“Don’t Seek to Do Great Things”
“Don’t Seek to Do Great Things”
Dear President Dawn, members of the Concordia Community, and especially our December graduates of 2023.
I am so honored to be back on this campus, and am deeply touched to serve as commencement speaker. I have an advantage. I sat right up on this stage for A LOT of graduation speeches at Concordia. A LOT. In fact, I did a quick calculation, and I think that after twenty-one years at CUC, two ceremonies in the fall, two in the spring, a handful in the Summer (back when we did them in August—yes, that was hot wearing those robes!); and then a handful of doctoral commencements the past few years, I think I’m up to hearing over seventy graduation speeches over the years. That’s biblical proportions of graduation speeches. I’ve listened to the “Septuagint” of graduation speeches!
I’m an expert now. And I can tell you that there’s two things you can always count on for a commencement speech: At the beginning, there’s the obligatory graduation joke; and at the end there’s the call to “do great things”. So, I’m not going to either, and that’s why this will be a very memorable speech.
For the joke, here’s what I’m going to ask you to do: after the ceremony, to do me a favor and google “best jokes for graduation speeches”. Pick your favorite, and then tell all your family and friends I told that one. (This will be our little secret. Keep it clean. I’m a Lutheran Pastor, and don’t want to get defrocked at my new parish!).
So, that takes care of the obligatory joke. The second thing is that graduation speakers always tell you to “seek to do great things.” The title of this speech, however, is “Don’t Seek to Do Great Things.” That’s my advice: don’t seek to do great things.
Give me a chance to explain. You see, very few of you will end up doing “great things” by this world’s dramatic standards. That’s the honest truth. Most of you will leave this morning, and enter into fairly ordinary lives: teaching, coaching, families, business, congregations, possibly graduate school. Perhaps a few of you might end up with an earth-shattering, seismic influence on the world—the “Great Things” by this world’s standards. If you do, great! Praise God! You’ll probably get an invitation to come back here and speak, and to make a gift to your alma mater. Which you definitely should do!
But that’s not how it works for most of us—it certainly didn’t for me. And so, if I tell you to “seek to do great things”; and “change the world”, so to speak, most of you are going to fail..
But what if I said it this way?: “Don’t seek to do great things, rather seek to do ordinary things, greatly.” That is, be faithful in the smallest things, and let God worry about making something great out of it.
This is, in part, what we mean when we talk about “vocation” at a Lutheran University. We mean that you have vocations (plural); they’re happening right now; they usually occur in the ordinary not the extra ordinary; and they’re given to you by God. Almost everything God asks you to do is going to happen in the every-day, ordinary, faces, places, and spaces of your life: where you live, work and play; the roles, relationships, and responsibilities you’ve been given; “the people that you meet when you’re walking down the street”, to quote Mr. Rogers. When I say, “seek to do ordinary things, greatly”, I mean to see each ordinary moment of your life, every simple interaction with another person as having sacred significance. God is at work through you, in the lives of others, in the quietest and most common ways.
I’m going to give you four quick examples of people who didn’t seek to do great things, but were faithful in the ordinary callings of life, and then God worked something dramatic in them.[1]
The first is Martin Luther, the German reformer whose statue is out by the rotunda (get a picture with him before you leave today). His recovery of the Christian gospel for the church, and the reforms which flowed from his study of the scriptures mark him as one of the most significant historical figures of all time. The imperatives which flowed from his spiritual insights brought about new art forms, new written languages, and new educational approaches which are still with us today. Public education—not just parochial—but public education emerges out of Reformation. The idea that all people should have access to knowledge, that knowledge is a gift for all— regardless of class, rich and poor, male and female, throughout a whole region, funded by the government, with standardized curricula and training for teachers—this is largely due to Martin Luther’s influence.
Example no. 2: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran Pastors and Theologians who worked against the Nazi regime in the 1930s and 40s. Bonhoeffer published against their wicked ideology; lead an underground seminary; at great personal risk and cost rescued Jews out of Germany; worked as a double-agent; and eventually (and quite controversially) joined in the plot to assassinate Hitler. His final days were spent in a Nazi concentration camp; he was hung naked at Flossenbürg just a couple weeks before the camp was liberated by the allied forces.
Example no. 3: Rosa Young. You’ve heard of Rosa Parks—the great Montgomery civil rights leader who helped spark the challenge to Alabama’s segregation laws. But you may not have heard of the “Second Rosa”, Rosa Young, whose Christian faith inspired her to bring education and the gospel to the rural poor of central Alabama in the 1920s and 1930s. As an African American woman, Rosa Young fought the battle against injustice on three fronts: racism, sexism, and the plight of uneducated poor. Inspired by the Lutheran vision of education, she worked tirelessly to establish congregational schools throughout Alabama, uplifting the faith and lives of thousands for whom education had previously only been a dream.
Example no. 4, hardly any of you have heard of, but remains one of the most influential African churchmen of the 20thcentury: Gudina Tumsa served as leader of the Lutheran Church in Ethiopia, in the 1970s. It’s called the Mekane Yesus, which means “Place of Jesus.”
Tumsa’s work combined a clear understanding of the gospel with the desire for holistic ministry among Africa’s poorest minorities. When the Marxist’s revolution arose in Ethiopia in the early 1970s, he refused to compromise the gospel to any worldly ideology. The brutal persecution of Ethiopian faith leaders during this times remains one an underappreciated account of Christian martyrdom. Rather than compromise the truth of the gospel, or flee his call and his people, Tumsa chose to stay and preach, regardless of the consequences. Persecuted, tortured and finally abducted and executed, Tumsa’s legacy is one of a deep faith in Jesus, a life of piety and sacrifice, and unwavering conviction. The “Place of Jesus” is now the largest Lutheran Church in Africa. There are more Lutherans in that one church body than in all of the USA.
These four “all-star saints” did great things. But here’s what you need to know about each of them: not one of them actually set-out to do anything dramatic or world-changing. In each case they simply began by being faithful in the every-day, ordinary callings God had placed upon their lives. Not one of them would have, or could have predicted impacting or inspired millions. Rather, each of them began with being faithful in the smallest, seemingly insignificant callings, which God then transformed into a legacy of world-changing proportions. They didn’t seek to great things, they sought to do ordinary things, greatly—and trusted God to take care of the rest.
We all want to make a difference, move mountains by faith, slay Goliaths with but five small stones, and leave a legacy of love and service. When they come to understand the depths and the power of Christ’s love, Christians feel compelled to take that faith into action in both word and deed.
But I want to call you this morning to “sweat the small stuff”, so to speak; to be faithful in the little ways—in everyday, ordinary faces, places and spaces of your life.
None of us can predict or control the chances and changes of life, and very few of us will ever have our names listed along-side the greatest saints of the Church —I certainly won’t. And yet, we are called to be faithful in the smallest andthe largest of callings—in whatever God gives us.
So “sweat the small stuff”. Make a difference in the ordinary. See the sacred in the simple story of your life, and leave the greatness up to God.
Congratulations and God bless you.
[1] The following four examples are cited in and revised from my book, Callings for Life: God’s Plan, Your Purpose (St. Louis: CPH, 2020), pp. 55-59