This week I was reflecting on how many  Baccalaureate services at OCU I have participated in, and I realized that this is the 33rd Baccalaureate service I have attended here in this beautiful chapel, 29 times as a faculty member and four times as a student. In 1988, I experienced baccalaureate as a graduating student from the Wimberly School of Religion, and I read the Gospel lesson during that service 37 years ago. Today is the second time I have had the privilege of being the speaker at Baccalaureate. The first time I was the Baccalaureate speaker was 22 years ago in May of 2003. The title of my sermon on that day was “A Call to Serve,” which is closely related to my reflections this morning as well. 

I am aware that 2003 is the year that many of you are graduating seniors today were born. I am acutely aware of this fact because the younger of our two daughters was born that year less than two months after I gave my first Baccalaureate sermon here at OCU, and our daughter Sophia is here today with her graduating class of 2025, so I feel especially blessed and privileged to participate with you all today and to bring this morning’s baccalaureate message. My wife Kristin and I are OCU alumni, as is our older daughter Rae who graduated last year and is completely her first year of medical school, so I think that after today we may be eligible to create our own OCU alumni chapter. 

The message I bring today is a simple one. It is much like the message I brought in my baccalaureate sermon 22 years ago when many of you graduating seniors were literally just making your way into the world, and it is based on the message from the prophet Isaiah written over 2500 years ago and on the message of Jesus from the Sermon on the Plain nearly 2000 years ago, and the message is this: We are called to serve, and through this service we are called to repair the brokenness and injustice in our world and to restore just relationships with each other and with the community of all creation. 

One of the first presidents of OCU, Eugene M. Antrim, recognized this call to serve in 1923 when he proclaimed that “Oklahoma City University has this peculiar message to all students: ‘The Meaning of Life is Service.” And throughout the history of this university, service has been a core part of our mission together. When our current OCU president Kenneth Evans came to OCU four years ago, he immediately began asking how our university could be even more involved in service to our community, especially in relation to its most vulnerable members, because like President Antrim over one hundred years ago, President Evans knows that the meaning of life is service. 

Our graduating students have experienced this emphasis on serving others here at OCU. You have been a part of service learning classes where you have taken what you have learned in the classroom, and you have applied it through direct service in a community based setting, and this has enhanced your learning and connected you with the community. Many of you have participated in campus service projects on Martin Luther King Day and in other service days and service events sponsored by student life, religious life, greek life, and OCU Serves. You already know what OCU President Eugene Antrim reminded us about over 100 years ago and what President Evans, faculty, staff, trustees, and your fellow students have emphasized and modeled during your time here  – you know and you have experienced that the meaning of life is service. 

In our scripture readings this morning, we are called by the Isaiah and by Jesus to do more than only serving others. We are also called to do justice, and both the prophet Isaiah and Jesus go into detail about what doing justice entails. Justice is about repairing the brokenness in our world, and it is about restoring our communities as places for all persons to live in, especially the most vulnerable among us. We are called to feed the hungry, liberate the oppressed, clothe the naked, house persons who have no shelter, and satisfy the needs of the afflicted. Isaiah and Jesus are calling us to repair and restore the community of all creation. We are to bring justice into the world, and all the while we are called to keep love at the center, loving our neighbors as ourselves, even to the point of loving our enemies. Isaiah and Jesus are calling for a revolution of values in which not only the wealthy, powerful and popular are celebrated, but there is good news for the poor and liberation for the oppressed, in which all persons, especially the most vulnerable, are included and cared for in the community of all creation. 

You who are graduating today already have been living into this call to do justice in the world. Many of you have made meals for the hungry and put care packages and blessing bags together for the most vulnerable members of our community. You have put art kits and school supply kits together for area school children. Many of you have been involved in projects to help those who are in need of clothing and shelter. And you have also been learning about the systems and challenges that perpetuate injustice within our communities. You have been doing the work of justice that we are called to do in our world, and I encourage us all to be even more intentional about repairing and restoring the world around us through love and justice in the community of all creation of which we all are a part. 

And now as you are graduating, you are called to take the work of love, service, and justice into the world through your various vocations. Whether it be through the arts, the natural sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, communications, music, theatre, dance, healthcare, business, the practice of law, politics, teaching, or ministry; each of us is called to use our gifts and our talents to repair brokenness in the world and to restore love and justice within our communities. Together through the work of love, service, and justice we can build a more Beloved Community. 

As you graduate today, I invite us all to think about our place in the world in the way that Martin Luther King Jr. challenged us to do in his book titled Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? that he wrote in 1967, a year before he was murdered by an assassin. 

The last chapter of King’s book was titled “The World House” in which he called on all of us to work together to eradicate the evils of racism, poverty, and war. In that chapter, he wrote these words, “We have inherited a large house, a great ’world house’ in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu—a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.” – (Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.)

King recognized that although we may be from many different religions and cultural backgrounds, we share this one planet, this one world house, of which we are all a part. King also recognized that unlike other kinds of houses, if we destroy our world house, we cannot simply move to another house or build a new one. This one world house is the only one we have. When it comes to caring for the household of our planet – there are no “do overs” – we have to get it right the first time because it is the only time we have. We share the awesome responsibility of making sure the world house we have inherited will be enjoyed by generations of life to come, humans and nonhumans alike, and persons from all faiths and persons from no faith.

How will you take care of this one world house of which we are all a part? How will you take care of our only home? How will you repair and restore our one world house? 

It is a daunting task. Our global social, political, economic, and ecological challenges are great and complex, and there are no guarantees that we will be able to address “the fierce urgency of now,” as Martin Luther King calls it, in time to avoid extremely negative consequences; but still we are called to love, serve, and do justice. We are called keep repairing and restoring this our one world house, our only home. 

Your work to repair and restore our world house will not be easy, and it will never feel complete, and I know that this can feel overwhelming, and during the times I have felt overwhelmed by this work, I have found comfort in the words that can be traced back to a section of the Mishnah (a foundational text in Jewish oral law) and I leave you with these words today: 

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.  Do justly now.  Love mercy now.  Walk humbly now.  You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.  

Amen.

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