The following sermon was delivered by Headmaster Byron Hulsey ’86 on January 9, 2023 during the evening service at St. Andrew’s Chapel.
Tonight in chapel we celebrate God’s revelation of Jesus as His Son to the world through Jesus’ baptism, that day when Jesus came from Galilee to be annointed by John at the River Jordan. Just as John baptized Jesus and he came out of the water, Matthew tells us in the Gospel reading that “suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.” And most climactically of all, a voice from heaven came forth and said of Jesus, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Every single one of us needs love, safety, and belonging to thrive in the world, and we all yearn to hear our fathers and our mothers tell us, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Some of us are fortunate and have received that kind of affirmation from our parents. Many in the world, however, have never felt that kind of unconditional love. And the truth of it is that for us humans, it is virtually impossible to extend it to those we love, no matter how pure our intentions might be. We are all flawed, and because we are shaped by the ego-driven demands of world around us, we all come up short, and mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, friends, teachers, coaches, and advisers often struggle to communicate fully and completely a pure and unbridled and absolutely unconditional love, even for those we love the most. The good news in tonight’s Gospel is that we are offered the undeserved gift of exactly that kind of abiding love from God through Jesus.
When I came to Woodberry as a fourth form new boy from Lubbock, Texas in 1983, I was eager to achieve, but I was poorly prepared for the academic challenges thrust upon me. In particular, I struggled with geometry and especially with biology. I was overwhelmed by the volume of the material, and despite the best efforts of my wonderful teacher, I was never able to embrace his advice and the coaching I give to students today: start by learning the concepts, and as necessary, apply the essential facts to support the core ideas. I was utterly bewildered by the rigors of the course, and feverishly tried to memorize everything just to survive as I drifted between a C+ and B- for the whole of the year.
The cumulative exam at the end of the spring trimester presented me with what felt like an impossible challenge. There was no way to re-memorize all of the material, and I drifted in and out of feelings of resignation, fear, and despondency as I studied most of the weekend for the final on Monday morning. On Sunday evening we gathered here in St. Andrew’s Chapel after adviser dinner, and I felt like a wreck. I remember exactly where I was sitting–not far from where Mr. Hale’s advisees sit this year. At some point in the service I remember unexpectedly being washed over by the kind of transcendent peace that passes all understanding, an inner presence I will never forget. In my trepidation and vulnerability, the message I received was “You are ok. You are enough.”
The message didn’t come from my father or my mother–they were home in Texas, and they really wanted me to do well academically at Woodberry. It didn’t come from my friends or my teachers or my adviser or my baseball coach. It was the kind of restorative and inner peace that comes from a higher power through the Holy Spirit to the essence of my personhood in all of my pain and vulnerability, and the message was, at least to me, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
The beauty of this Gospel truth is that because of this gift we are all invited to drop our pretenses and stop the performative fakery. We’re invited, even encouraged, to present ourselves as we really are to God who loves us through Jesus Christ. We need not pretend to be someone we are not. I find this gift to be utterly liberating, and it is one of the bedrocks of my own faith. Moreover, it applies to my beliefs about Woodberry Forest when we are at our best. Woodberry boys for generations have taken great pride in sniffing out fakes, whether in the student body or the faculty ranks. We’re all encouraged here to be who we really are.
But if we’re being honest, we should all be strong enough to admit that we still, to some extent, fake it and perform, mostly for the favor of others, whether it’s our parents, friends, teachers, coaches, or even the colleges you have applied to or will apply to in the future. The possibility of rejection whips up fear in all of us. Given these realities, we at Woodberry push back against those forces and intentionally challenge ourselves and each other to scrape aside those barnacles and reveal ourselves, first to ourselves, and then to others.
