William H. Willimon - "1492 to 1992" Baccalaureate Service (May 15, 1992)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(enchanting pipe organ music) | 0:02 | |
(man mumbles) | 10:10 | |
(church choir singing gospel hymn) | 10:20 | |
(enchanting pipe organ music) | 11:22 | |
(church choir singing gospel hymn) | 12:00 | |
- | You may be seated. | 15:23 |
On this joyous occasion, | 15:37 | |
it is easy to get so caught up in the world around us | 15:39 | |
that we cannot hear the voice of God | 15:43 | |
or feel the presence of all that is holy. | 15:46 | |
Let us look closely now | 15:49 | |
that we might see ourselves in the presence of God. | 15:51 | |
Let us confess our sinfulness together. | 15:55 | |
Most merciful God, | 16:00 | |
we confess that we have sinned against you | 16:02 | |
in thought, word and deed | 16:05 | |
by what we have done | 16:08 | |
and by what we have left undone. | 16:10 | |
We have not loved you with our whole heart, | 16:13 | |
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves, | 16:16 | |
we are truly sorry and we humbly repent. | 16:20 | |
For the sake of your son, Jesus Christ, | 16:24 | |
have mercy on us and forgive us | 16:27 | |
that we may delight in your will | 16:31 | |
and walk in your ways to the glory of your name, amen. | 16:33 | |
For as the heavens are high above the earth, | 16:41 | |
so great is God's steadfast love toward those who fear him. | 16:44 | |
As far as the east is from the west, | 16:49 | |
so far does God remove our transgressions from us, amen. | 16:53 | |
(enchanting pipe organ music) | 17:23 | |
(church choir singing gospel hymn) | 18:16 | |
- | Let us pray. | 23:29 |
Almighty God, in you are hidden all the treasures | 23:33 | |
of wisdom and knowledge. | 23:37 | |
Open our eyes that we may see the wonders of your word | 23:40 | |
and give us grace that we may clearly understand | 23:45 | |
and freely choose the way of your wisdom | 23:50 | |
through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen. | 23:54 | |
Our Psalter is found on page 758, | 23:59 | |
Psalm 27 verses one through four. | 24:04 | |
Please stand and read responsively. | 24:07 | |
The Lord is my light and my salvation, | 24:25 | |
whom shall I fear. | 24:28 | |
(congregation mumbles) | 24:31 | |
When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh, | 24:36 | |
my adversaries and foes shall stumble and fall. | 24:40 | |
(congregation mumbles) | 24:45 | |
One thing I ask of the Lord that will I seek after. | 24:55 | |
(congregation mumbles) | 25:01 | |
(enchanting pipe organ music) | 25:12 | |
(church choir singing gospel hymn) | 25:22 | |
- | Please be seated. | 26:14 |
The lesson for today is from the Book of Numbers, | 26:26 | |
selected verses from the 13th and 14th chapters | 26:30 | |
using the new revised standard version. | 26:34 | |
And the Lord said to Moses, | 26:39 | |
"Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, | 26:41 | |
"which I am giving to the Israelites. | 26:44 | |
"From each of their ancestral tribes, | 26:46 | |
"you shall send a man everyone a leader among them." | 26:49 | |
Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan | 26:54 | |
and said to them, "Go up there into Negev | 26:58 | |
"and go unto the hill country | 27:02 | |
"and see what the land is like, | 27:05 | |
"and whether the people who live in it are strong or weak, | 27:07 | |
"whether they are few or many, | 27:11 | |
"whether the land they live in is good or bad, | 27:14 | |
"and whether the towns they live in | 27:18 | |
"are unwalled or fortified, | 27:20 | |
"and whether the land is rich or poor, | 27:23 | |
"and whether there are trees in it or not. | 27:26 | |
"Be bold and bring some of the fruit of the land." | 27:29 | |
Now it was the season of the first ripe grapes. | 27:33 | |
So they went up and spied out the land | 27:37 | |
