No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. (Matthew 11:27).
Editor’s note: The following sermon was given on January 27, 2025 at the start of the Spring Semester at Virginia Theological Seminary’s Immanuel Chapel. It has been lightly edited for this written context.
1. What has God’s revelation in Jesus Christ meant for you in the turmoil of this political moment?
2. How has the Gospel work that you’ve committed to in your context taken on political significance in this time?
3. What biblical tasks are you feeling called to commit or recommit to?
For my skeptical friends, they have a very simple question: how on earth can puny humans know what the creator and source of everything is like? It is hard enough to know what a black hole is like or how come the Washington Commanders are having a decent season even if they lost the NFC Championship? Given that these things are hard to work out, then trying to work out what is underpinning everything is really difficult. Surely, they conclude, it is impossible to know about ultimate reality. Agnosticism is the only rational position.
The question is a good one and we need a clear answer. We know what God is like because God has revealed God to us. As the Gospel of Matthew makes clear, the source of everything that is – the Father – is disclosed in the Son. You can know what God the Father is like by looking at Jesus the Son. Look at Jesus and you see God. The words and deeds of Jesus tell us what the ultimate reality is like.
Our obligation as Church is to constantly share with others what we learn of God in Christ. This is it. This is our mission.
You might have heard that our alumna Bishop Mariann Budde recently generated some media interest because she had the temerity to ask the President of the United States to be merciful. I did not intend to get involved but when emails and phone messages came to the Seminary condemning our teaching because we had produced a radical left-wing Marxist, I felt obligated to issue a statement. Thus far the statement has been viewed over 200,000 times. The point was simple. VTS teaches students how to read the truth about God from the incarnate God. And we support Bishop Budde because she modeled in her sermon the art of reading of God from Christ. Let me explain what I mean. If you listen to the sermon carefully, you will find it is deeply biblical. So, just walk with me through the concluding sentences of her sermon.
She said, “Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land.” Here she is picking up on a major theme in the Old Testament- see Leviticus 19:33-34, Deuteronomy 10:18-19 – and of course the sheep and the goats story in Matthew 25, where our Lord says, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
Then we have “May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being” – this is of course from the Baptismal Covenant and is grounded in the doctrine of the Imago Dei – every human being is of infinite value because we are made in the Image of God.
Then having asked God to grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, she continues: “To speak the truth to one another in love.” This is a straight quote from Ephesians 4:15. And then she concludes with the words alluding to Micah 6:8 “and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people. Good of all people in this nation and the world.” And so, the sermon ends.
Friends, it really was all Scripture. And this is a good model. The way to proceed in this moment is very simple. We preach the Gospel; we witness to the values of Scripture. We do not deviate from our core mission.
It was under my predecessor Dean Martha Horne that we started our work in multicultural ministries. The Rev. Joseph Constant was the first director of multicultural ministries. It was always grounded in a conviction that all people are of infinite value and that all people must be honored. It was a program that also recognized that racism is abhorrent; and yet white America is so utterly imaginative in ensuring that racism continues – slavery ends, segregation starts, segregation ends, mass incarceration starts, and so the journey continues.
We never called it DEI. We started it long before DEI became fashionable. It was simply biblical – say after me, it was simply biblical. But we will continue to do this work. It is embedded in our Seminary Covenant, which I want to see given greater prominence. We are going to do our multicultural ministries work with even greater intentionality in this season. We will continue the work of reparations. When an institution commits sin and generations of people are deprived the benefits in their estates of the labor of their ancestors, restoration is a foundational principle in the Torah; in Numbers, we read, “he shall make full restitution for his wrong, adding a fifth to it and giving it to him to whom he did the wrong.” (Numbers 5). We are not doing this because we are trendy; we are doing this because “it is simply biblical” – say after me “it is simply biblical.”
It was under my predecessor Dean Martha Horne that we took a stand and made it clear that our understanding of the revelation of God in Jesus of Nazareth means that we are committed to the full inclusion of LGBT-plus people. This will continue. The Biblical witness is clear about our obligation to support persons who are trans. The question is asked and answered in Acts 8, where the eunuch is permitted to be baptized. So, we support our trans students because it is simply biblical. Say after me “it is simply biblical”. Out of fidelity to the Scriptures, we affirm, support, and celebrate our trans students in this Seminary. This is not new. We are just continuing the work we have been doing for decades.
This Seminary has always had faculty who are either tenured or tenure track. The roots of tenure in higher education (it is even older in other educational sectors) go back to 1940 (during the second world war) with the American Association of University Professors issuing a statement on Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure. The Faculty need to know that they can write and speak as appropriate to the challenges of our time and their position at VTS is secure. No external agency can require the Seminary to dismiss a Faculty member because of their witness in this time.
And so, I am clear: we welcome a plurality of voices as we seek to discern the values that we are called as Christians to uphold. As part of our commitment to honoring the voices of others, we remain in conversation with the Anglican Communion and our siblings in Christ in other Christian families. The New Testament constantly calls us to live in unity and conversation with each other (John 17:21-23, Ephesians 4:1-6): we do this because it is simply biblical – say after me “it is simply biblical”. This we have also been doing for decades.
As we start the Spring semester, we are just going to carry on doing what we have been doing for decades. This work of multicultural ministries – this work of inclusion of LGBT-plus persons – this work of supporting Faculty who want to address the challenges of our time – this work of welcoming international students and visitors – this work, we never called woke, this work is not VTS seeking to be partisan, we do this work because it is what the God revealed in Christ requires us to do.
So help us God.