Charge to the Graduates

The Rev. David E. Bumbaugh
Professor of Ministry

The world we knew is passing; all things grow strange;
all but the stout heart's courage;
all but the undiministed lustre of an ancient dream--
which we shall dream again as others have dreamed before us,
pilgrims forever of a world forever new.

And what we loved and lost
we lose to find how great a thing is loving and
the power of it to make a dream come true.

For us there is no haven of refuge;
for us there is the wilderness, wild and trackless,
where we shall build a road and sing a song.

But after us there is the Promised Land,
strong from our sorrows and shining from our joys,
our gift to those who follow us along the road we build singing our song.

These words by A. Powell Davies have echoed down the corridors of my mind for nearly half a century. I confess to you that they seem more appropriate and more compelling with every passing day.  I commend them to you today because, my colleagues and friends, you go out from this place to begin ministries in a world grown strange, a world where all that once seemed so permanent, so reliable, is now passing away.

You take up your ministries in a nation which has committed its vast resources to a war on a noun, a war on terrorism--a concept so vaguely defined that it is a war no one can win or even envision ending--an endless struggle with a shapeless, faceless, formless fear. You take up your ministries in a society that has decided that in pursuing that war, it can only protect freedom by destroying it.

You take up your ministries in a world in which, day by dreary day, the rich grow steadily richer, the poor steadily poorer, a world in which the cries of suffering and pain and despair cannot penetrate the precincts of power and privilege.

You take up your ministries in an era in which globalization is replacing the nation state with a planet-wide economic empire of mindless consumption, cultural oppression, and ecological devastation, all based on the ethic of the main chance.

You take up your ministries in a time when the church is sorely tempted to forsake its ancient obligation to the larger world, to the despised, to the excluded, to the marginalized; at a time when the church seeks to ensure its own survival by devoting itself asiduously to scratching the itches of its members.

In such a time, I charge you to tend to your own integrity. In such a time, there is no other standard by which to judge between options or to make the hard choices life will demand you make.

As you go out from this place, I charge you to build a road in the wilderness of this time, even when the ultimate destination of that road is not clear.  I charge you to heap stones into cairnes and to establish mile markers that others who travel the path may know you have been here, may discern whence you have come and whither you are tending.

As you go out from this place, I charge you to keep ever in mind those who will come after you along the road you build, singing your song. In the end it is they to whom you are responsible, yeah even unto the seventh generation.

I charge you to remember the dream that lured you into ministry; to trust that dream no matter what befalls. For somewhere along that road, somewhere in the singing of that song, somewhere in the dreaming of that dream, lies the key to the promised land.

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