from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, Lebo-hamath. | 27:40 | |
At the end of 40 days, | 27:46 | |
they returned from spying out the land. | 27:47 | |
They came to Moses and Aaron | 27:51 | |
and to all the congregation of the Israelites | 27:53 | |
in the wilderness of Paran at Kadesh. | 27:56 | |
They brought back word to them | 28:00 | |
and to all the congregation | 28:02 | |
and showed them the fruit of the land and they told him, | 28:04 | |
"We came to the land to which you sent us. | 28:08 | |
"It flows with milk and honey, | 28:11 | |
"and this is its fruit. | 28:13 | |
"Yet the people who live in the land are strong | 28:16 | |
"and the towns are fortified and very large, | 28:18 | |
"and besides we saw the descendents of Anak." | 28:22 | |
But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, | 28:26 | |
"Let us go up at once and occupy it, | 28:30 | |
"for we are able to overcome it." | 28:33 | |
Then the man who had gone up with him said, | 28:35 | |
"We are not able to go up against the people, | 28:38 | |
"for they are stronger than we are." | 28:40 | |
So they brought to the Israelites an unfavorable report | 28:42 | |
of the land they had spied out saying, | 28:47 | |
"The land that we have gone through as spies | 28:50 | |
"is a land that devours the inhabitants | 28:53 | |
"and all the people that we saw in it are of great size. | 28:55 | |
"There we saw Nephilim | 29:00 | |
"and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, | 29:03 | |
"and so we seemed to them." | 29:06 | |
Then all the congregation raised a loud cry | 29:09 | |
and the people wept that night, | 29:12 | |
and all the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron, | 29:15 | |
and the whole congregation said to them, | 29:20 | |
"Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! | 29:23 | |
"Or would that we had died in the wilderness! | 29:26 | |
"Why is the Lord bringing us into this land | 29:29 | |
"to fall by the sword? | 29:31 | |
"And our wives and our little ones will become booty! | 29:34 | |
"Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?" | 29:38 | |
So they said to one another, | 29:42 | |
"Let us choose a captain and go back to Egypt." | 29:44 | |
And Joshua's son of Nun | 29:48 | |
and Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, | 29:50 | |
who were among those who had spied out the land, | 29:54 | |
tore their clothes and said | 29:57 | |
to all the congregation of the Israelites, | 29:58 | |
"The land that we went through as spies | 30:01 | |
"is an exceedingly good land. | 30:04 | |
"If the Lord is pleased with us, | 30:07 | |
"he will bring us into this land and give it to us, | 30:09 | |
"a land that flows with milk and honey. | 30:12 | |
"Only do not rebel against the Lord | 30:15 | |
"and do not fear the people of the land, | 30:19 | |
"for they are no more than bread for us. | 30:21 | |
"Their protection is removed from them | 30:24 | |
"and the Lord is with us, | 30:27 | |
"do not fear them." | 30:29 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 30:31 | |
Thanks be to God. | 30:34 | |
(enchanting pipe organ music) | 30:55 | |
(church choir singing gospel hymn) | 31:02 | |
- | Class of 1992, | 36:43 |
there you are and here am I, | 36:46 | |
there you are preparing to cross | 36:49 | |
a great threshold in your life, your graduation. | 36:54 | |
And at this threshold, we gather again in the chapel. | 37:00 | |
Do you remember when we first met? It was | 37:04 | |
the first day of your orientation four years ago, | 37:09 | |
in the afternoon we gathered here in the chapel. | 37:14 | |
I prayed to God to ask God to give you what you needed | 37:18 | |
in this strange new world named Duke. | 37:22 | |
And then a professor, as I remember spoke to you, | 37:26 | |
and I sat up here and looked at you, | 37:31 | |
and that afternoon you looked so | 37:34 | |
young and eager and virginal, | 37:38 | |
