PANA Institute for Leadership Development

Professor Fumitaka Matsuoka delivered this sermon at Pacific School of Religion's weekly chapel service on May 12, 2009.

INTRODUCTION

I am not really sure how many times I have sung my swan songs this school year, but I assume that this is the last one before my retirement, at least here at PSR. When I say to people that I am retiring, the inevitable question people ask me is this: “What are you going to do when you retire?” Since so many times people ask me this question, I am tempted to say: “Over the cup of morning coffee with the newspaper in front of me, I will think about you making very difficult decisions in committee meetings.” But one thing I will do when I retire is to quit buying green bananas and I will buy only ripe ones.

But my honest answer to the question of what I will do in retirement is this: “The future is wide open.” Yes, I have some short-term plans. I will probably teach a theology course or two next year in another seminary. I am currently engaged in a couple of writing projects. They will go on for the next couple of years. But, beyond these plans, the future is indeed wide open, full of possibilities that I have not been able to entertain until now.

The only sure thing I know is that something will continue to speak through my life. And my hope is that I will not mistake the voice of victory for the voice of success, or the voice of failure for the voice of defeat. But, I also know that it will take many years and many events, that is, if I last that long, before I will begin to see, or think I see, a little of what are the meaning of these words.

Even when we glimpse whatever is spoken in our lives, we really cannot fix its meaning and know it once and for all. Because whatever is spoken in our lives is always an incarnate meaning and therefore it is alive and changing as we are ourselves alive and changing.  

Sometime ago I came across a poem written by Miriam Therese Winter, a former colleague of Bill Mckinney at Hartford Seminary. It goes like this:

“Time
turns
taking us
where we would not choose to go
Suddenly we pass a point
We will never pass again
Turning points interrupt us—
There must be some mistake!
Looking back we see them
For what they really are
Bittersweet raw reality
Breakthrough to beatitude
Bedrock that gives us courage
To give ourselves away
The less we struggle with turning points
The greater the strength remaining
To return
And turn
Again.”

It was indeed some time ago, in fact, a long, long time ago, that I came to PSR, first to teach in our summer school in the year1981. Then, I came again as a faculty member in 1984 and stayed until 1987. After five years of absence, I returned here in 1993 as academic dean. Even after I stepped down from the dean’s position, I stayed on as a theology professor and as the director of the PANA Institute. Time indeed has turned over and over again between the day I first set my feet on this campus and this day. Time has taken me where I am not sure sometimes if I would have chosen to go.

Turning points have interrupted me during these years just as your own turning points must have interrupted you. Looking back we see them for what they really are, or at least we see the contours of their meaning, that is, even if dimly. And if we close our eyes, probably we can see these turning points more clearly.

•    I would like to believe that these turning points have a plot—that the events of our lives, random and witless as they generally appear, have a shape and direction of their own.  

•    Turning points are showing us something, leading us somewhere.  At least I would like to believe that.

Obviously we are always free to run with the storyline of life. We can change the plot. But in the midst of our freedom, we sense something is hidden, some plot is at work, to make us truly who we are meant to be. Yes, “Time turns. Looking back we see them, bittersweet raw reality” indeed.

Since the year 1886 PSR has gone through many turning points. You might say this school is no longer the same school it once was.  Today there are new faces, new names, new menus that I did not see even in my time at PSR. Schools are like people; they have their own unique personalities. They grow. They age. Sometimes they even retire!  Like people each school has a history. And in our history with its numerous turning points something speaks to us. I would like to believe that God, the Holy, speaks to us at each turning point. The history of PSR and the history of each of us who have been a part of this school are not just involved in a mundane journey through time. The history of PSR and those of us who have been a part of the school are really participating in a sacred journey.

PSR’S JOURNEY DURING MY TIME:

Many incidents have followed one after another during my years at PSR. Sometimes they left me wondering where this school was going. I still wonder sometimes where we are going! But, once in a while there is the suggestion of purpose, meaning and direction.  Once in a while there is the suggestion of a plot--the suggestion that however clumsy and dim, our life-together in this school is trying to tell us something and take us somewhere at each turning point.   When I think of our life at PSR I remember the expression once used by Frederick Buechner, the “alphabet of grace”—he even wrote a book by that name.  If we learn to listen to the message of each turning point, then we will also hear the holy and elusive word that is spoken to us out of their depths—the word of grace. God speaks words of grace to us through our turning points.

