A Valedictory Address

Yesterday I had the honour of giving the Valedictorian's address at my graduation ceremony for Briercrest Seminary. Still thinking back over the day, I thought I'd post my talk here. You can click below for a recording of me giving the address.

Seminary Valedictory Address, 2009

President Uglem, Chairman Werner, faculty, staff, honoured guests, family, friends, and fellow students: Today hours of reading and writing and talking and thinking about the things of God comes to its culmination in this—this day of celebrating God’s good work in our lives.

And I’m thinking about spiritual gifts.

I actually opened mine last week: It was a nice wooden cross that my family gave me for graduation, inscribed with the words: “I am the resurrection and the life."

A nice gift, very spiritual.

But I’m thinking about spiritual gifts in the biblical sense, too. Because today’s about celebration, and like every celebration, there’s going to be a lot of giving. People giving degrees. People giving recognition for achievement. People giving words of congratulation and challenge.

So maybe it’s fitting for us to pause in the midst of all this giving to reflect a moment on God’s gifts. Every good and perfect gift, after all, comes from him.

In the book of Ephesians, Saint Paul reminds us that in Christ, God has given his church all the spiritual gifts they need so that the body of Christ might be built up. “It was he,” says Paul, “Who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers.”

This verse is probably familiar to many of us.

And if you’re at all like me, you grew up with the impression that the gifts Paul’s talking about here—the spiritual gifts—are the abilities required to do the different tasks he’s listed. And if you’re like me, you’ve probably wondered at some point: “Is my spiritual gift evangelism? Or teaching? Or preaching? Or what?”

But one day I was reading Ephesians 4:11 and it hit me like a new-washed window pane on the noggin of a spring sparrow: Paul’s not talking about the skills here. He’s talking about the people. Paul says: “God gave his church apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors.”

He gave people.

People who would go on his missions, speak his messages, join in his ministry in the world.

Not the skills or the talents or the abilities, but the people are the gifts.

Graduating class of 2009, you- we- all of us- we are spiritual gifts. And today God is giving us again to his church.

In his book, Life of the Beloved, Henri Noewen says that one of the best pictures you can ever get of the Christian life is at the Lord’s Table, at the Eucharist, the communion meal. Because just like the communion bread is the body of Christ, taken and blessed by the celebrant and then broken so it can be given to nourish all who partake, so too the Christian: in the life of faith we are the body of Christ, taken by God, and deeply blessed, then broken so we can be given to others.

Taken, blessed, broken, given.

As we reflect today on what it means to be a spiritual gift, I’d like to invite you to ponder that image with me a moment.

Because men and women of faith, we are part of the body of Christ. And only a few years ago, we were taken. Taken from thriving careers, maybe, or burdened ministries, or safe homes and families, we were taken, and brought to this prairie landscape to be shaped for Christian leadership. And here we really were blessed and broken. Blessed with loving friends and rich community, supportive mentors and faithful instructors who spoke the challenge of God’s word into our lives.

But we were broken, too. And not just those of you who slugged your way through Greek Exegesis II; we were all broken. In those times of loneliness or doubt—when that one right book, or right lecture, or right research assignment at the right time forced us to ask that one question of God we most feared to ask—when God gently embraced us, saying, “I don’t want pat answers or rote responses or easy-believism”-- we were broken.

But today we acknowledge that all this happened so that we might be given.

Remember called-out Abraham? Remember wrestling Jacob? Remember Gethsemane? And Golgatha?

The taking and blessing and breaking is always only so that God might give. And today God is gifting his church again.

He’s giving her people with hearts burning to see Jesus make hurting youth whole. He’s giving her people with ears open to help others find healing through biblical counseling. He’s giving her people with eyes open wide to see reconciliation take root where there is discord and false peace in her midst. He’s giving her people with minds keen for painstaking academic research, to challenge her to think and love more deeply.

He’s giving her men and women shaped and humbled for lives of service.

Fellow grads, family, friends, instructors, brothers and sisters in Christ: as we celebrate today, amid all the giving, may we hear God remind us that we, too, are being given. May he show us what it means to be spiritual gifts.

Amen.