Saturday, June 29, 2013

Invocation - Bentley Grad



Invocation

Friends:

Let us gather our hearts into one mind and reflect on these words.

Title or Testimony...which do you prefer? You will live your adult life working for the man; you will go to work, day after day...and then one day that realization will hit you...your dreams haven't come true. You grow cynical and begin thinking, life's a hassle and then you die. You will then begin to reflect on what you have done with your life.

Ten years from now you'll be at your high school reunion, catching up with old friends. Many of you will have achieved your BA, your MA, your MBA, your PhD, your MDiv, your BSc, your LLB...but what has it really gotten you? You will come to realize that reality has been creepin' up on ya without you even realizing it, and now you ask, What have I done with my life?

See, you know what you've done. You know all of the titles you have amassed. But you are still unsatisfied. You are unsatisfied because you know that at some point in your future it's coming – one day you will die, they will cry, throw you into the ground, push your face into the dirt, dust off their hands, then go back to the church to eat potato salad. And what do you have to show for it? A BA, an MA, an MBA, a PhD, an MDiv, a BSc, an LLB?

But what if you could dedicate your life to the public good? What if now was the opportune time to start dreaming up the way forward for all of humankind? What if you, a mere graduate of Bentley High School, were the answer to this province's prayers, to this nation's prayers, to this planet's prayers? You see, the people who make the biggest impact on the world are those who dance with the visions that have been placed on their hearts.

Look at Moses; he was a man who beat enormous odds; he shouldn't have lived beyond infancy. But he was thrown into a basket, dropped into the river, and drawn out by Pharaoh's daughter. She named him Moses, as the Bible says, because she, “drew him out of the water!” Moses was drawn out of the water, and his encounter with God convinced him to draw the enslaved Israelites out of Egypt for a forty year sojourn back to the Promised Land. Moses had been visited by YHWH – the God of Israel – to liberate a broken-hearted people. But then there was Pharaoh, who sought to stifle the progress of the Israelites. He enslaved them and he oppressed them and he burdened them and he worked them until their sweat turned to blood. But what we know about the long story of life in Egypt and the Wilderness is that the oppressed and enslaved Israelites got to tell the story. I mean, mean old Pharaoh was king – he had the title – but Moses delivered his struggling and hurting people out of Egypt and had one of the greatest stories of breaking the bonds of social degradation in history. Moses had the testimony.

Dear graduates of Bentley High School 2013, today is an opportunity to begin dreaming up your contributions to the world. You don't necessarily have to decide what you will do with the rest of your life right now, but at least you can begin discerning how you can serve your community, your province, your country, and even God's world through public service. You might change careers 3 or 4 times during your life, but you can always volunteeryour time to a variety of organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters, the United Way, local churches, Optimist Clubs.

I became a Christian by osmosis. I hung out with people of deep faith, who also gave back to their communities in profound ways, and eventually I started to look like a man of faith. Just last week my foster mother, Erma Vinson, who fostered over 200 children in Windsor-Detroit over 50 years, died at the age of 89. When I was adopted into a household of 13 children I was renamed after her husband Rev. Adam Vinson. Erma saved the lives of so many desperate children, including me, that the local AME Church (AME stands for African Methodist Episcopal) was later named after her and her first husband, who died rather young (Rev. Bernie Price). The church was called the Price AME Church. They did this stuff because they felt it was necessary to bring about the beautiful world Jesus envisioned when he gave sight to the blind, healed the lame, and restored justice to the temple. Erma had the testimony.

Testimonies are the accounts people give about the lives they have witnessed. Good testimony ultimately leads to freedom.

The great 19th century African American freedom-fighter Harriet Tubman, who brought hundreds of Black folks to freedom via the Underground Railroad, said the first time she crossed the Mason-Dixon Line: “I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything. The sun came up like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven.” Tubman had the testimony.

One day when you are standing in that Great Courthouse in the Sky, what will they say about how you lived your life? Or, for those of the more agnostic and atheistic persuasions, what will they say about how you lived your life as they stand quietly beside your grave? What stories will they be telling when they get back to the church to eat that potato salad?

Today is the day you begin to carve out your legacy. Dream big, stay honest, and keep the faith. Let's pray.

Prayer to the Holy Spirit

O Spirit:

The dance floor is set, the DJ is playing the funky music, and we are now ready to make our way onto God's Great Dance Floor!

It is the life of freedom, the life of opportunity, the life of making the world a better place for everyone that we meet. It is the life of positivity, the life of possibility, the life in which our wildest dreams are realized. Give us the courage to make our way onto the floor and to show the world the moves we are making.

Spirit, let us dance with you throughout our lives, and let that dance begin here and now – tonight! Let tonight not simply be about the ending of a chapter of life, but also the pushing into the future, the unveiling of a grand adventure, the wrestling with what it means to be human.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come!

Move us into a majestic future of great accomplishment, serious questioning, passionate striving, critical self-reflection, and vision to see precious opportunities.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come!

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