THIS HOLY PLACE

Well, many of us are about to experience another important turning point in our lives. Just as the distance between PSR’s classrooms and the comfort of our own home is sometimes rewarding, and sometimes painful, the distance between what has been and what will be is filled with signs and wonders, clues and suggestions, about what life is all about. After all, the distance that comes with each turning point is really the distance from the head to the heart. And, what each turning point is saying to us is not always clear.  Yet, as I stand here at this moment, I am aware that this life-together at PSR is truly a holy time and holy place.

•    What makes this place holy in a special way is that we, you and I, are hopefully more aware of ourselves here than in some other places.

•    What makes this place holy is because we know deep within our hearts that we are thirsty for something more than what we can see, hear, and taste, something that we cannot name ourselves. “We hope for what we do not see, wait for it with patience.” We “wait with eager longing for … the freedom from the bondage of decay.”

•    You see, the Holy speaks to us best from the empty place inside us where it all belongs. Yes, we live on a holy hill indeed.

The other day, a couple of weeks ago, 30 of us, PSR & GTU students, community people and youth, all participated in the 40th Pilgrimage to Manzanar, the site of the Japanese American concentration camp during World War II. When we arrived we were met by dust, an extreme fluctuation of heat and cold, and the site of common latrines where every morsel of human dignity and privacy was stripped away in the name of national security. And wind. We were greeted by “the rush of a mighty wind” coming suddenly into our midst. We all heard the sound of the wind. We heard the sound other than our own, the sound of the painful history crying out to be heard, the sound that says:

“Never again Manzanar!
Never again concentration camps!
Never again Guantanamo!  
Never again tearing apart of families coming from the south of the boarder in the name of legal immigration!
Never again!

We “groan in travail together till now.” We wait “for the redemption.”

•    If we have our eyes open, if we have our ears tuned, every once in a while something speaks to us, in the dusty wind of a former concentration camp located out in nowhere.

•    If we have our eyes open, something is spoken to us, even in a poorly taught classroom, at our dining hall, in a very contentious meeting, and at each turning point in life -- something is spoken.

Something is spoken through the painful tears and through an unexpected joy that we share with others. “Turning points interrupt us.” And in these turning points the Holy is present. The Holy is present when the “rush of a mighty wind” sweeps into our empty place inside us. The “rush of a mighty wind” wakes us up to respond to the cry for justice, and urges us to love.  The “rush of a mighty wind” carries the cry that calls us to “wait with patience, with hope for what we have not seen.”

•    The interruption of the Holy is often subtle, often cryptic, often veiled so that the meaning is left to us to figure out by means of all the faith and imagination we can muster.

•    The interruption of the Holy is sometimes very sudden and violent like the dust storm in Manzanar. Regardless, the Holy interrupts us unexpectedly. The presence of the Holy is a turning point for us. And the message of a turning point for us, to whom it is spoken, is a meaning that only becomes clear and inspiring in our own lives when we dare to seek it out.

    I am glad that I have spent these long and short years with you at PSR. We have been together to listen to the Voice that brought us here. We have listened for the sound of the Holy at each turning point of our lives, eagerly waiting for a sign of hope that reveals itself in moments of ambiguity, in moments of bewilderment, in the moments of grief as well as the times of joy we lived together in this school.

God, the Holy does come. God, the Holy, heals and ultimately saves us in each turning point. We have been together in this school with the hope that we are each known by name, and out of the turning points of our lives God calls us by our names to the lives which God would have us live. May this be so for each one of us today, and in the days ahead. Amen.

BENEDICTION

    Go now:
    Go in safety,
        For you cannot go where God is not.
    Go in love,
        For love alone endures.
    Go with purpose,
        For God will honor your dedication.
    Go in peace,
For it is the gift of God to those whose hearts and minds are in the Holy One.
    Amen.