the good of the world when it is in a bad situation? Frederick Buechner points out, “There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of society. By and large a good rule for finding out is this: The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need to do and (b) that the world needs to have done….The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Dr. William Sloane Coffin put it somewhat more bluntly when he said, “The problem with the rat race is that even if you win you’re still a rat.
My hope and prayer for you is that your skills and talents and desires meet the world’s needs. Southwestern University has attempted to help you find that intersection. My church, the United Methodist Church, established this university and has long had a passion for education. The founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley, insisted all his preachers be able to read at a time when that was not common and ordinary.
Not only did Wesley want his preachers educated and able to preach sermons that made sense to people, he believed that personal and social holiness were connected. It’s not enough to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless. We have to free the oppressed, as well. That means we must change systems that perpetuate hunger, misery, and poverty.
I work on Capitol Hill directly across the street from the Supreme Court and the Capitol Building where I direct the public policy and social justice advocacy agency of our church. When we walk across the street to meet with Members of Congress and their staff, we do not offer campaign contributions. We do not seek passage of a law that will benefit the United Methodist Church or even one of its colleges and universities. We do not threaten to elected officials with defeat if they fail to support us and we do not pray for the death or illness of Supreme Court justices. No, we provide a firm, polite, moral, and ethical witness in the halls of power on behalf of the last, the least, and the lost.
I find that Members of Congress are, generally, grateful that the church serves to remind them that life and politics is more than financial success or getting over on someone else. You see, Capitol Hill is a vast arena of deal-making yet nearly everyone who pursues public service, regardless of party affiliation, arrives with the goal of doing good. Many end up doing well, but they came to Washington to do good.
Somewhere along the way many decided to cash in and get their own piece of the rock. We are living in a time of moral crisis. Our values have been systematically subverted since September 11, 2001, and our indifference is not only lethargic but lethal. The quiet acceptance of torture and preemptive war eats away at the soul of American life. Our acquiescence to the big lies told by the rich and powerful—and repeated by the media ad infinitum—is frightening and demoralizing.
The earth, you see, is in the grip of three interlocking systems of vast power and scope. They are desert-making, hunger-making, and war-making systems. These systems have enabled a minority of the world’s population to enjoy great wealth and power at the expense of most people It is your task to reform these systems.
Lest you believe this is an impossible dream, let me remind you that the last 50 years of human history have witnessed great gains. The civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the environmental justice movement, the movements for the rights and dignity of all people, the movements to end the nuclear arms race, apartheid in South Africa, and the Vietnam War have changed the very face of this nation, indeed, of the world. Social change for the better is possible. It requires commitment, hard work, and sacrifice.
President Bush was right when he said there is an axis of evil, but he was wrong when he said it is Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. It has been said the true axis of evil is pandemic poverty, environmental degradation, and a world awash in weapons. This triplet has caused enormous suffering and pain.
The nations of the world have united behind 8 Millennium Development Goals that are intended to make poverty history. They are:
MDG 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education
MDG 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
MDG 4: Reduce child mortality
MDG 5: Improve maternal health
MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
MDG 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
MDG 8: Develop a global partnership for development
That is the best anti-terrorism campaign around. Friends, we can’t build enough guns, tanks, and war planes to stop the anger and frustration that leads to terrorism, but I do know we now have the capacity to re-shape the world so that a good and decent life is enjoyed by all of God’s children.
Can we imagine a new future? We must.
We’re all world citizens now. None of us want to buy shirts made in sweatshops or coffee grown on land that should feed its hungry children. None of us are pleased to be pumping toxins into our planetary home, destroying the life systems upon which life depends. Yet, we do. Our lives are intimately bound up in a moral-spiritual crisis of profound and unprecedented dimensions. The reigning model of economic globalization threatens earth’s life systems, undermines cultural integrity and diversity, and endangers the lives of many who are poor in order that some might consume exorbitantly and a few accumulate vast wealth.
Have you ever seen the movie “Animal Crackers” starring the Marx brothers? At one point Groucho asks, “Where are we?” and Chico replies, You can’t fool me—we’re right here!” Right here may not be the best place to be, but it is where God has put us. So, we who try to live faithfully have to hold many ideas, changes and hopes in tension at the same time. God does not call us to do everything with brilliance or efficiency. What God calls us to do is to focus our lives.
William Barclay used to say that there are two great days in a person’s life—the day we are born and the day we discover why.
Most of us gathered here this afternoon are among the most privileged, the most blessed people in the history of the world. We have more than enough food to eat, we have shelter, clothing (some have probably bought new items to wear to this gathering), spending money and, of course, fine educations. We have been thrust into a new era, a new time. And we are not yet able to comprehend or understand all its meanings and implications. The intertwined meaning of our life and of our history, set as they are against a vast mystery, can neither be encompassed nor completed by our own powers.
How do we proceed as we move forward from this university? Three principles derived from Catholic social teachings and serve us well:
1. The needs of the poor take priority over the wants of the rich.
2. The freedom of the dominated takes priority over the liberty of the powerful.
3. The participation of marginalized groups takes priority over the preservation of an order that excludes them.
Even with this guidance, you may find yourself at some point where you have to make a choice between right and wrong and it may not be so clear cut at the time. Dr. Timothy Tyson, who now teaches African American studies at the University of Wisconsin, has written about the killing of a black man on May 11, 1970, in Oxford, North Carolina, when Tim Tyson was ten years old. His father, the Reverend Vernon Tyson, was pastor of the United Methodist Church in that town, a man who tried to further racial understanding in a tense time.
