Getting It Wrong

Zephaniah 3:14-15

’Tis the season of graduations! We spent a good chunk of last week in Atlanta for son Perry’s graduation from Kennesaw State, finding a lot to celebrate that took a few days. Others among us have been hither and yon for other college and university commencements, also finding good reason to celebrate with family and friends from all over. Still more are about to witness their high school dear ones march across the stage to get their diplomas ending 12 years of public education in Richmond or Columbia Counties. Others will attend the conclusion of a private school year. And yet still more will fill a graduation of wee ones ending preschool to head into grade school. There are a lot of kids transitioning from one phase of life into another, joined by adults adding to the letters behind their names. With all of them, there comes a speaker, someone charged with charging the assembled celebrants to do something, get somewhere, and make a difference as they make the world different. 

I want to add my nickel’s worth to those addresses this morning with some of our own congregation’s graduates seated before me. 

My theme may seem a bit counterintuitive—my charge to anyone graduating from one phase of life into another is to get it wrong!

Now, before any parents rise up to silence me, or educators start pelting me with the pew Bibles, or students assume I have lost my mind—let me explain.

First, I do not mean intentionally or willfully running amok, breaking all the laws, codes of responsibility, and expectations for simply being a decent human being. No, we have more than enough wreckage strewn about from folks doing as they please, wherever they please, however they please, to or with whomever they please. 

What I mean in my charge to get it wrong is to let go of the fear of failure—something that can freeze a great many students in school or of life in place. Afraid to fail, we don’t try. Afraid to fail, we stay in a narrow confine of pretested endeavors. We fill slots in a machine, choosing to be cogs because it is safe. We find ourselves agreeing with the curmudgeons we meet, intoning, “We never did that way before, and I see no reason to change.” We find ourselves meeting expectations every time, in every circumstance. What we don’t experience is original thinking, sudden insight, or bursts of imagination. So, I charge you to get it wrong—try something new and do something never tested. 

For instance, Christ was a master of getting it wrong.

First, he rewrote the rulebook. There was once a wonderful dialog that folks from our time no longer really understand very well. Some Pharisees, the students of the Torah who committed themselves to perfect obedience of all 600+ laws in it, and some of John the Baptist’s disciples practiced fasting—a ritualized practice meant to purify heart, mind, and body through sacred deprivation. This cleansing was believed to bring the practitioner closer to God. It was scriptural. It was understood as part of practical holiness. But Jesus and his group ignored it—so much so that the critics of Jesus called him a glutton! Jesus did a new thing—he got it completely wrong—fasting is well and good in certain times, but not all the time. Cleansing heart, body, and mind comes as much through joyous entrance into the presence of God as it does with blind obedience—maybe more so.

There will be times to rework the rulebook guiding whatever endeavor you undertake. There will be times to exert who you are within the context of where you work and live. You may well see a better way to do something—try it. You may well see something that makes a work environment more human—engage in it. You may see a rule that no longer applies to anyone—forget it. 

I am a jazz fan. Blue Note Records provides the soundtrack for my daily travels. Listening to those artists is deep schooling in improvisation—playing with the rules to make art. John Coltrane was schooled and skilled in all the formalities of music. He knew the rules for playing music inside and out. So he changed them, moving music into places no one thought it could go. Music, for him, was completely spiritual—and the Spirit is free—so he exploded the rules of music to find expression of the Spirit as he played. My car rides would be thunderously dull if Mr. Coltrane had not broken the rules. He firmly believed he found God as he played—when was the last time you heard anyone describe a day at work in those terms? 

Second, Jesus rethought where he needed to work. As a rabbi—a sacred teacher among the Jews—the expected place for him to be was in a synagogue or in the Temple in Jerusalem. That was where rabbis worked. Instead, Jesus got it wrong. He spent his time in the streets, in the villages, and even out in the fields near where people worked and lived. The people who needed him could not get to him because of the aforementioned rules, so he went to them, astounding all the official priests, teachers, and experts—what was he thinking?

As you discover what it is that God has gifted you to do, think deeply about where you are going to do it.  Where will you be most effective? Where people expect you to work, or is there a more meaningful, effective place to practice? 

We inside the Church are hearing voices from those who, like Jesus, are not sure that church needs to be practiced inside the Church. The people who need the good news are not here for one reason or another, so creative people are finding new places to be in the Word. Some have dispensed with formal gathering altogether, and instead simply announce a work to be done among the poorest of the poor, or someone unable to tend themselves, or with folks desperately needing an assist with something—no sanctuary service, no Sunday School, church is reduced to acts of love, preaching compassion in being compassion. Others still need the gathering, but find a locals only coffee house meets the need better. Others still need the gathering and even the ritual, but a basement in an abandoned city building serves the purpose more effectively than a set-aside church building. Again, they find God. Isn’t that the point?

Finally, Jesus really did not care a whole lot about whom he worked with—look at his enclave. He got it all wrong. No biblical scholars, no PhD. educators, no CEOs, CBOs, or CFOs, no one who seemed to have spent a great deal of time in either synagogue or Temple, and no one with any working experience in evangelism, church administration, or worship. Nope, he gathered together what honestly is one of the most motley crews ever assembled of miscreants, malcontents, and misanthropes he could find. But they needed God desperately, and as they found God, they would be able to communicate God in the language, experience, and thinking of others like them. 

Remember that as you make your way. It will be seeing the people around for what they are that will matter far more than anything else. Never, ever forget that every human being you meet is a unique act of the creative will of God. There are no exclusions or exceptions to this rule—this one has to be kept all the time. 

You, I hope and pray, have already met someone with the eyes of Christ as they dealt with you. I hope and pray you encountered a teacher who saw more than a potential test score, an IQ, or social category as they dealt with you. I hope and pray you met someone who saw a child of God as they engaged with you. They probably never told you what you were as directly as that or as bluntly. But you know that is how they cared for you for the way they walked with you, engaged you, and led you into the deep pools of wonder, miracle, and grace that a real eduction encompasses. 

Now, go and do likewise. Get it wrong as you deal with other human beings. Don’t listen to conventional wisdom about who is worthy, who is important, or who is to be courted. Use your heart. Use God. Allow God to open before you the wonder of these other human beings all around you all the time. Dr. Daniel S. Papp, president of Kennesaw State University, did a marvelous thing during commencement—he basically played “20 Questions” with the graduating class. Each question revealed something about the human beings about to receive their degrees—how many worked a full-time job while in school? how many were parents? how many were active military? how many were foreign students? how many were the first in their family to graduate from college? On went the questions—the impact was tremendous—these were not several thousand nameless numbers passing through a ginormous state university—these were human beings. Do that. Do it again and again. Keep exploding conventional wisdom’s sweeping generalities that bind us up. Keep refusing to play along with what someone else says everyone else is and does. 

Keep getting it wrong.

All shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.