Taking Holy Steps: Why we are Here at College

I love Stephen Colbert.  I think he speaks truth to Power.  And I think that although some people think Stephen Colbert is a nut, his Jewish upbringing makes him one of the most important people to consider as Christians.  He’s not the only nut ball to speak truth to power.

I mean seriously, Jesus was considered a nutball by many…He said things like “Love Your Neighbor As yourself” and “Blessed are the poor, for they will see God.”   He told people that Prostitutes and Tax Collectors were all part of the kingdom of God.  He told people that the Sabbath was made for man, not for God and that in the end, the first shall be last and the last shall be first.  Where do you hear that in American Politics today.

And sometimes those Nut-balls, especially people like Stephen Colbert say things that are important for us to hear… Like this statement…

“If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.”

        

         This is a very serious statement, but it is a real statement, one that commands attention.  And I think it commands attention of every single college students.  Because you are here at college, and you need to know what it is that College is all about.  And I’ll tell you, I think it’s about the reality that we are called to help the poor and the other, the neighbor, or admit that we are as selfish as it seems we are and just forget about everyone else. 

Think about this for a minute.  What were you told about going to college: Go to college for what reason: To get a degree, to hurry through as fast as possible, to get out, get a job, make money to support yourself and maybe a family, and then probably to live a happy life for the rest of your life with kids and puppies and nice houses and cars.  Anyone who goes to college hopes for those things and is here for those things. But that’s not the point of college.

College encourages competition in classes, grudge matches for best grades and an endless amount of people telling you that if you get the right degree and go to the right school you’ll get a perfect job and be better than someone else who will later be working for you.  College tells you there’s a ladder you are climbing so that you are achieving some mystical sense of happiness later in life and that you are better, mostly at the expense of someone else.

But that’s not what college is about. If that’s the meaning of college, then we’ve created a monster that will never help us achieve the betterment of the world, only the betterment of ourselves.  College can’t be this for us, first because it would be create a world where we didn’t really care about each other except as cogs to achieve better than, and second, because I really don’t see in our society just an endless sense of autonomy.  I see a world slowly but surely becoming more and more collectivist, a design of a culture where each and every person has certain hopes and dreams that can be lifted up by the other.

  College is not a place where you come to get a degree any more than making the degree the bookends of the journey: came for the degree, found so much more, and finally left with a degree. No, College is about figuring out how to live a life that makes everyone better around you and a world better for everyone.   That’s why you are here, because you are smart, and because you have something to offer the world that will make it better for everyone.  And yes, you might make some money doing it, but the money and the success can’t be what you are after.  You must be here to figure out yourself as a citizen more than figuring out how to claim a degree by bulldozing everyone else.

Now why do I say that you have to make the world better?  Well, because you are privileged to be here. You all, along with myself, are privileged people in this world.  Yes, you are in debt, could qualify for food stamps if you paid utility bills and rent, and yes you are having a hard time.  But you’re privileged.  You have come to college to get a degree that will make you way more money than those people who don’t have degrees.  And you are earning that degree, but you’re not earning it to make yourself better ONLY.  You have to make everyone better, a world better because you were given the chance to change things for yourself but also for others.  There are a lot of people who will be envious because you are here at college.  Make them a part of a better world.

In the passage we read today, James is speaking with his brothers and sisters, helping them to consider how they might learn to love their neighbors as themselves.  They are sitting around and watching people on the street perhaps, some who are dressed in fine jewelry and others who are of rags and tattered clothes.  He asks them how it is that they may love themselves and love others if they are seeing these two different groups as unequal. If you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.  The picking of a certain looking type of individual will make you guilty of not loving your neighbor as yourself, because then you are not truly loving them, you are loving the accessories they have.

         This is a challenge for us in society.  We tend to like the beautiful people, the successful people, to deem people around us as more or less worthy of our affection, our time, our investment, our sympathy.  But when we do that, we put ourselves on a platform above others.  We say, if you are to have my affection, you better be as good as me, thus leading to a ladder of success that we measure on image of many sorts.

What James is saying is that there is a thing called “agape” love that transcends what the world sees as worth caring for.  We learn to love, radically, not just for ourselves, but because we are better when we are all loved. We learn to take the best of ourselves and turn it into something that can bring out the best in everyone and provide authentic care and support for each and every neighbor we might encounter, no matter how different from us.

The other passage tonight is from exodus.  It’s a famous passage about bread and manna sharing.  The Israelites are reminded that in sharing, they can all have their fill. But in greed, they end up wasting their bread anyway. And this takes them a few times to master because they are naturally greedy.  Just like us…

God provides them manna, a valuable resource that means in Hebrew “what is it”.  Is has been described as bread, but the more literal translation might be something resembling a goo that is on the grass in the morning…like dew in the form of sustenance.  Not quite what you imagined in the beginning. Once they start to share this manna, to trust that God will provide all that they need as long as everyone gets a fair share, then everyone gets their fill and everyone is better off through it. The come to realization that competition for food will leave most without any and that at the end of the day, it won’t matter anyway because they will all be left to trust God provides again tomorrow.

Welcome to college.  The most exciting 4-9 years of your life you might imagine. 

Welcome to college, the most opportunity filled years of life you have ever experienced.  Hello, welcome to college, the most self-serving time of life you have ever been granted. 

Welcome to college, the place where you learn how to be citizens for a world that needs you to help change it for the better. 

Or welcome to college, the place where all your dreams come true and where we truly realize that there is a nation of poor and less able persons who we just don’t care about.

You pick:  either your dreams come true (maybe) or you make the world a better place and through your life that starts right here and right noweveryone’s dreams come true along with yours.

  It’s up to you.  Take Holy Steps: Realize why you are truly here.  You are here and have been offered a wonderful opportunity to make the world a better place, and every moment of college is an opportunity for you to become the person this world needs you to be.  So take holy steps… the world a waiting for you!