All Scriptures quoted are from The New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise quoted.

A very old tree and a man named Gray. Those are two images I would like the graduates we honor today to carry with them as they prepare to move in different directions from this place. A very old tree and a man named Gray. Hold onto those, will you?

We have a remarkably large number of graduates before us today. If I may, I’d like to share a personal word with them and just allow the rest of you listen in. My heart sinks when I think about the hole you will leave among us physically, emotionally and spiritually. If this church’s history is any indication, however, at least some of you will be back, maybe even with a spouse and child in tow. Given that it’s always easier to leave than to be left, I hope you graduates will understand if we act a little more sentimental than we normally do and embarrass you a little with too much attention that you will act like you don’t enjoy. Again, my pastoral gifts to you today are the stories of an old tree and a man named Gray. They illuminate beautifully the story we’ve been given in scripture of this remarkable vision of Peter’s that played a very significant role in all of us ever having heard the gospel.

Dreams and visions, especially those given by God, are always very important. Not everyone will understand your dream. Yet, the only people who ever change the world for what is good are those who stay true to their own convictions and live out the life God has called them to live even when it makes no sense to others whose support they would have liked to have had. Peter sets a great example. Like all of us, he was shaped by the worldview of his upbringing. His life, until he met Jesus, had been shaped largely by the very narrow view of the Jewish community of that day and time. The Jews tended to believe that God belonged exclusively to them. For a while, they even had God located in the temple and not much anywhere else. Then, along comes Jesus.

Jesus’ transformation in Peter’s life was still taking shape even after Jesus had been resurrected and then ascended to heaven. Up until then even the Jews who had become followers of Jesus believed that Jesus still belonged exclusively to the Jewish Christian community, just as had the law and the prophets. Until now. Peter had a vision, something like a dream. In that vision, three times, God tells Peter to embrace as good what the Jews heretofore believed to be profane, unfit, which was pretty much anything non-Jewish. Peter may have been the first good Baptist because the instrument God used to get Peter’s attention was, of all things, something like a gargantuan covered dish luncheon served up on a white sheet, like something you might use for a dinner on the grounds.

God was asking Peter to consider the possibility of being willing to accept all of God’s creation as good. This would especially demand the willingness to see beyond the narrow religious conviction of his upbringing to the larger view of the world in which all of God’s children were God’s good creation, intended to be loved and redeemed. This was a breakthrough moment for the gospel as well as for Peter. I doubt we can possibly appreciate the impact it must have had on Peter when God told him, and through Peter the church, that it was time for them to see Jesus and the Holy Spirit as God’s gift to the entire world, not just to the Jews. It took some work on Peter’s part, not only to overcome his own religious prejudices but also because he faced stern criticism from the established religious community of his childhood upbringing. But, with the Spirit’s grace, wisdom and power, Peter won the day and the rest is, literally, church history.

You never know what’s going to happen when you have the courage to share your dream with others and ask them to dream it with you. Too many never know. They go to their graves with their deepest dreams kept a secret. Please! Don’t be one of them. Your dream could change the world! Peter was not among those willing to keep his dream to himself and we owe this ancient believer a debt of gratitude. What does all this mean for us? That’s where the very old tree and a man name Gray come into the picture. First, the tree.

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit my good friend, Roger Paynter, in Austin where he serves as the pastor of the First Baptist Church. When we finished our coffee and got back to the church, he asked me if I’d like to meet the newest member of the church. He then pointed to a huge oak tree newly transplanted into the children’s playground area. It was a three-hundred and fifty year-old tree. Up until recently, it had grown just a couple of blocks down the street from First Baptist. A developer wanted to build some condominiums but, of course, the city wouldn’t allow the tree to be cut down. So, at a cost of $250,000, the developer paid for it to be dug up, root ball and all, and transplanted to the First Baptist property. Three-hundred and fifty years! How much history has walked in the shade of that tree? The Jamestown settlement, the first permanent English settlement in America, was still in its infancy when that tree was a seedling.

As you leave us, graduates, you are being transplanted to a different world than the one in which you were raised. A very different world. It will not be one that, by and large, readily accepts your worldview that includes a loving and redeeming Jesus. It will not be easy to live your faith. You already know that, though. Just remember that, when you are transplanted, the roots that nourished you until now go with you. God did not intend the Jews to leave behind all of their spiritual roots but to be transplanted into the whole world and bring forth the full fruit those roots were meant to bear. Leaving here does not mean leaving your roots. You will never, ever, be totally disconnected from the roots that are yours in this church. You have been given wonderful roots in this church. Roots, for one thing, of faithful example or of a faith that demonstrates what it means to keep going even when it is hard.

Gladys Watt was telling me this past Wednesday that she will soon be ninety-five years of age and also celebrate her seventy-sixth anniversary as a member of Cliff Temple! When Gladys joined Cliff Temple, the three-hundred and fifty year-old tree in Austin had just celebrated its two-hundred fiftieth anniversary! Those who know Gladys also know that it has not always been easy for her. No one of whom I know works physically harder to get to church every week than Gladys. When you get discouraged, thinking all is lost, remember Gladys. She is one of many examples I could name from this pulpit of people who have shown you what it’s like to put one faith step in front of another until those steps counted seventy-six years of faithful service! Before you leave this place, be sure to take a walk down the Hall of Memories and see the faces of those in very old pictures who gave you your spiritual heritage.