(congregation laughs) | 37:42 | |
now you look older. | 37:42 | |
Are you ready to go? | 37:45 | |
I ask that because there is a melody, | 37:49 | |
which sometimes occurs in seniors | 37:52 | |
this time of the year called, | 37:54 | |
there's still one more course I want to take syndrome. | 37:56 | |
Strange, people who their sophomore year could not find | 38:01 | |
anything in the curriculum worth having | 38:06 | |
now say that their education can be complete | 38:08 | |
only by taking one more course. | 38:11 | |
(students laugh) | 38:14 | |
Other symptoms: strong desire to spend | 38:16 | |
one more night in Krzyzewskiville. | 38:19 | |
(students laugh) | 38:22 | |
Particularly bizarre is the wish for | 38:22 | |
another meal of the Duke food service. | 38:24 | |
(congregation laughs) | 38:26 | |
Can I stay another year? | 38:29 | |
No, dear, we say we've already | 38:30 | |
given your room to three others. | 38:32 | |
You've got to go, goodbye, | 38:34 | |
adios, this is it. | 38:37 | |
You and I have a way I'm saying of meeting | 38:42 | |
in these liminal moments, these moments, | 38:44 | |
these thresholds between the old and the new, | 38:47 | |
between hello and goodbye. | 38:49 | |
People on the outside | 38:55 | |
frequently ask me, "Well, what are today's students like?" | 38:59 | |
And I know it's hard to generalize, | 39:04 | |
but I say, well, the seniors are scared. | 39:05 | |
And I know that characterization does not fit you all, | 39:11 | |
but many of you it seems to me this year are scared. | 39:16 | |
It's an unattractive characteristic in the young. | 39:20 | |
I, like your parents, was a student in the 60s, | 39:24 | |
and we thought there was a lot wrong with our world, | 39:28 | |
but nothing was wrong that | 39:31 | |
we couldn't fix once we were in charge. | 39:35 | |
Now we are in charge. | 39:40 | |
And our baccalaureates 60s self-confidence | 39:43 | |
seems almost laughable now. | 39:45 | |
54% of you in a recent survey said | 39:52 | |
that you believe your future | 39:55 | |
will not be as good as your parents' present. | 39:59 | |
And your pessimism may not be unjustified. | 40:05 | |
Your senior year on-campus recruitment | 40:08 | |
by corporations was down 50%. | 40:12 | |
We had to beg IBM to come talk to you. | 40:15 | |
One of your classmates met one of last year's graduates. | 40:19 | |
One of the ones that heard my, | 40:26 | |
You are The Hope of Tomorrow baccalaureate in 1991, | 40:27 | |
here's the way she described it in The Chronicle. | 40:32 | |
"The day we had dinner | 40:35 | |
"he spent all afternoon playing Nintendo. | 40:36 | |
"He was bored because his sisters started back to school | 40:39 | |
"and didn't have anybody to bully around. | 40:42 | |
"His mother had been dropping hints | 40:44 | |
"more like bombs about how nice it would be | 40:46 | |
"if he would get a job. | 40:50 | |
"He was scheduled to start | 40:52 | |
"the next day at a temporary agency, | 40:54 | |
"one of those places that we thought | 40:56 | |
"a Duke education would prevent us from ever entering. | 40:57 | |
"And he'd memorized the TV guide. | 41:03 | |
"I hear he's managing people | 41:06 | |
"who sell perfume on street corners. | 41:08 | |
"I am scared." | 41:11 | |
Graduation 1992, it strikes me | 41:16 | |
that it's a long way from say | 41:18 | |
Columbus 1492. | 41:22 | |
I don't know about you, | 41:26 | |
but as a child we learned that story | 41:27 | |
as children in the poem of 1492. | 41:29 | |
Behind him lay the gray Azores, | 41:33 | |
Behind him lay the Gates of Hercules; | 41:36 | |
Before him only shoreless seas. | 41:38 | |
Lo! even the stars are gone. | 41:42 | |
Why, Columbus, why 'Sail on! sail on! | 41:45 | |
And it's a long way, a kind of great psychological gap | 41:52 | |
between that 1492 and our 1992. | 41:55 | |
A great gap. | 42:01 | |
