University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

THE EDUCATION OF MIND, HEART AND SOUL

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Luke 12:35-48

A Sermon by Robert E. Dunham

University Presbyterian Church

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Installation of John Rogers                    September 21, 2008

            Some of you have heard me tell her story before. She came to Harvard University from the Midwest, from a working class family.  To fill the gap between financial aid and financial need, she was working her way through Harvard, and, in so doing, was cleaning the rooms of some of her fellow Harvard students as a housekeeper.  One of her professors there, Robert Coles, wrote about this otherwise anonymous young sophomore some years ago in The Chronicle of Higher Education.^[1]  The young woman told Coles that in her work as a housekeeper again and again she had encountered classmates who “apparently had forgotten the meaning of please and thank you -- no matter how high their [S.A.T.] scores -- students who did not hesitate to be rude, even crude toward her.”

            She came to see Coles in tears one day, describing for him a work-related encounter in the dorm with a classmate who had sexually harassed and propositioned her.  It was not the first time, she said.  And after all the other harassment and rudeness, she had finally reached the breaking point.  Feeling vulnerable and hard-pressed, she had quit her job and was getting ready to drop out of school.

            As she told Coles about the precipitating problem with the unprincipled classmate, she commented that the young man who had harassed her was a very good student, pre-med.  “That guy gets all A's,” she said.  “In fact, I've taken two moral reasoning courses with him, and I'm sure he's gotten A's in both of them -- and yet look at how he behaves with me, and I'm sure with others.”  She talked about the irony of it happening at Harvard, of all places.  Then, said Coles, she became a bit more reflective. A philosophy major, she began to talk about a course she had taken on the Holocaust and of the ironies of that unspeakable crime – that it could happen in a nation previously known as one of the most civilized in the world, with a citizenry as well educated as that of any country at the time.

            Before she left his office, and, shortly thereafter, the university as well, she asked Coles a pointed question: “I've been taking all these philosophy courses, and we talk about what's true, what's important, what's good.  Well, how do you teach people to be good?  What's the point of knowing good, if you don't keep trying to become a good person?”

            It's a good question.  Indeed, we might ask, what's the use of education at all if it does not make some significant contribution to the public good, if it does not make of us better persons and more thoughtful contributors to the communities and world in which we live?  If you take nothing else away from here today on this Sunday when we install John Rogers as our campus minister, I hope you will take that question:  what is the use of education if it does not make some significant contribution to the public good, if it does not make us better persons and collectively more thoughtful contributors to human society?

            Franklin Roosevelt once said, “To train a [person] in mind and not in morals is to train a menace to society.”  But that idea draws fire today in an age of moral relativism and multi-culturalism.  Whose morals?  Which values?  According to what authority?  They are, of course, legitimate questions, which make simple answers very difficult to come by.  So, let me simplify matters a bit by focusing our attention on the church's role in higher education, on campus ministry, if you will, and on the responsibility of Christian students and faculty to help education find its heart and its soul... that is, to help bridge the chasm between intellect and character, between knowing good and doing it.

            We find our moorings as Christians in the old Hebrew understanding that the “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps. 111:10), which is to say that true wisdom begins with a sense of reverence, mystery and awe in the presence of God.  The writer of Deuteronomy framed such awe in terms of the affirmation and command which lies at the heart of the Hebrew Torah, and at the foundation of our faith as well:

Hear, O Israel. the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.  And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (6:4-7)

When Jesus was asked to name the greatest commandment, Mark’s Gospel remembers that he cited that same Deuteronomic text, with a slight rewording: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Then he added, “And your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:30)   Our minds are an integral part of that important equation.  The life of the mind is crucial to a life lived in the service of God.  There is no knowledge/ morality gap in such a focused way of living.  Knowledge, faith, behavior and character all fit together, as do heart, soul, mind and strength. They are all part of our calling and responsibility.

            Of course, the greater the knowledge one attains, the higher the responsibility for faithful living.  It is a point underwritten by Jesus' reminder to the disciples that “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” (Luke 12:48)  And so, to us... mostly intelligent, articulate, highly-educated people (or well on the way to such an identity)... the challenge is even greater.  As we know, so should we do.  As we have been given, so should we give.

            And thus, not only should our education provide an impetus to right behavior; it also should ask of us something more than the pursuit of narrow self-interest… or narrow national interest, for that matter.  In the Christian consciousness, education is never simply for the enhancement of self or of one’s own tribe, but always for service and the larger common good.  During his presidency at Davidson College, John Kuykendall often spoke of the historic Christian, and, more specifically, Presbyterian linkage of education and service. Scholarship and service go hand in hand, and the aim of the former is always to prepare us for the latter, he argued. 

