Commencement Address

James and Carolyn McAfee School of Theology

May 17, 2008

By Charles Foster Johnson

Visiting Instructor of Preaching

McAfee School of Theology

     President Underwood, our beloved Dean Culpepper, our esteemed and highly respected faculty colleagues, family members and friends of McAfee graduates, pastoral colleagues who are now indeed doctors of ministry, and especially these masterpieces who are graduating this day from seminary and into the glorious ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ, I am deeply honored to be accorded the privilege to address you today. 

     When I read our assignment from our Leader in his marvelous Gospel message, I note that He tells us over and over not to be afraid, to fear not, to be not anxious, to take no thought for tomorrow, to lift up our heads.  These oft-repeated encouragements tell us that Jesus recognizes something consistent about our human nature:  that we are frightened creatures, easily spooked, and, frankly, often scared out of our wits.

     Here is what we are afraid of: scarcity. We fear the world of not enough and the world of not like me.  It is this myth of scarcity that threatens us as humans.

     We are frightened of not enough. We are seized by a scarcity mentality. I am not smart enough or pretty enough or popular enough or rich enough or strong enough.  There is not enough love in my life, not enough understanding in my marriage, not enough attention from my children, not enough money in my bank account, not enough prestige in my position, not enough purpose in my vocation, not enough acclaim from my peers, not enough security on my borders, not enough goodness in my character, just not enough.

     Following closely behind the fear of not enough is the fear of not like me.  Diversity threatens our need for similarity and familiarity and homogeneity.  In our flesh, there is something inherently suspicious about someone of a different race and nationality and class and region and religion.  I have to be only with people who look like me, who have my language, my traditions, my economics, my gender, my age, my skin color, my background.  There just isn’t enough core commonality among us to turn the foreigner into my kinsperson.

     This is the original devil’s lie, and your Leader came to confront it with the divine truth of abundance.  The very first thing the biblical record reports is that we humans are placed in a garden of abundant provision and delight from which we may eat freely, but no sooner had those words come from God’s mouth than the Evil One shows up to plant a suspicious seed of scarcity.  “Did God say you may not eat?” (Genesis 3.1)  I’ve heard that serpent’s hiss in the middle of the night.  I recognize that crafty voice.  “There’s not enough for you.  Who told you that you have enough integrity and wisdom to preach and minister the love of God?  You don’t have enough support in your church, enough balance in your budget, enough bravery in your soul to build the Kingdom of God. You can’t love your neighbor as you love yourself.  What kind of baloney is that?  Why don’t you just hedge your bets and settle on the kingdoms of this world instead?”  

     Over against this insidious deception of scarcity comes Jesus’s assurance of abundance. Hear these words today, ministers of God:  though you are poor and persecuted, meek and in mourning, you nevertheless have a blessedness about you that is so utterly abundant that you can create a new world with it.  You have enough love to take the violence of your enemy into yourself by turning the other cheek. You have more generosity about you than you ever imagined, so give away your cloak as well as your coat. You really can bear the burden the extra mile, you can bless in response to curses, you can shine in a world of shadows, you can pray for the guy who wants to do you in.  In short, Jesus says, your DNA is now agape, and you can be whole, even as your Heavenly Parent is whole.  This is the rule of the abundant God for you, and if you seek this rule, as my teacher, Glenn Hinson, translated Matthew 6.33, “and its OK-ing of you, everything else will fall into place.”  What’s it going to be, ministers?  The scarcity of fear or the abundance of love? 

     For years I didn’t tell the following story because the Providence it conveys is just too embarrassing.  But, God is trying to teach me abundance, and Dean Culpepper’s sermon last night from 2 Kings 4 about the widow’s vessels empowers me this morning.

The year was 1984, and I had just finished the seminary and entered indeed that sometimes Orwellian world of full-time local church ministry. I had already served my tiny western Kentucky congregation, the West Point Baptist Church of Matanzas, Ky., for three years of seminary, driving down on weekends, but now I had moved to that isolated rural community to be her full-time pastor. 

My salary of $100 dollars a week did not change when I moved from part-time to full-time status.  I wondered if God had brought me through four years of college and three years of seminary to serve a 35-member congregation in the middle of nowhere on such a modest income.  (The narrow road in front of the church ended at the Green River, across which you had to take the ferry to go to Owensboro.) 