Not only because thanks to your Duke PC education, | 42:03 | |
you know the Columbus story to be a deeply problematic, | 42:06 | |
culturally falsified myth, | 42:10 | |
(congregation laughs) | 42:12 | |
(congregation applauds) | 42:14 | |
but also because the prospect of your voyage | 42:17 | |
into the new after-1992-world has got us, well, | 42:22 | |
scared. | 42:29 | |
Which brings me to another story | 42:32 | |
of expiration of new worlds, a Bible story. | 42:34 | |
In the story from Numbers 13 and 14, | 42:41 | |
we are at the threshold of the promised land. | 42:44 | |
The children of Israel been wandering for 40 years, | 42:46 | |
and now these former slaves are about to see land. | 42:49 | |
They stand on the threshold of this new land, | 42:55 | |
these slaves who had nothing, | 42:59 | |
and Moses has led them | 43:01 | |
through the wilderness to the promised land, | 43:03 | |
but there is just one small problem. | 43:04 | |
The land is already occupied. | 43:08 | |
The place is crawling with Canaanites. | 43:11 | |
A friend of mine was teaching out in Texas, | 43:17 | |
and he was lecturing on this very passage | 43:20 | |
from the Book of Numbers. | 43:22 | |
He was lecturing to his students about this | 43:24 | |
taking of the promised land, | 43:26 | |
and there was a hand, | 43:28 | |
yes, what is it, Mr. Running Bear, what is it? | 43:29 | |
He said, the questioner said: | 43:31 | |
"who promised this land to the Hebrews?" | 43:35 | |
"Well, God did." | 43:39 | |
"Well, did God tell those Canaanites | 43:43 | |
"that he had promised their land to somebody else?" | 43:45 | |
"Could we go on with the class, Mr. Running Bear?" | 43:48 | |
Moses sends some scouts to reconnoiter the land, | 43:52 | |
find out what things are like over there, | 43:56 | |
how big a force it will be required to take it. | 43:58 | |
And after a few days they come back | 44:02 | |
and there are two reports given. | 44:04 | |
There is a majority report | 44:06 | |
and then there is a minority report by Caleb. | 44:08 | |
And in hearing these two reports | 44:12 | |
we're impressed by the gap in their perception | 44:14 | |
of what this new land looks like. | 44:16 | |
The cities are fortified, impregnable, | 44:20 | |
the land devours its inhabitants. | 44:24 | |
It devours its inhabitants, what does that mean? | 44:27 | |
Is there famine, is there disease, are they cannibals? | 44:29 | |
The people over there looked like giants, | 44:35 | |
in the Hebrew, sons of the long neck. | 44:39 | |
Compared to them we are to ourselves as grasshoppers. | 44:43 | |
People over there, they just looked like giants. | 44:50 | |
They have a great educational system, | 44:53 | |
they don't do drugs, they work hard at the factory, | 44:55 | |
they eat diets low in saturated fat. | 44:57 | |
(congregation laughs) | 45:00 | |
Why compared to them we just looked | 45:01 | |
to ourselves like grasshoppers. | 45:03 | |
And the story says that the people went crazy | 45:06 | |
when they heard this majority report. | 45:09 | |
"What have you done?" | 45:13 | |
They screamed to Moses. | 45:14 | |
"Bring us all the way up here from Egyptian slavery | 45:16 | |
"only to perish at the hands of these giants. | 45:19 | |
"At least in Egypt we knew our place | 45:22 | |
"and we had three square meals a day." | 45:24 | |
"Yeah, but you were slaves," said Moses. | 45:28 | |
"Well, we had it better in the safety of slavery. | 45:31 | |
"We might have lived like grasshoppers, | 45:36 | |
"but at least we were well-fed grasshoppers." | 45:38 | |
Then comes the minority report, Caleb says, | 45:43 | |
"I can't believe we saw the same place. | 45:49 | |
"The land is rich, the Lord is with us, ours for the taking. | 45:51 | |
"Let us go at once and take what the Lord has given us." | 45:56 | |
Here in this ancient story, | 46:03 | |
the threshold of the promised land, | 46:06 | |
