Proving Your Greatness
And to the chaplain, it is good to be here, with Dr. Gibson and
members of his staff as well as members of the faculty, the staff, the administration.
I am overjoyed to be here with the parents because over the last two years
I have graduated a daughter in each year which meant that I have given
myself a raise over the last several years and so I know that you are joyful
for this moment as your son or daughter leaves this institution. And of
course I am grateful for the opportunity to greet the graduating class
of they year 2001. I commend each and everyone of you.
Since this service has been determined to be a baccalaureate, let
s see if we might be able to glean from a particular passage of scripture
some understanding of what I think you will do as you go out into the world
from this place with all of the greatness that is personified by it and
the education you have attained. The credentialling that you carry by virtue
of the fact that you have its label, you have its degree and you will go
into a world now where change is constantly occurring.
I would like to speak from the topic proving your greatness and
use for this from the 17th chapter of Joshua the 14th and 15th verses. In
it there are people who stand before Joshua who have led his people into
the promised land and as they stand before him, they come with a complaint.
And they come before him with that complaint saying unto him why hath thou
given me but one line or one portion of inheritance seeing that I am a great
people, for as much as the lord has blessed me hither to. And Joshua answered
them If thou be a great people then get thee up to wood country, cut down
for thyself the land of the parasites and the giants if Mount Epham be too
narrow for thee. In this text one of the things that we realize is that
often times we make decisions about our lives. Those things that will guide
us and direct us built upon perceptions and assumptions of a particular
time frame.
Many of us who are standing here today can testify that what we
thought when we entered into our college years was different at the time
of our graduation. The way the world was in the time of our entry was different
in the time that we came out. All of us have learned how to live with paradigm
shifts and often times our inability to make the natural adjustments and
change perceptions to deal with the reality of the world as it is, as opposed
to the way it was causes us to lose a bit of our faith, a sense of direction
and purpose we lose our focus we are challenged to such a degree that we
dare to believe that perhaps these have been wasted years. That the time
that we have come into this arena, things have happened so rapidly that
we are not prepared to make the change. May I say to you today that change
is a part of life and we make decisions about how we deal with those changes.
We either deal with those changes in reactive ways or we deal with them
by being proactive. We think about what we want to be, what we want to do.
We think about greatness as merely having received the necessary tools,
the equipment, the degree, that says we have received a body of knowledge
and now have the capability to go to the world and to communicate it.
And yet in a changing world where the paradigm is shifted, to whom
are we communicating? No longer are we able to go into the environments
where we thought we'd be functioning. The professions that we thought showed
so much promise for us, now we see that those professions have changed.
We thought we'd be going to the internet e-commerce community only to see
now that because of paradigm shifts that world is turned upside down.
The opportunities that were available four years ago are no longer
available for us now. How do we handle it? Do we handle it by understanding
by faith, we do have the capability to overcome because not only did we
get a degree, that symbolizes mere knowledge in a particular field, it also
symbolizes that we have a body of knowledge and a capability and skill for
the necessary adjustments to be able to function in a world that is ever-changing.
Let me suggest to you this is not the first adjustment that you will have
to make. By the time you reach that place at the half century mark as I
have done, you will discover that there are many changes you will have made.
Even your parents whom you believe you need not hear from any longer with
their advice, if you would but listen, they will but testify that they have
had to make perceptual changes to deal with the reality of those paradigm
shifts that have taken place in their life. They did not expect many of
the changes that have occurred during your four years here and yet they
knew that if they were to prove their greatness, change and adjustment to
them is an ineffable requirement for all the rest.
Greatness then is not measured exclusively by he degree that you
have, it is really a piece of paper, it does suggest that you have a body
of knowledge to sell to the world, the one thing you must understand is
that you cannot be so locked in the box that you cannot deal with the reality
of change. And a part of that change means coming out, adjusting to a new
world, a new world that according to the most recently released census data
indicates to us that at last we will finally get behind us or at least hopefully
so, this notion of race and class and distinctions of people because if
the census data is correct and I dare to believe that it is, we will be
living in a world where there is no pronounced majority. All of us will
be the majority. There is no minority and I have never accepted that nomenclature
in the first place. All of us will have to learn how to live with each other
to determine ways by which we will express our unity to each other not based
upon our differences but dealing with the reality that there is so much
that we share in common.
No longer are we looking at each other merely from racialized terms
but dealing with each other dealing from a reality that we are one, we are
one America, we are one people, we are a people who have common pursuits
common goals and common directions and as we move into this future the greatness,
our greatness will ultimately be determined by willingness to learn how
to live with each other, to respect each other in the words of Dr. Martin
Luther King, "to view each other from the content of our character".
It is time for that change, it is time for us to stop exploiting freely
abroad a democracy that oftentimes is viewed in hypocritical terms by those
who are part of the very society that we declare is the greatest nation
in the world. Not only by our verbal declarations but by that by which defines
us as a great nation to which others look.
Our challenge becomes one of moving towards principle-centered paradigms,
principal-centered paradigms that don't change because of conditions but
understand that with principal-centered paradigms we stand on a ground of
faith and although things around us shift we do not shift, we stand out
because we have determined that we can be great. We can be greater than
we are, we can be a greater people, we can be a greater nation. The day
has come when we must cease from trying to place impediments in the face
of those who tried to stand up in a world that is often times cruel to people
because of the limitations of their background, the limitations of their
environmental circumstances, the limitations of what we consider to be their
genetics. Our reality must be one where we learn how to lift people up,
regardless of the places where they are. As I listen to people discuss who
can succeed in America and who ought to fail I'm often times amazed, I am
amazed because I am the product of 5th and 6th grade educated parents,
I am the product of parents who gave birth to 13 children, who slept in
two bedrooms, in a two-bedroom house. Rolling roll away beds out into the
living room and the kitchen. Every time I had an opportunity to stand as
dean of the students or dean of the chapel at Boston University or to stand
in the House of Congress, I asked myself the question, "What would
I be if I had listened to what other people said I could not be, if I had
accepted that as a notion of what my life would be about?"
