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Good Afternoon,
I would like to express my gratitude to my fellow graduates for this opportunity to be the Senior Commencement Speaker. I am honored that you have selected me and I thank you.
Prior to me starting my theological spiritual journey I had walked through many years of my life searching and trying to answer the question why did God create me. Finally, fours years ago I understood God’s answer. And as overjoyed and honored as I am…I had two major issues with God. First, the call to ministry would financially have an impact on my life style. Second, my call to be a pastor would require me to do the one thing that I fear the most, public speaking. It’s evident by my presence here today who won both battles.
Once God set me straight about those two issues, I transitioned myself to walk into the world of theological wonder. I remember on my first day of class I paced myself to walk slowly down the short path to enter this rather small building where I would be spending the next few years of my life. Although the path was short it was long enough for me to clearly hear the Holy Spirit echoing in the wind…Welcome Home Mia! In that moment, I was humbled and honored at the thought that the Spirit had whispered such a phenomenal greeting just for me.
But I soon learned that each and every time that I walked that short path that God’s salutation was His invitation to me and my colleague’s to embrace our uniqueness, but don’t stop there, walk through the doors of Moravian Theological Seminary to something far greater. We were being commissioned to value the experience of a collective assembly…called community.
It is here where we each walked through the doors of theological wonder holding on tightly to our own unique specific beliefs. After all it was God who called us to this journey; it made sense at that time for us to believe that we were right in our assumptions and beliefs. But I soon learned that as a seminarian student that my beliefs would be challenged, stretched, repositioned, reconsidered, and yes even on occasions rejected. That sounds uncomfortable… well it was. Although it was at times painful…it was done with the utmost respect, love, and nurture as a member of this community…which empowered me to come back the next day for more.
As I look back now on this spiritual journey over the past 4 years, I recognized that as we each took our turn walking down that short pathway for classes, taking our first steps in accepting our call to be teachers, chaplains, counselors, and pastors we brought with us a sense of arrogance. We thought that this call to the seminary would of course require some fine tuning, or polishing of what we thought we were, these pretty well rounded future leaders. But as the first of many syllabi were handed to us, providing us with an overview of the required readings, deadlines for assignments, presentations, and papers, we soon learned that we were not as put together as we thought. Fine tuning or a quick polish was no where in our near future…that would come a few years later. We had a lot more walking to do down that short path in understanding the foundational work that we needed to achieve in really honoring our call.
We needed to discover who we are, not what we thought we were. We needed to dig deep beneath the layers of our own personal experiences and our uniqueness to make room to mature into the reshaped beings that God was calling us to be. That’s real hard work. And it is a transformation for me that came from being in the midst of a supportive community. Moravian Theological Seminary is a community that embraced me and changed me. It’s a community that grooms you to want to make a difference in the ministry. But more important the difference in peoples lives.
It is a community that cares about its members and its neighbors. It’s a place that gets energized about the students who are walking through the doors. It’s filled with a richness that is contagious that invites you and longs for you to not just attend classes, but to make friendships that will become integral and essential parts of your life. It provokes you to be a part of something that is delicious that will feed your soul.
In addition to the personal friendships that we have been rewarded with in this community, we have been blessed with some awesome learning opportunities by the staff. We have been also blessed because God had entrust us in the hands of some wonderful, infuriating, frustrating, and intriguing professors…whose call is to teach us, inspire us, and push us past our comfort levels. They were committed to motivating us. It was here in this community that we have learned so many things because of them. We have learned that no journey is really undertaken alone. As students we have supported each other, but the professors and faculty have supported us and walked this journey with us. Today we are polished because you have honored your call and we thank you.
As graduates today we have all grown in heart and soul. Together we came to know how much we had to give. We can thank this community for that. We have been moved to a place that we could not have traveled alone. Here we have all found wisdoms and truths that cannot help but be related to our own lives and our calls. We know ourselves a lot better than when we began. Here our short walks down the path to this small building put us on a new journey to life.
It is here in this community that God recognized and also the faculty…that for each of us to be the best we can be we must explore who we are and God’s design of us to be better and equipped for our new roles in the world. And now that moment has come again to transition ourselves for the new communities that we will be joining. I am anxiously waiting to hear what the Spirit will whisper in the wind for each of us as we embrace the new paths that we will walk. Thank You…
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