Madam President, Trustees, Members of Faculty, graduates, ladies and gentlemen: what a truly glorious occasion this is. I have defined my responsibility today as three-fold: to honour the 2007 Graduating Class for their achievement; to celebrate the love and dedication of the many who have contributed to their success; and to charge the graduates with new challenges, responsibilities and life-goals.
My fellow candidates join me in thanking Millsaps for the honorary degrees we have been accorded. We shall respectively bear this special privilege as ambassadors of this outstanding university college.
Foremost, it is my special honour to extend our deepest congratulations to the graduating class of 2007. Well done! When you enrolled at Millsaps some four years ago, you were afforded the privilege and opportunity to study at one of the finest universities in the nation; by your committed endeavours, your hard work, and your perseverance, you have not wasted the opportunity given to you. Because you were faithful with the opportunities provided to you at this prestigious College, you have opened for yourself the exciting possibility of many other wonderful opportunities in the years to come. If you recall for a moment those anxious sleepy midnights, when deadlines for papers were piling this high, and you were needing more and more caffeine to keep going, and comps was draining you, and you were desperately worried whether you were really going to make it, and if there truly was a light at the end of the tunnel: well, here’s the good news: it’s over! You’ve made it! Today you are reaping the harvest of the efforts you sowed, and gaining the reward for staying the course. And so I say again: well done! Please join me in applauding this wonderful class of Millsap’s graduates.
As much as it is right that we celebrate your achievement, I know you want me to acknowledge the many people who have provided so much emotional, intellectual – and dare I say it – financial support to you. In Southern Africa we embrace a concept called “ubuntu” – it means “I am, because of you”; or to put it this way: “we exist only because of others; we are inter-connected; we need each other; we can only become fully human individually as we acknowledge each other in community”. Ubuntu: you are who you are today because of others. Primary among these are your families: parents, grandparents, and siblings, perhaps other family members, who have shed tears for and with you, prayed over you, sustained you and cared for you, and never stopped loving you. I’d like to ask you graduates to briefly stand and applaud your families.
Your ‘ubuntu’ circle is a wide one, and I do want us to appreciatively acknowledge that in no small measure you are who you are today because of the dedication, devotion, dutifulness, diligence – and just to break the alliterative cycle of all those ‘d’s, the outstanding competence of the leadership, as well as the teaching, support and administrative staff who comprise the faculty at Millsaps. In my opinion, the defining quality of a great college is helping students to discover learning as an open-ended and on-going experience, assisting them to embrace the challenges of their era with courage and creativity, believing that complex problems can be solved with critical inquiry, active engagement, collaborative experimentation, and seeking the humanity in all others. Great colleges are places where students find themselves in a place of learning that is not regimentally ordered to purpose. Instead, great colleges are places where loose cannons are free to stroll the corridors of teaching. The only point in having real live professors around, instead of just computer terminals, videotapes, and mimeoed lecture notes, is that students need to have freedom enacted before their eyes by actual human examples of learning excellence. In great colleges therefore, students do more than form relationships with dead scholars. They meet dynamic, inspiring, living teachers, and when they do, a spark leaps back and forth between teacher and student, connecting them in a relationship that leads to creativity, growth, and transformation. That’s why great colleges produce great thinkers and great leaders; that’s why they produce students who change society for the better. That’s why great colleges produce great citizens of the world, people who truly realize what democratic institutions are meant for, namely, making possible deeper forms of human freedom and co-existence. Great colleges send into the wider world young people who are intellectually alive, socially and politically engaged, and readied to make a difference for peace in our pluralistic, global society. May the Lord save us from colleges whose curriculum contains only conventional wisdom designed to prepare students to make a good living, but fail to inculcate in them a vision to make living itself a good enterprise.
In my observation, Millsaps is a great college because it meets these standards, and that’s because it has great leadership, staff, and faculty. And so I want to wake the graduates once more, and ask you to stand and express gratitude to every member of staff at this great family college – bearing in mind that some of your teachers are still quite unbelieving of the fact that you have actually made it!
Commencement is not homogenised milk. It is not sugar-coated candy.
Commencement is a time to momentarily pause and take life seriously. Suddenly the spotlight is on the next phase of your life – your precious life – and this is the only one you have. Life has no dress rehearsals. This is it! As you move on from here, you have one real shot at making a difference: to shape the future, to get outside your comfort zones, to create new maps in your mind, to navigate un-travelled roads, to discover new ways of solving old problems. To make a difference, by being the difference. Can I say this: if our world is to heal from its worn out wars; if it’s to ever finally defeat injustice and intolerance; if ever we’re to solve the crises that ecologically threaten our environment; if we’re to dismantle tyranny, eradicate extremism, discover moral and physical cures for the AIDS pandemic across the world; if we’re to break the destructive cycles that plague humankind: the cycles of poverty, of bigotry; of abuse; of exploitation; of ignorance – it will be because young people realise their calling under God.
