President’s Response
Inaugural Reflection
The Reverend Dr. David Vásquez Levy, D.Min.
President
Pacific School of Religion
January 29, 2015
Jeremiah 32
I got some ocean front property in Arizona.
From my front porch you can see the sea.
I got some ocean front property in Arizona.
If you’ll buy that, I’ll throw the Golden Gate in free.
– George Straight’s Ocean Front Property
Thank you for the opportunity to join the Pacific School of Religion (PSR) community. Those of you gathered here today represent the depth and beauty of PSR’s rich community and partners.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and venture to say that this is the only time a country song has been used at a PSR presidential inauguration. I can’t help it. I’ve got to show my Texas connections! Plus it mentions the Golden Gate Bridge.
Ocean front property in Arizona… A dubious real estate proposal. The housing bubble of 2008 has made us leery of real estate investments. Planting Christian Seed in Western Soil, the book that tells the story of PSR’s first 100 years, captures vividly the reality of dubious investments, as it questions the wisdom of starting a seminary among 49ers, gold prospectors streaming in from across the country and around the globe. The beginnings of PSR likely would have sounded like a dubious real estate proposal.
Weren’t there plenty of good seminaries out East that could churn out pastors to send out here and tame the masses? Yet there was a conviction that theology at its best must be contextual. That it must be connected to deep academic roots and traditions, but interpreted anew, embodied—taking its cue from the Word made flesh. Ocean front property in Arizona indeed.
There is some funny real estate business going on in the reading we heard earlier from Jeremiah. Listen to it again:
At that time the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and the prophet Jeremiah was confined in the court of the guard that was in the palace of the king of Judah, where King Zedekiah of Judah had confined him.
The word of God comes to Jeremiah and suggest he buys the equivalent of some ocean front property in Arizona. He is instructed to buy land in a city that is besieged.
As my family and I make the transition here to California, we are getting a more in-depth, first-hand education in Real Estate. We have a front seat to the ways that real estate embodies value, reveals divisions, and is tied to opportunity.
You noticed where Jeremiah is, when he gets the proposal, right? Jeremiah is receiving this advice while he is in jail. The official story is that he is in jail for treason to the nation. But in reality he is in jail because unlike the king and those in power, he doesn’t have the luxury of pretending that the sky isn’t falling. He called out the inequality, injustice, and reliance on the excessive forms of power. Oh my, some things never change…!
Jeremiah has the right of purchase on this choice piece of land in Anathoth, and God is telling him he ought to buy it—no promises of throwing in the Golden Gate in free, though.
We can all think of places where even if given the choice and the resources we probably would not invest. Places torn by uncertainty, transition, violence. Some could argue that given today’s realities higher education and the church are two such real estate propositions. Put the two together, and you have seminaries: Church + Higher Ed = Seminary.
Higher education is in the news more than ever before—from Saturday Night Live to the State of the Union Address. Headlines about student debt, unequal access, the failure of education hoped to be the great equalizer and instead is adding to a growing inequality; the challenges brought about by technological change and global competition. Ocean front property indeed!
Since the late 50’s and 60’s when the majority of mainline denominations formed their current permutations, they have shrunk to about half the size. Yet the number of church buildings has not reduced nearly to the same level. We are, Diana Butler Bass, states in Christianity after Religion, in a post-Christendom world. We are in the years following what she terms “the horrible decade”:
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- Started with the events of 9/11 (2001) and connected religion with extremism (both in the attacks and in many of the responses)
- It was followed by an inability to engage conversation about human sexuality and confront sexual abuse
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I’ve got some ocean front property, indeed…!
Yet, the word of God comes to Jeremiah:
“Buy my field that is at Anathoth,”
And he buys the field!
I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, and weighed the money on scales.
Somebody say: stop! Having just bought a house and signed a mountain of papers in the last three weeks, I know exactly what the reading is going on about.