the graduation from slavery to freedom | 46:09 | |
is rendered as a kind of a epistemological dilemma. | 46:13 | |
Who knows what the future looks like | 46:18 | |
and who shall name that future? | 46:21 | |
The fearful majority or the faithful minority? | 46:24 | |
We know, we know this story well. | 46:31 | |
It's a story about how | 46:36 | |
every journey's end as an invitation to wander into some | 46:39 | |
and perhaps more perilous new path. | 46:44 | |
Every victory we get in life always has a way of | 46:48 | |
landing us right into the unknown. | 46:52 | |
At the threshold between a land we knew | 46:56 | |
and a land we do not know | 47:01 | |
between the grinding the humanizing world of the slave | 47:04 | |
and this risky unknown promised world of the free, | 47:08 | |
a great deal depends on how we describe | 47:14 | |
what awaits us. | 47:18 | |
The majority saw Canaan as a land | 47:21 | |
of these impregnable fortresses, | 47:24 | |
unscalable heights, these giants. | 47:26 | |
But Caleb spoke of Canaan as God's land. | 47:30 | |
Even the Canaanites as God's people, | 47:37 | |
a land promised to do with his God pleased. | 47:40 | |
Could they have been describing the same place? | 47:45 | |
There's a vast epistemological, theological gap | 47:48 | |
which lies between the, they're giants, we're grasshoppers | 47:52 | |
and the God is with us, | 47:56 | |
let us put our fears aside and go forth. | 48:00 | |
Now I'll admit it even as I tell this tale | 48:05 | |
that Numbers 13, 14 is a very risky story to tell | 48:07 | |
among people like us. | 48:11 | |
So risky that I thought for awhile | 48:13 | |
about not telling it to you | 48:15 | |
for the risk of the damage it might do if poorly told. | 48:16 | |
Because you know that this is the Bible story | 48:21 | |
that's been told for centuries | 48:24 | |
by the possessors of the land | 48:26 | |
to justify how they got land. | 48:29 | |
And now they must retain it with murderess possessiveness. | 48:31 | |
In calling what was really a very ancient world | 48:36 | |
the new world, | 48:41 | |
we became giants in our own eyes | 48:44 | |
and treated millions of God's people like grasshoppers. | 48:48 | |
There were no Canaanites' voices in the 1492 Columbus story | 48:54 | |
because most of the history we know | 49:01 | |
silences the cries of the people who are vanquished. | 49:04 | |
This Bible story, I believe, is the one that my ancestors | 49:10 | |
in South Carolina love to tell | 49:15 | |
as explanation and justification | 49:17 | |
for why people of our color had land | 49:20 | |
and people of their color had none. | 49:23 | |
It is the 1492 story retold in 1992, | 49:28 | |
Belfast and Soweto and Jerusalem and Durham | 49:33 | |
up this day | 49:38 | |
by the possessors in an attempt to give | 49:40 | |
ideological justification to our dispossession of others. | 49:42 | |
But I'm telling it to you this afternoon | 49:48 | |
because I hope that you can see | 49:50 | |
how such a telling of this story | 49:53 | |
is an ideological perversion of the story | 49:55 | |
rather than the story. | 49:58 | |
I think that this story from Numbers only makes sense | 50:03 | |
if we remember that it was first told by landless people. | 50:06 | |
The people who told this empowering tale were slaves | 50:12 | |
and before that nomads. | 50:17 | |
They were people who had never known | 50:18 | |
what it was like to have land. | 50:19 | |
This is the tale meant to be told | 50:23 | |
in the ghetto, in the barrio, at the bottom. | 50:25 | |
It's meant to be told in the refugee camp, | 50:29 | |
a tale meant to electrify those who have nothing, | 50:33 | |
but who may be imaginative enough, | 50:38 | |
if they hear the story, to believe the promise | 50:41 | |
that the land is not ours, it's God's, | 50:44 | |
and this is God's world and God intends them to have it. | 50:47 | |