You see, God has this strange idea about young people. God believes in them. God believes that young people are powerful agents for making a difference for the better. In the biblical record, we see Joseph, the youngest son, declaring God’s dream in Egypt. There’s David, the young boy, showing that giant problems can be dealt with. Here’s Jeremiah, who complained, “I’m too young to be a prophet”. And God replies: “Jeremiah, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” And then there’s the young Jesus, confounding everyone in the synagogue. God has always shown a bias towards the particular use of young people.
Who will ever forget the images of a young man in Tiananmen Square in China refusing to move in front of an oncoming tank, forcing it to swerve around him? I know that particular protest by young Chinese was crushed, but we’re still being inspired by it, and one day China will be free.
We in South Africa owe a debt of thanks to young Americans of a previous generation.
When Apartheid was viciously oppressing black South Africans in a struggle that saw the minority regime imprison and torture its own citizens for simply wanting equality and freedom, young people at college campuses joined anti-Apartheid pickets, protests, and marches. Beginning in 1962, those in South Africa who believed in non-violent struggle begged successive U.S administrations to join the international coalition to impose sanctions against the Apartheid government: to send them the message: “you can’t do these things. We won’t support you.” Fourteen times, proposed anti-apartheid sanctions legislation was voted down in Congress. When it eventually passed, the President vetoed it. Congress subsequently over-rode the veto, and within 36 months, Apartheid crumbled. But it was young Americans who had kept up the pressure, forcing College pension funds to disinvest, forcing businesses as large as the Ford Motor Company to shut its South African operation, and eventually forcing Congress to scale the moral heights. Young Americans went out as Peace Corps volunteers, to serve in lonely rural places. Because young Americans answered the cries of their brothers and sisters on another continent, South Africa is free; South Africa is democratic; South Africa is non-sexist; South Africa is non-racial. And the Ford Motor Company has returned!
You see, the perpetrators and supporters of Apartheid thought they could last forever, but they could not outlast America’s young people who were part of God’s movement for ushering in justice and freedom. Imagine that: young Americans, caring about young South Africans, whom they had never seen or met – and helping to secure their liberty. Young people in this country helped us to be delivered from a hellish nightmare. You didn’t bomb us into liberation. You didn’t militarily invade us. We became free non-violently, and young Americans demonstrated with us that there are better ways for the world to deal with conflict: the ways of forgiveness, of compromise, of reconciliation. As a South African, let me publicly state for the record the thanks of my nation to the generation of young Americans who helped make the miracle of South Africa possible.
God continues to have a dream for our world: that young people will continue to answer the call, to show the way, to be the difference, to make the difference. Archbishop Tutu, who is one of my heroes, and also one of the two people who actually commissioned me into the anti-apartheid struggle, always reminds his listeners that when God sees injustice and oppression in the world, God doesn’t send lightning bolts to strike down the perpetrators. Or when God sees hunger, God doesn’t float hamburgers down from heaven; angels don’t supernaturally deliver ‘carducci’ clothing for the poorest of the poor: God usually sends young people. When the starving are to be fed, the naked clothed, the weeping comforted, God usually sends young people. You see, when young people catch the vision in one place, and add their passion, and answer the call, then young people in other places get to live in houses, drink clean water, have enough to eat, receive medicines and health care, and live in peace.
In the past two years, an outstanding young Millsap’s graduate, Crickett Nikovich, served in a project started by a friend and colleague of mine in Cape Town, to empower women and child refugees who have fled violence or hunger in their own countries. From the reports I received, Crickett has been an outstanding ambassador for America, and Millsaps – and I am so proud of her. Even as we meet here today, a group of our students are on their way to Cape Town to work in that same project, and I am so proud of Millsap’s for this initiative, helping young America to once again become part of God’s dream to alleviate human suffering. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Will you too answer that call, in your own particular way, to be part of God’s dream, by serving humanity? Let me move towards my conclusion by suggesting to you two challenges you will need to engage and overcome, if you are to be a generation who moves the world forward, to a better place. I’m a preacher, so I use stories – because I’m not smart enough to think without pictures: this story is a true one, told by Carlos Valles, a Spanish missionary in India. On a beautiful sunny, blue-skied afternoon, he was riding his bicycle along a sandy jungle path, when he experienced a chill in his spirit. He knew something was wrong: the birds had stopped singing, and even the crickets in the grass had stopped their chirping. Then he saw it: in a low bush was a tiny bird, and in front of it, a swaying cobra was hypnotising the tiny bird, with its rhythmic movements. The bird was paralyzed, unable to move. The snake was poised to strike, to deliver its load of deadly toxin. Carlos was filled with a sense of profound irony: the little bird had wings – all it had to do was flap them, and it would soar into the blue heavens. Isn’t it sadly tragic that creatures who have been designed for the heavens can allow themselves to be hypnotised and paralyzed by creatures that can only crawl the earth on their bellies?