Vernon Tyson had the gall to invite a prominent black educator, Dr. Samuel Proctor, the President of Carolina A & T University, to preach in the-of course-all-white Methodist Church on Race Relations Sunday, the second Sunday in February each year as mandated by the Book of Discipline of our denomination. You can imagine the consternation, the anger, the dismay of the leaders of the congregation. So an emergency meeting of the administrative board of the church was called on Saturday night before the next day when Dr. Proctor was scheduled to preach.
You know before I tell you what was said: “This is going to tear this church apart.” Members of the board shoved a telephone at Vernon Tyson demanding that he call Dr. Proctor and rescind the invitation, cancel the sermon. “You can end all this with one phone call.” Just as the meeting threatened to dissolve in an uproar, a quiet, dignified older woman rose to speak.
“‘Miss Amy’ Womble was sixty, an ‘old-maid schoolteacher,’ her neighbors would have said in those days. She walked with a limp. Miss Womble had been a first-grade teacher to most of the people in that room. The community honored her, but nobody had any idea what she thought about the burning social issues of the day. ‘I’ve been just sitting here sort of listening,’ Miss Amy said. ‘And I hear one of us saying this is going to tear this church apart.’ She looked directly at the man who had said it. ‘Now, I don’t know the man who is coming very much. I know he is the president of A & T, that’s all I know. But I know our pastor, and you know him, too, and he’s not going to tear anything apart. And I don’t suppose Dr. Proctor is going to tear anything apart, either. If there’s going to be any tearing done, we’re going to do the tearing apart ourselves.’”
She slowly hobbled to the front of the room and told a story about a recent automobile accident near Chapel Hill. A teenage boy went around a curve too fast and was killed. So they thought. There were not any signs of life. But then an airman from Pope Air Force Base stopped. “He scrambled down the embankment and opened that boy ‘s mouth,” she said. “And he saw the boy’s tongue stuck back in his throat, and he ran his finger there and pulled out that tongue, and then gave that boy mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. By the time the ambulance got there,” Miss Amy said, “that boy was walking around alive as you and me. And the next week they had a big dinner at the fire station out in Orange County for that airman, celebrating how he had saved that boy’s life.” She paused once more.
“What I haven’t told you is that the boy who had the wreck was white, and that airman that saved him was a black man. But that’s the truth,” she said, “and I want all of you fathers to tell me something.” She looked searchingly around the room. “Now, which one of you fathers would have said to that airman, ‘Now, don’t you run your black fingers down my white boy’s throat?’ Which of y’all would have told that airman, ‘Don’t you dare put your black lips on my boy’s mouth?’”
The board voted 25 to 13 to stand with Vernon Tyson and welcome Samuel Proctor to the pulpit of the Methodist Church.
What I hope you will seek to do as you leave this place is seek to live a just life. Not just live your life, but live a just life. In one of my former jobs, I designed and led seminars on national and international affairs for United Methodist youth, college students, and adults. Many seminars explored homelessness. One of the most effective speakers was a man named Harold Moss. Harold was the first person in his family to go to college. In fact, he earned a Ph.D. and did cancer research in Washington, DC.
However, Harold took his Christianity seriously and found he could not walk past or step over homeless people to get to work so he left his job to live and work among poor people. His family was shocked and outraged. Harold admitted to naivete in the beginning. He thought he could turn around the lives of homeless people pretty quickly, but he found it was hard work.
He said, “Homeless people are like diamonds. You have to dig deep into the earth to find diamonds. They’ve been under pressure for a long time, but once you polish and clean them you are amazed by their beauty.” He used to tell seminar groups that in our society you’re supposed to do your own homework and not share the answers with the person sitting at the next desk. It’s a competition, you see. If you get the best grades, you can go to the best schools and marry the smartest and prettiest boy or girl and land the highest-paying job and get a nice house in the suburbs and fade into oblivion.
This trajectory of life, he insisted, was utterly antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. Without exception, the seminar groups were deeply offended. ‘No,’ people would say, ‘you don’t understand. When I get money and skills and expertise, then I can really change things for the better.’ Many participants broke into tears because they felt so strongly about their plans and could not bear to question them.
Nearly every time Harold spoke, at the most intense moment of the seminar someone would say something along these lines, “You know, this has been an amazing week for me. I’ve met Members of Congress, I’ve heard from experts, I’ve work in soup kitchens, but this discussion will stay with me forever because now I’m being forced to question what I want to do with my life. What I really want to do is help people and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Some might say living a just life will always be the choice of a minority, that it is a small group who are the ones who change things for the better. Why can’t we have a society where living a just life is at least easier to achieve?
What are the marks of a just life? It’s not just about being nice, although that’s important. We must distinguish a just life from a nice life. A just life requires a higher degree of consciousness and a more serious sense of purpose. A just life requires thinking about and acting on behalf of others and not just oneself. Plenty of nice people support bad things and policies.
Let me close with these words from Archbishop Desmond Tutu:
We are made for goodness. We are made for love. We are made for friendliness. We are made for togetherness. We are made for all of the beautiful things that you and I know. We are made to tell the world that there are no outsiders. All are welcome: black, red, yellow, rich, poor, educated, not educated, male, female, gay, straight, all, all, all. We are all meant to belong to this human family, God’s family.
Be of good courage, live a good and just life, and shake the gates of hell.
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