Going Too Far
For a father it was positively the best of times. My 18-year-old son was
graduating from high school and I couldn’t have been happier. His baccalaureate ceremony was scheduled for Thursday
evening and we were blessed with beautiful May weather. Outside the church all
the soon-to-be grads were milling around in their robes, smiles stretched
across every face. It was a great time in their lives and not one of them was
looking beyond Saturday when they would walk down the aisle and collect their
diplomas. Everything felt perfect as I walked through the crowd, smiling and
shaking hands with my son’s friends, more than a few of whom I’d taught in Sunday School or
carted around on church youth group trips.
Someone told the kids to start lining up, so my wife and I went into First
Baptist and found a seat. Mine happened to be next to the school principal, Dr.
Kelley. Being the kind of guy who puts his foot in mouth when honestly just
trying to make conversation, I leaned in and joked, “Hope we’re not going to hear any wild theology from the pulpit tonight.” Dr. Kelley wasn’t smiling. She replied by disavowing responsibility for the event. “We don’t sponsor baccalaureate,’ she said. “The local ministerial association puts it on.”
I was thinking about two years earlier when a preacher in our county made the
newspaper by telling students at another high school’s baccalaureate that the main thing they should be worrying about as they began
their adult lives was did they have a personal relationship with Jesus; were
they saved, he wanted to know, in that special way fundamentalists define being
saved. State the day and time please. You say you’ve been going to church all your life and believe Jesus is the Son of God?
Sorry, not good enough. Any Jews in the audience? You’re really outta luck! What were you thinking, stepping into a Christian church?
Catholics? You’re not looking so sweet either. I said a little prayer we wouldn’t hear any of that. Apparently, God doesn’t always answer prayer.
I didn’t recognize any of the three pastors sitting on the dais, but we got through the
welcome and the opening prayer all right. Two students made speeches and were
appropriately considerate of their classmates. Then it was time for the keynote
speech, or to be honest, the sermon. First Baptist’s youth pastor had been given the job. I wish I could call him “pimple faced” but he really was old enough to know better than to say what he was about to
say.
Baccalaureate services for public high schools are unique opportunities for
testing how church and state can come together for good. Technically, they’re a religious event, not an official state event, but that fact is lost on the
students. To them it looks like one more happening in the parade of dates
leading to graduation. For the church, and by church I mean the Christian
faith, it is a precious chance to do as Jesus did and draw people together in
love for the healing of hearts and spirits.
On this particular baccalaureate night, one year ago, we were a community badly
in need of healing. Graduation is a dangerous time of year wherever you live in
America. Students are overflowing with excitement. Celebration is the word.
Partying is the way. On the Saturday before baccalaureate, a popular graduate
from the previous class had suffered a terrible, alcohol related accident with
two girls from the current crop as her passengers. She struck a light pole at
high speed and was killed. Her passengers lived but their absence from the
evening’s proceedings sat heavy on everyone’s mind.
As the young pastor stepped forward to speak, I wondered if he would ignore the
accident or seize the moment and reach out with the healing hand of God. He did
neither. Instead, he launched into a story from his high school days, telling
how his freshman year had been pure agony. He was one of the geeks, a nobody on
campus, but in the summer before his sophomore year a female neighbor who would
be a senior had offered to let him ride with her to school in the mornings. She
was one of the most popular girls in the school, an all-conference softball
player, and pretty too. This was his opportunity; when he arrived at school in
her company, he suddenly would be someone important. At that point the young
pastor paused, the smile fading from his face. “But then,” he went on, “two days before school was to begin, my plan was ruined. She went to a party,
got drunk and was killed in a terrible auto accident. But worse than knowing my
plan was ruined was having to live with the knowledge that because of the way
she died, she would spend eternity in hell.”
The audience was silent for a second, then the murmuring began. What did he say?
We couldn’t believe it. I learned later many felt as I had—torn between wanting to walk out and wanting to toss the young preacher through
the stained glass windows. If ever someone had turned a chance for victory into
a crushing defeat, this was it. When Jesus was asked by his disciples, “who then can be saved?” he answered compassionately, “with God all things are possible.” Now we learn from this arrogant young pastor that Jesus was wrong.
We Christians often debate what “separation of church and state” should mean. How private should our faith be? In a recent speech, God’s Politics author Jim Wallis asked where we would be “if the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King had kept his faith to himself?” I’m not sure exactly where to draw the line, but I do know this: when we do drag
our faith into the public forum we darn well better follow the command that
Christ gave us to love one another, “By this,” he said, “everyone will know that you are my disciples.”
Opinion by Gary Broughman, editor of Christian Heartbeat
All content Copyright © Gary Broughman, 2007