Jeremiah is no blind optimist. In fact, he is mostly known for his Jeremiads, which dominate most of the book that takes his name. Yet there is a shift in his tone just a few chapters before in chapter 29:
“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”
Indeed, Jeremiah is no idealist… he is keenly aware of the reality. He has been cataloguing it for almost 30 chapters. Yet he also knows a different story. Jeremiah, the master of the prophetic act, the early pioneer in the power of image to communicate, embodies his hope in real estate terms:
“For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”
He buys the field in Anathoth. He invests in a future he cannot yet see but fully believes in. He acts out of hope just like the Prophet Ezekiel, when asked to assess the investment situation in a desolate valley:
“Mortal, can these bones live?”
Jeremiah and Ezekiel both respond:
“O Sovereign one, you know.”
Sitting at the intersection of faith communities, higher education, and the world, PSR is called to invest in the future. In the midst of all the uncertainty, God will continue to raise leaders that can bring about God’s dream and vision for the world. What role will we play? Where will we invest?
What we do at PSR—at this intersection of higher education and the church—is more needed today than ever. A recent Lumina Foundation study stated that out of 60% of the population who need higher education, only 14% have access. That’s a shocking statistic for many of us who have had access to education and may have even believed it was a given or our right. But it is, in the words of Jonathan Kozol, marked by “savage inequalities.” The need for the kind of education we provide is real.
In contrast to the sense of decline in mainline Christianity, religion continues to be the leading animating force throughout the global south and in emerging communities here in the United States. We need leadership that helps connect the church across its divides, bringing together resources of established communities with the energy and promise of emerging ones. We have incredible capacity. Leaders who view the church differently, through the eyes of the immigrant, the marginalized, for whom the resources and opportunities we have are unimaginable.
As the community of Pacific School of Religion, we have put everything on the table. Being realists as Jeremiah was, we have also dared to name our field in Anathoth.
A vision of theological education for the 21st century: to prepare spiritually-formed, theologically-rooted leaders for social transformation. We have elected to pair our theological depth with spiritual resiliency and decided not just to admire the problem, but transform it!
Michael Crow at his inauguration set the path for Arizona State University saying it would become, “not a place for a few but a force for many.” Refusing to equate “exclusion” with “excellence,” we too must challenge a system often focused on educating only those most resourced and considered the brightest.
We will build our work around three pillars:
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- One: Providing strong academic training for leaders of existing and emerging faith communities
- Two: Preparing spiritually rooted leaders to respond to the call for social transformation
- Three: Being a seminary on the move, responding to recent alumna Gale Tompkins-Bischel’s call to “get off holy hill” as the disciples who experienced God on the mountain top
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Why PSR? Because in real estate, it is all about location, location, location. We are a place of intersections: literally. Our campus sits on the corner of Scenic, LeConde, and Ridge Road. A complex and beautiful intersection that embodies the Graduate Theological Union and its broadening vision of ecumenism and interfaith engagement. With both historical and promising possibilities with one of the leading public universities in the country. For 150 years, we have had a tradition of boldness. We have experience investing in daring real estate. We led the way in preparation of women for ministry and a broad diversity of leaders in emerging communities. We held early commitment to leadership in ecumenical and interfaith work. We have lived out our commitments through scholarship and activism in response to the Japanese internment camps, the civil rights movement, full inclusion for LGBTQ people, and many others.
We have real, very real, estate. In a place that is 20 years ahead of where the country is heading in terms of economy, energy, and demographics, we will engage in a campus transformation: keeping this location while freeing up resources, being better environmental stewards, and creating the kind of community we envision.
Here we can embody the kind of community Alice Walker hinted at in The Color Purple, when Baby Shug (played in the movie by Margaret Avery) asks Celie (the main character, played by Whoopy Goldberg):
…Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? [Cause] I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.
Here we come to share God.
Where is your field in Anathoth? The place where we will choose to invest even as we acknowledge the challenging realities of our world? These are challenging times, but they are not the first, neither will they be the last. This past Tuesday was the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In the context of the atrocities of the Holocaust, Dietrich Bonhoeffer—reflecting on Jeremiah’s unlikely real estate investment—wrote:
“There remains for us only the very narrow way, often extremely difficult to find, of living every day as if it were our last, and yet living in faith and responsibility as though there were to be a great future. It is not easy to be brave and keep that spirit alive, but it is imperative.”
Amen.