Each of us lives in two concentric circles of neighborhoods [Kuykendall said, by which he meant that we live in]: two [Chapel Hills], two North Carolinas, two Souths, two Americas, two worlds: there is the one that is, and the one that ought to be.  The litmus test of [one's education and one's] servanthood is the degree to which one aspires to see the real become the ideal.  And what keeps us engaged – keeps us  serving, if you will – is the healthy and creative tension which can always exist between the two, if it is our honest and persistent desire to make a difference in the way things are, so that they come closer to the way they ought to be.

The message [of the church in higher education] is servanthood:  servanthood in the classroom and in the courtroom, in the wards of hospitals and in the corridors of power, in banks and corporations and commercial ventures, in homes and offices and places of worship, in matters civic and social, economic and political.... [You] will be able to make a difference in this world to the extent that [you] are willing to give of [yourself].^[2]

Education is for service. It is for upbuilding the community with justice and equity and integrity. I’m grateful that the faithful care and thoughtful leadership that Ollie Wagner and Caroline Craig and now John Rogers have brought to the Presbyterian Campus Ministry, coupled with the strong leadership of the PCM students across the years, that linkage is alive and well in the Presbyterian Campus Ministry. Conversation about personal faith is never very far removed from conversation about or engagement with human needs at PCM.  Campus ministry, indeed the ministry of the whole church should always be pressing us to see that education equips faithful people better to serve the welfare and good of the whole community. As Jesus said, “From those to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.”  

            I’ve spoken here before about the eccentric old chemistry teacher I had in high school, one who had mastered the art of teaching by intimidation, who graded each day’s class performance by hundreds and zeros.  His name was Mr. Krummel.  Consistently he began each day by a tour of the room, asking each of us a question, giving each of us a hundred or zero.  There was one day, however, when the first question he asked was a stumper.  Annette Chipley nervously ventured a guess, but missed: Zero.  J.B. Harper shrugged his shoulders.  Zero.  Becky Daniels just started crying.  Still, a zero.  One by one, we all missed the answer, and all of us felt the sting of the zero in Mr. Krummel's grade book.

            Then he rose from his desk, and launched into his little homily for the morning.  “There are four types of persons in this world,” he said.  “There are those who know, and know that they know.  There are those who know, and know not that they know.  There are those who know not, but know that they know not.  And then there are you: those who know not, and know not that they know not.”

            But that's not our problem today.  We know.  We know.  The challenge for us is to do and to be as well as we know.  It is always a challenge for educated people, but even more crucial in these challenging times.

            Think back for a moment to the Harvard sophomore who asked Robert Coles how intelligent, civilized people could allow and participate in such horrors as the Holocaust, even as she thought of the classmate who had behaved so poorly toward her.  Her question about the Holocaust brought to my mind a different experience of those horrific days on our world stage.  More than a quarter century ago now the philosopher Philip Hallie wrote a book about a remarkable French village, a town whose people, unlike so many others in France, engaged in the dangerous practice of sheltering Jews from the Nazis during the German occupation.  The name of the village was Le Chambon, and Hallie went there to try to discover what led these simple people to do such an extraordinary thing.  What he discovered was that they weren’t particularly heroic or extraordinary people... not even politically enlightened.

            Indeed, what he found was that the largest part of their education had come from the teachings of the village church, and from its pastor, André Trocmé.  Each week Pastor Trocmé proclaimed the Word, and each week the members of the parish studied the Scriptures, and each week they came to understand something of their call to discipleship and faithfulness.  And over time the people there came, by habit, to be folks who knew what to do... who also developed a willingness to do it.  When the time came for them to be courageous, specifically, when the Nazis came to town looking for Jews, the people of Le Chambon quietly did what was right... they sheltered their Jewish brothers and sisters from harm.

            One elderly woman, who faked a heart attack when the Nazis came to search her house, said later, “Pastor always taught us that there comes a time in every life when a person is asked to do something for Jesus.  When our time came, we knew what to do.”  Another woman, when asked why she would risk her life for the sake of these total strangers, replied, “For what else was I born?”^[3]

            Education and understanding without a heart and soul are empty and devoid of promise.  Education that seeks and finds a heart and soul yields servanthood and strength.  It is the mission of the church and of its campus ministry in this village to help tie together scholarship and service, intellect and character, personal compassion and social justice, to help connect education, the life of the mind, with its heart and soul and strength. 

Why study?  Why learn?  Why serve others with our understanding?  Why strive to integrate heart and soul and mind and strength in the service of God and humankind?  For what else were we born?