Month by month the school loan bills from college—deferred during seminary—started to come in now that I was no longer a student and now gainfully employed.  I struggled to meet those financial obligations, but soon entered a period of lapsed payments.  One day, after several months of these unpaid bills accrued, I received a notice saying that the matter would soon be turned over to a collection agency.  I threw up my hands in despair and uttered an exclamation that was hardly a prayer, “God, there is no way I can pay this!” 

As I was brooding on all my scarcity in the parsonage that Saturday afternoon, the phone rang.  My neighbor, Violet Porter, was on the other end of the line.  Violet was a Methodist sister, not a member of West Point, but ecumenism was alive and well in Matanzas, and we all worshipped regularly at each other’s churches.  She had just lost her husband and was lonely.  She said, “Brother Charles, I’ve just made some chocolate chip cookies, why don’t you come down and have some and drink a cup of coffee with me.”  I made my way to Violet’s home right down the lane, had a lovely visit for an hour or so, and rose to leave.  She said, “Now, Brother Charles, you take some of these cookies with you.  Here, I have them wrapped up for you.  Oh, one more thing.  Take this, too.”  She handed me an envelope.  “I’m not sure why, but I’m led to give this to you.”  Enclosed was a check for the exact amount of money due to that date on my school loan.

     Outrageous story, isn’t it?  Yeah.  God’s abundance always is.  No, such dramatic and immediate intervention of Providence doesn’t routinely happen to me.  But, I’m here to testify before you today God’s abundance is real and constant and beautiful in this maddening and marvelous work of ours.   

     “If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will God not much more clothe us, o us of little faith?  Therefore, do not worry saying, ‘What will we eat?  What will we drink?  What will we wear?’  Your heavenly Parent knows you need all these things.  Rather, seek first God’s abundant rule and God’s never-ending OK-ing of us, and all of these things, everything else, will fall into place.”  (Matthew 6.23)

     You are about to be handed a document.  It’s not a check.  But it is a profound reminder that there will always be enough in your life and ministry.  There were frequent times throughout your seminary journey when you thought you could not make it, that there would simply not be enough resources of time and intelligence to get you through.  But, you were wrong.  As you graduate, as you commence, as you end nothing and begin everything, make a vow this day that you will not fall for the myth of scarcity, but will hold fast to the truth of abundance.  The diploma you are about to be handed is a promissory note on your vow before the Lord.  Put it somewhere prominent.  Look at it and remember that there is always, always enough.  And always will be.  That’s a state of grace that Kingdom of God is a term for.  Get that abundance inside your head, and everything else will fall into place.

     Among the many powerful reasons my visiting professorship here at McAfee has been so meaningful for me is your support for me in the wake of my father’s passing some months ago.  Dad suffered from that double whammy of neurological disease:  both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.  His memory loss was so severe that in the latter stages of the disease he could no longer remember my name. 

“Now who are you?” he would ask.

 “Daddy, I’m Charlie,” I would patiently respond. 

“Oh, yes, that’s right, Charlie,” he would acknowledge with a slight nod. 

Thirty seconds later the same interrogation would occur all over again.  We buried my father at our Johnson Family home place in Monroe County, Alabama, where my forebears settled in 1810, right beside his father and grandfather and great-grandfather and, yes, great-great grandfather.   Shortly thereafter, my three brothers and I visited my father's hunting cabin on the Alabama River where he and his fathers before him roamed the woods and fields, and fished the rivers and streams, and experienced so much personal joy in God's great outdoors. We had a wonderful time rummaging through Dad’s personal effects, collected memorabilia and momentos from a life fitly and fully lived. 

My oldest brother Langdon was in the kitchen when he called out, “Fellows, come here.”  Lang had peeled back the oil cloth tablecloth covering the kitchen table only to discover the names of all of my father’s sons carefully etched in the wooden plank of the table:  Langdon, Francis, Charles, Dennis.  My father wanted all of his children to know, long after he could tell them himself or even call their name, that we always had a place at our Daddy’s table.

     That’s right.  Everyone always has a place at the table.  That’s what the abundance of God is all about.  And precisely what you graduate this day to go and tell the world.  Amen.