You have been given the roots, in this church, of a strong conscience for a gospel that expresses itself in acts of proactive social justice. You have been given roots here of a strong sense of conviction that, in Christ, there is no male nor female, that women, as well as men, are all created in the image of God, can be called and gifted for all offices and positions of ministry in the church. Someone suggested to me just yesterday that some of you will have a hard time finding a Baptist church that is a lot like the place in which you have been rooted all this time. That’s OK. As much as I cherish my Baptist heritage and wish you would as well, we are all called to be followers of Jesus first and whatever else second.

You have been given a strong sense of community service and missions that is both local and global. Some of you will be transplanted into worlds, whole oceans and continents away, that you cannot imagine right now. Others of you will find yourselves transplanted back here. Wherever you go, your roots go with you. As you go, trust in God and, in time, you, like Gladys, will be able to celebrate what she now knows in her own life. That, if you will love God, even in your stumbling, you “will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither” (Psalm 1:3, NASV).

Remember the very old tree. Remember, too, a man named Gray. While Roger and I were having coffee, he told me of another restaurant where he regularly goes for morning coffee. Over several years, he’s gotten to know one waiter there in particular; they’ve shared some of their life stories with each other. Recently, this waiter, who calls Roger, “Reverend,” asked Roger if he had a minute. Roger assured him he did so the waiter sat down and said, “I’ve changed my name. My first name is now Gray and I’ve changed my last name to my mother’s maiden name.”

He went on to tell Roger that he had been raised to believe that the world was all black and white, all right or wrong, all good or bad. He had discovered that the real world in which he lived was not all like that. That there was more gray than black and white. Part of his confusion grew out of the fact his father and grandfather had both been publicly very devout, religious people. In private, however, both had verbally, physically and sexually abused him. So, he had changed his last name to his mother’s maiden name and his first name to Gray. Then, he told Roger, “I’ve come to discover that it is possible to live with faith in the midst of ambiguity.”

Roger, who thinks on his feet as well as anyone I know, listened compassionately to Gray’s story. Then, he told him that he knew of a story in the Bible about a man who was raised in a very rigid, black and white religious world. Then, he met Jesus. The experience was so profound he had to change his name from Saul to Paul. He was letting Gray know that, despite his very human heritage, he was in good company with people whose experience with Jesus is so transforming, it sometimes literally changes what people call you.

We tend to idolize our spiritual fore-parents; we do so at great risk. When we look honestly, we discover that we were given our faith by very human people. But, faith wins the day. Faith still takes root. You have been given a good faith by a very human church. Please don’t become one of those cynics who use the humanity of the church as an excuse for not believing in Eternal God. Your faith will sustain you even within a very human church.

You will be going into a world that will be making decisions about things, the likes of which we cannot imagine this morning. More than any generation of believers that has ever lived, you will be asked to creatively search the scriptures for what God’s word might say to a whole panorama of moral and ethical dilemmas mankind has never had to discuss.

You will be asked to make or live with the decisions others make about things your parents never had to consider, from matters related to human sexuality to increasingly complicated medical ethics, including stem cell research. To the exercise of preemptive war as a response to international terrorism to how technology is going to increasingly dominate the way we live and even think. The list is endless. It even includes how the Christian community will respond to a world in which scientific and technological advances are doubling the base of human knowledge every five years, but, simultaneously, we seem to be taking moral steps back into other centuries as human trafficking in our own country is now more of a problem now than it was during the Civil War.

To put it simply, you will be asked to live with faith in the midst of ambiguity. To live with faith in a world where there is more gray and less and less that is clearly black or white. You can see that as frightening or you can see it as the most remarkable opportunity to discover the timeless purposes of God in the midst of a very human church and world, a church and a world God both created and also for which Christ died.

As I have shared with you before, going to Latvia the last two years has taught me a lesson I never experienced before. I once believed that “doing missions” meant taking Jesus to people. How condescending! How arrogant! How blind! When we went to Latvia we discovered that we didn’t take Jesus to them. We discovered that Jesus has always been with them. All we were doing was going there to see how we could get in on what Jesus was already up to, even in the city orphanage of Jelgava, Latvia, a place I didn’t even know existed until two years ago.

Our world is so much bigger than the very small one in which we were raised! Yet, there is no place you will ever go that God has not created. There is no place on earth you will ever find where God is not present. Wherever there is even one orphan, you will find Jesus there. Wherever there is one lonely widow, you will find Jesus there. Wherever there is one starving child, you will find Jesus there. If you ever wonder what Jesus’ face looks, look into the eyes of those he called the“least of these” (Matthew 25:45).

As you go, remember your roots. Remember Peter’s dream. Remember Gladys’ faith steps, one in front of another.

Remember the very old tree and a man named Gray.