The question: can this story of the landless | 50:55 | |
have any meaning for us, the landed? | 51:00 | |
Because you and I don't live in a ghetto or a barrio, | 51:03 | |
we live at Duke. | 51:06 | |
And we are here in great part | 51:08 | |
because we have been the possessors | 51:10 | |
of all that this society has got to offer, | 51:12 | |
the best homes, the best schools, the best advantages, | 51:16 | |
and we would love to get together at graduation | 51:22 | |
and think that we are here just because we worked hard | 51:24 | |
and have taken advantage of our advantages. | 51:28 | |
God is with us, let us go forth and take it. | 51:31 | |
But is there no part of us able to admit somewhere down deep | 51:36 | |
that everything that we've got, | 51:42 | |
which we shall celebrate this weekend came as a gift? | 51:45 | |
We're gonna pray that in just a moment, | 51:51 | |
confessing our indebtedness | 51:53 | |
to parents and benefactors and teachers and, | 51:56 | |
but do we believe it? | 51:59 | |
Do we believe that everything we've got | 52:02 | |
was God's before it was ours? | 52:04 | |
And is there no part of us able to be 1992 surprised? | 52:07 | |
Having been assured at least since 1492 | 52:14 | |
that we are landed and entitled | 52:18 | |
and titled and secure and gifted. | 52:21 | |
That maybe all of that could kind of be a lie, | 52:25 | |
a hype of a society much more internally troubled | 52:29 | |
than it dares to admit to its young. | 52:33 | |
Isn't it odd to find ourselves 500 years after Columbus | 52:38 | |
feeling so strange, so old in this allegedly new world? | 52:46 | |
Our little North American 1992 noses | 52:51 | |
pressed to the shop window | 52:54 | |
peering at other nation's material achievements, | 52:56 | |
coming to feel like the dispossessed | 53:00 | |
in the technological, industrial world that we created. | 53:03 | |
And this is important, because if we can | 53:09 | |
make that imaginative leap | 53:12 | |
and imagine ourselves not as lords | 53:15 | |
of everything that we survey, | 53:18 | |
but as frail, unsteady, scared immigrants | 53:20 | |
in a 1992 threshold of the future | 53:25 | |
that we may not control, | 53:28 | |
maybe then this old Bible story could speak to us. | 53:32 | |
Can we trust the beckoning of a living God | 53:38 | |
who doesn't stand in the old world, | 53:43 | |
but he's always in the new on the other side | 53:45 | |
in the unknown, in the threshold over in the New World? | 53:47 | |
Can we trust that God? | 53:50 | |
Let's admit there is part of us | 53:54 | |
that would just love to go back to Egypt, | 53:55 | |
to the narrow, but at least secure world | 53:58 | |
that we once had. | 54:01 | |
But I think the story says with Caleb, | 54:04 | |
don't go back because back there is slavery, | 54:07 | |
not life. | 54:12 | |
Maybe you do think that your future will be smaller | 54:14 | |
than the present of your parents. | 54:18 | |
I know from the poll that most of you | 54:22 | |
do not expect to make as much money as your parents. | 54:24 | |
And why should you? | 54:30 | |
You have grown up in perhaps the most selfish generation | 54:32 | |
ever to rule the United States, | 54:35 | |
having taken from your children | 54:38 | |
and your grandchildren to finance our false prosperity | 54:41 | |
and thereby run up the largest deficit ever. | 54:46 | |
No wonder you worry. | 54:51 | |
It's a sign of intelligence. | 54:54 | |
But I've come before you today to predict | 54:58 | |
that your future may not be just simply smaller, | 55:00 | |
but it may be different and maybe even better. | 55:04 | |
Because from my brief expeditions | 55:10 | |
spying out your generation, | 55:12 | |
there's a lot that I like that I see. | 55:16 | |
I just don't think it's any coincidence | 55:20 | |
that it was your class | 55:22 | |
that pioneered Duke's Student Volunteer program, | 55:24 | |