What paralyzes us?
In South Africa, we learnt that evil can do it. We live in a dangerous world where – as America learnt again on 9/11 – people are capable of despicable and barbaric evil. In South Africa, we experienced nearly 50 years of indescribable evil. We lived through many, many 9/11 moments – massacres, torture, killings – not even churches were hallowed ground. At St. James Episcopal Church in Cape Town, terrorists entered one Sunday evening and gunned down young people while they were worshipping God. During the revelations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, we listened with shock to an account of young policemen barbecuing meat and drinking beer while watching the bodies of the innocent victims they had killed burning on a fire they had made to get rid of the evidence of their savagery. Such evil can paralyse us. When we hear of children being molested, or children being conscripted into armies, or dictators brutalising their citizens, we can become so overwhelmed that we feel helpless. We can lose heart, and even lose faith, because human beings have such extraordinary capacity for evil.
But we discovered something more; much greater: in the midst of gruesome evil, human beings have an incredible capacity for goodness. During the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, we learnt this as we listened to the victims, people who had every reason for bitterness and revenge; yet as they confronted their victims, they transcended the evil, and obliterated it with their forgiving spirit and Christ-like goodness. My most enduring memory is of an older woman, intently gazing into the eyes of the young security policeman who had killed her son. With tears running down her cheeks, she cupped her hands on his face and uttered words to this effect: “You killed my son. Now he’s not here for me to love. I have no son to love, so now you are going to have to let me love you as my own son.”
The young security policeman fainted. You see, goodness can outlast and wear out evil. We don’t have to be paralyzed by evil.
Second, we can be paralyzed by fear. In South Africa, we had to make our choice: between the politics of fear, and the politics of hope. The politics of fear bring out the worst in us; the politics of hope draws out our best. The politics of fear convince people that the only way to destroy your enemies is to kill them; the politics of hope tells us that we overcome our enemies with the strength of our ideals, the nobility of our values, and the power of our ideas. The Bible says: ‘Perfect Loves drives all fear away.’ Young people, here’s my plea: don’t let cynical old folks destroy your idealism and hope. Don’t let merchants of fear paralyse you. When we’re unafraid, we can find solutions in the midst even of excruciating evil. That’s the thing about people like Mother Theresa, and Nelson Mandela: they refused to let hope give way to fear. Therefore history will celebrate them, while those who trade with fear will be thrown into the trash-bins of history. In the coming decades and centuries, the world will continue to celebrate President Mandela, but the South Africa Presidents such as Verwoerd, Vorster, and Botha, who betrayed the vision of hope that God gives to the world, these Presidents, who brainwashed people with the propaganda of fear, they will be always condemned in the annals of history. I thank God for leading us from fear to hope.
Listen how the saga of the snake and the bird was concluded. The missionary tells that he couldn’t bear the thought of the little bird being unnecessarily killed by the cunning snake. He had to move quickly: the snake was arched, ready to strike: so all he did was this: (make sudden forward movement, raising both arms):- the snake angrily turned to see who was intruding, and as it turned, the spell was broken, and the bird was freed from its hypnotic state: it became un-paralysed, flapped its little wings and flew into the heavens, with a song in its throat. Our world and future requires young people to intervene; to do this: (make the movement); please: don’t let evil or fear paralyze you. Goodness and hope are the winning solution. South Africa has proved that. Young Americans of past generations have proved that. Learn that the God of goodness and hope is inviting – calling – saying, as Archbishop Tutu expresses God’s appeal: ‘Please help me realize my dream. Come help me overcome injustice, exploitation, discrimination, and oppression. Come help me feed the hungry, build health clinics among the destitute, create jobs among the unemployed, build hope in communities who have given up on the dream.” God says: “We can do it.” When we answer the call, and refuse to let evil or fear incapacitate us, God smiles.
Fly graduates, fly! With goodness in your hearts, with freedom in your spirit, with fire in your bones, with hope in your minds, and with God by your side, fly young Americans, fly young South Africans, fly, young people from every nation, fly young people, fly!
Thank you.
Rev. Ross Olivier
Galloway U.M.C.