This kind of practice aligns with why I believe so strongly in the Honor System. In a world of social media self promotion and ChatGPT and crowd sourcing and artificial intelligence, we challenge you to be who you are, and not surrender the beauty of you to some outside power. When you turn in your own work, when you respect what belongs to others, when you tell the truth, even when you are likely to get into trouble, you are stating honorably and emphatically, “This is who I am.” And if you don’t, in the moment, get affirmation from me or from your parents or from your teachers, coaches, and advisers, be open to receiving that message from God through Christ Jesus, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Having received this underserved gift, we’re all called upon to be intentional about how and for what purpose we use it. Here at Woodberry, and in the world beyond, there are innumerable ways that we might reveal our true selves to ourselves, and then to others, ways we might step up to take care of each other. I want to close my homily tonight with a story that might drive the point home, and I share this story knowing that a week from today we will celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day here in the United States.
Just before Thanksgiving I traveled to Montgomery, Alabama to participate in a conference of higher education and secondary education leaders on civil rights and race relations sponsored by the Equal Justice Initiative. As part of the conference we toured The Legacy Museum and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which is a truly extraordinary memorial that documents and highlights the thousands of lynchings in the South in the years after the Civil War until 1950. Each one of these known lynchings is thoroughly and completely documented in the historical record, and then presented to museum guests in a majestic outdoor memorial. When the museum’s historians document a lynching in a new county, they offer the descendants of the victim an opportunity to take a large jar to the site of the lynching and shovel up dirt to mark the place where this kind of racist vigilante violence occurred. The display of hundreds of jars of dirt from these lynchings at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice is haunting, beautiful, and unforgettable.
Not long ago the National Memorial of Peace and Justice confirmed the location of a lynching in a new county in southern Tennessee. Following protocol, they shipped a jar and a shovel to one of the descendants of the victim, an older woman who resolved to fill the jar with dirt underneath a tree off a gravel road in the woods near her home town. This woman was understandably anxious about the work that she had committed to complete. One afternoon she drove to this remote location, got out of her car, looked around, and began to dig into the soil and fill the jar. Not long after, a white pickup came very slowly from the other direction. Now she was really anxious. The pickup crept by her, and she looked up and saw a large white man behind the wheel. It passed, but then turned around and approached her from behind. Now she was downright frightened.
The man got out of his pickup and stood there as she dug into the dirt. Finally he asked, “What are you doing?” The Equal Justice Initiative trains those filling the jars to not feel obliged to answer such a question. She might have just kept quiet, or she might have said something like, “Getting some dirt for my garden.” But somehow and from somewhere she mustered the courage to say, “One of my ancestors was lynched right here in the late 1890s, and to mark this murder, I’m filling this jar to go on display at a museum in Montgomery, Alabama.” He continued to stand there as she worked away.
Then he asked her, “Would you mind if I helped?” She said, “No. Please do.” She offered him the shovel, but he used his hands and helped her fill the jar with his heaving body. He looked up and saw that a tear was dripping down the woman’s cheek. He said, “I’m so sorry. Have I offended you?” She said, “No. I am happy to have the help.” Not long thereafter, she noticed a tear dripping down the man’s cheek. She said, “Are you ok?” In reply, he said openly and honestly, “I’m just afraid that it was one of my ancestors who did this to your ancestor.”
The job complete, they took pictures of each other with the jar to mark the moment and hugged. She got in her car to begin the journey to Montgomery with the jar of dirt. He asked, “Would you mind if I followed you to the museum in my truck?” She welcomed his company and support, and together they rode south to Montgomery with a jar of dirt from the site of a lynching over 120 years ago. Taking care of each other. A friendship forged, and some restoration and even redemption from a hateful and heinous crime so many generations ago. I imagine in this moment, knowing that the woman and the man, even in their brokenness and vulnerability, had resolved to do something with the undeserved gift of grace that we all enjoy, God saying from the heavens, “This is my Daughter, and this is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
What will you do with the undeserved gift of God’s unconditional love? Because it is unconditional, nothing–absolutely nothing, is required. But with this gift, each one of us is free and empowered to make the world a little better by embracing the opportunity to take care of each other. Amen.
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