cleaning up the mess | 55:28 | |
that we and your parents made of Durham | 55:30 | |
and the public schools and the healthcare system, | 55:33 | |
one person at a time. | 55:37 | |
And I love that your class | 55:40 | |
gave a huge senior gift for the care of children. | 55:41 | |
And I love that your commencement speaker | 55:47 | |
is a woman that The Chronicle never heard of. | 55:49 | |
(congregation laughs) | 55:52 | |
(congregation applauds) | 55:55 | |
I guess not. | 55:58 | |
I guess not, not only is she from South Carolina, | 56:01 | |
but she has spent her whole life speaking up for people | 56:03 | |
that don't have a voice in this society, the children. | 56:07 | |
(congregation applauds) | 56:11 | |
And so what I'm saying is that in a weird way | 56:12 | |
you are going to the promised land, | 56:14 | |
though it looks a good deal different | 56:17 | |
and maybe even better than the one | 56:19 | |
that your parents thought God had promised to us. | 56:21 | |
So class of 1992, | 56:27 | |
lay aside your fears, | 56:30 | |
get out of here, go for it, | 56:33 | |
not because you're smart, talented and gifted, | 56:36 | |
though many of you are. | 56:38 | |
(congregation laughs) | 56:40 | |
No, because of our faith that God is with us, | 56:41 | |
let us go forth, | 56:46 | |
God is with us. | 56:48 | |
Man | Amen. | 56:53 |
(congregation applauds) | 56:55 | |
(enchanting pipe organ music) | 57:08 | |
(church choir singing gospel hymn) | 57:57 | |
- | Please join me in the responsive prayer. | 1:00:31 |
Almighty God, as you've granted us | 1:00:36 | |
a place in this University, | 1:00:39 | |
allow to us now this day | 1:00:41 | |
when we dedicate ourselves to the life | 1:00:44 | |
and work to which you have called us, | 1:00:46 | |
that we may remember with gratitude | 1:00:50 | |
the families and friends who have cared for us. | 1:00:53 | |
(congregation mumbles) | 1:00:57 | |
That in the life ahead, | 1:00:59 | |
we may keep faith with those who loved us | 1:01:01 | |
and trusted us and whose hopes follow us. | 1:01:04 | |
(congregation mumbles) | 1:01:08 | |
That we may enter with good courage and constant purpose | 1:01:12 | |
upon the task which await us. | 1:01:15 | |
(congregation mumbles) | 1:01:18 | |
From all vanity and pride as if our accomplishments | 1:01:20 | |
were of our sole creation. | 1:01:25 | |
(congregation mumbles) | 1:01:28 | |
From neglect of the opportunities, which are all about us, | 1:01:30 | |
and from distrust of our ability | 1:01:34 | |
to meet the duties of each dawning day, | 1:01:36 | |
(congregation mumbles) | 1:01:39 | |
that the example of wise and generous people | 1:01:41 | |
who have gone before us in our families | 1:01:45 | |
and here in this university | 1:01:47 | |
may save us from folly and self-indulgence. | 1:01:50 | |
(congregation mumbles) | 1:01:53 | |
More especially that you would show us | 1:01:57 | |
to us your way of love, | 1:02:01 | |
and all that we do or say | 1:02:03 | |
that we should come to love the Lord, | 1:02:05 | |
our God with our soul and mind and strength | 1:02:07 | |
and our neighbor as ourselves. | 1:02:11 | |
(congregation mumbles) | 1:02:13 | |
These things and whatever else you see needful | 1:02:16 | |
and right for us, we ask in your holy name. | 1:02:18 | |
(congregation mumbles) | 1:02:23 | |
And now class of 1992, | 1:02:31 | |
the Lord bless and keep you, | 1:02:34 | |
the Lord make his face to shine upon you | 1:02:37 | |
and give you peace. | 1:02:39 | |
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you | 1:02:41 | |
and be with you this day and forevermore. | 1:02:44 | |
(church choir singing gospel hymn) | 1:02:51 | |
(enchanting pipe organ music) | 1:03:30 | |
(church choir singing gospel hymn) | 1:04:11 | |
(enchanting pipe organ music) | 1:07:05 |
Item Info
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