Our challenge becomes to prove our greatness. Proving our greatness
means facing the challenges. Understanding that they are there. No one has
made the road easy for you, but the challenges are there to help to build
a kind of character that allows you to build for a future that is greater
than your past. To build upon the legacy that you have received from those
who have gone before you and a great institution like the University of
Pennsylvania so imbedded in the principles of freedom and independence that
is so much a part of the culture of this society. My prayer is that you
have learned enough to be able to go out into the world and make the necessary
adjustments.
A group of people stood before Joshua, said unto Joshua we have
a serious problem. We can't understand why you would give us less than
you have given other people. One of the great challenges that I have faced
as pastor of Allen Church is I have looked at the community of which I am
a part, a middle class community that in the early 1980s were in decline.
In decline because people did not see the opportunities available to them.
They saw the greatness of a community that did exist before they moved there
immediately following white flight. They made a determination that their
best hope was to leave that community and go to the suburbs. My challenge
to them is not to move to the suburbs but let's make the suburbs a part
of the community where you live. Let's make it an environment where people
are comfortable not only in living, but also if they have already left coming
to back to. That challenge brought us to the place where we understood the
necessity of building homes, the necessity of buying up boarded-up properties,
the necessity of building our own school. The necessity of redefining for
people their sense of self. Giving them the understanding that if you have
knowledge, if you have faith, if you have a focus, it is possible for you
to turn your situation around. It is not necessary to run from it, but rather
to run to it with an optimistic view that somehow within you there is the
power to bring about change rather than waiting for the government to do
it. My challenge was lets do it ourselves. The people have responded. And
they now believe that they live in the promised land. And they believe so
much so that they continue to make necessary investments in it. So these
people stood before Joshua and said to him, "you don't know who we
are we are a great people. We are the sons and daughters of Joseph; our
ancestors include Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. If you understood who we were
you would have given us more than you gave the others. Their square footage
is more than ours, the ample land that you have given to them offers greater
opportunities than ours. They need but go and break up the barren land they
need but plant in the fallow places and they will be able to produce crops.
But the land that you gave to us is a woody place, it is a mountainous region
and we don't understand how we will be able to do anything with that. You
could of at least given us a land similar to everybody else's. You could
have given us a place that was not already inherited by the giants."
Oftentimes in life we are faced with the challenges to having to work our
way through the woods. To climb the high mountains, to come to the place
where we face the giants. The question becomes how do we manage it. Do we
manage it by merely reacting or do we find ourselves looking for ways to
make opportunities where no opportunities seem to exist. The great challenge
that you will face as young people is that there will be many mountains,
there will be many wooded regions, there will be many places where you will
wonder if you have the power to overcome the giant. But your degree signifies
the level of greatness. Your challenge now is to go out and to prove it.
So Joshua said to them, "You said you were great. If you are really
great, your responsibility is to take those woods and make something of
them. It is to take those woods and by my interpretation it means take those
trees, use them use that lumber build yourselves some homes, build yourself
a strong community and with what is left, take it and go and look at your
land. Your land has in it three rivers and in those rivers you will be able
to export the remainder of your products so that you will be able to sustain
yourself. Go back and hue those mountains, bring them down and if you're
scriptural and believe in the dynamics of faith, move those mountains. And
as those mountains move, you will find that you have the strength to be
able to overcome whatever impediments there are in the land that you occupy.
Your land may not look as great as someone else's but your land can be a
great place. It can be the home of your people, it can be the legacy for
your future and so you as members of the Class of 2001 get ready for the
great challenge that is yours. The paradigm has shifted and it is shifting
everyday. Between now and the time you take your first job it can shift
even more. But the question becomes for you, are you ready for this great
challenge.
This great challenge will not be met by merely racializing, politicizing,
and personalizing every issue. It's time to rise beyond the level of those
things that separate us and come to an understanding of what brings us together.
And coming together means that we must become more accountable, we must
move beyond our discouragments, our disappointments. We must stop merely
complaining about what we don't have and begin to look at the opportunities
that are available to us. Look at ourselves in relationship to those who
do not have and then challenge ourselves to be more responsive to their
needs. When we do that, we will have the kind of nation, we will have the
kind of people, who will be able to stand on their ground of faith not merely
declaring it another Martin Luther King celebration 'We Shall Overcome'
not merely having a few brotherhood Sundays where we come together across
racial lines. Not merely talking about opportunities that aren't being made
available to women and allowing the gender gap to continue to exist. Not
merely talking about the necessity of trying to break a glass ceiling, but
rather we will join hands together and we will join not based upon who is
beside us but understanding that whoever is beside us is our brother and
whoever is beside us is our sister and no longer will the refrain be "we
shall overcome" but it will be that we have overcome. We will indeed
demonstrate tot the rest of the world that we are a great people. So to
the Class of 2001 go out to the barren places, go the mountainous regions,
go to the places where the giants already inhabit and conquer and when
you have conquered stand up on the strength of a faith that says that
my faith, my focus, is so in order I am so in tune with the reality of who
I am and who I intend to be, that there is no force in the world that can
keep me from becoming greater. If the barriers are there I can overcome
them, I can go around them, I can go through them, I can go under them,
but by God, I am determined to prove my greatness. God bless you and may
the Lord be with you. |
