Chapel: Sandy Richter, Sept 10, 2018

morning guys hope you guys had a good weekend I'll be honest with you all I hate public speaking when I was asked to introduce dr. Sanjay Richter there's like no way I could say no in her short time here at Westmont she's already impacted the lives of many other students just like me her and her family I've been through so much to be here with the recent fires mudslides and daily struggles of adapting to a whole new lifestyle I can't express how blessed we are as a community to have her and her husband dr. Stephen so callous their two daughters Noel and Elise here in Santa Barbara and for that we at Westmont want to thank you and your family from the bottom of our hearts graduating with the PhD from Harvard a masters from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary and ambassadors from Valley Forge Christian College dr. Richter serves both as a seminary and undergrad professor for 15 years she's letting an Israel Studies program with her seminarians and moves back and forth from the Academy in the church in her work internationally known for her work on the deuteron deuteronomistic history Hebrew and environmental theology Rosa dr. Richter is the living proof of a woman's rightful place in ministry not only Sandra Richter an incredible scholar she's also one of the most loving and caring individuals I've ever gone to know when I was at my lowest point last year suffering from infection in my brain professors like Sandra Richter show me the true love and grace that was mountain embodies for their students Sandra Richter like many other professors here I've convinced me that I have made the right decision coming here she's changed my life forever and let her changers and with that it is with great honor that I introduce to you the rubber age gandhi professor of biblical studies professor her senator [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] well usually wind up crying at the end of a sermon not at the beginning Kevin thank you so much what an honor I can't imagine I can't ask for a stronger introduction or recommendation so so hey folks it's really good to be here this morning thank you for being here good morning Westmont happy Monday Westmont Monday's that are a little hard I don't know about you hmm a little sick I'm sure most not most but a number of you are as well probably because I caught whatever I had from you but that's okay it's worth the price so what an honor to be standing in front of you thanks to our Chapel staff and our new campus pastor for the invitation again I hope Monday is treating you well the passage that I've chosen for this morning comes out of first Corinthians chapter 1 verses 25 through 31 this is one of Paul's letters to the believers in Corinth and what he is up to in this letter is he is reminding the Corinthians of who they are one of the illustrations I use in the epoch of Eden is that too often we as Christians in forgetting who we've been we lose who we are and Paul is busy reminding them who they are and where they came from in order to encourage them in their faith and so this is what Paul has to say for the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength brothers and sisters think of what you were when God called you not many of you were wise by human standards not many were influential not many were of noble birth not many of you were valedictorians not many varsity athletes not many rich not many teens star finalists but God has chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise God chose the weak things of this world to shame the strong he chose the lowly things of this world that despise things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are so that one can no one can boast before him it is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus he is our righteousness our holiness our Redemption therefore as it is written let him who boasts boast in the Lord now the reason that I chose this passage is because I was asked if I would be willing to tell you folks some part of my own story of faith this morning now there are countless stories hundreds even thousands that are actually represented in this room right now the greatest one of course is the great story that one about a heavenly father who will not rest until he seeks out every lost son of Adam and every wandering daughter of Eve that great story about a God who simply will not let it go until he is stood in the crowd as I reminded my intro to Old Testament class just last week watching our lives being bartered away by Preval issues and trivial things and lies and says no no that one that one's mine this is the story I get to usually tell and it is the one I love to tell about our God who not only cast the cosmos in the place but is the creator of our hearts and whose deepest desire is that where he is there we may be also that's the story I usually tell my own story is just one little addendum to that great story because I of course was one of those wandering lost daughters of Eve wandering the darkness having absolutely no idea what I was worth and yet as Paul says God has chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise so I who am now your Gundry chair and who have traveled hither and yawn in my education and teaching and paradigm design and ministry and speaking of publications and all that stuff that Kevin spoke of I want to take this morning to do two things one I want to give witness I want to give witness of the God who called my life back from the darkness and made something where there was nothing and then two I want to speak to every one of you who was within earshot of me this morning and tell you that this God who did it for me will surely do it for you as well he is the God who has indeed chosen the weak things of this world the broken things the pieces that nobody thought could be put back together to shame the strong so my story and will leap in because Chapel is short I come from one of those upbringing that most people would prefer not to claim now like many stories it didn't start off that way I was born in Norfolk Virginia which is a Navy base on the East Coast that's on the other side of the Rockies you've heard of it that is where all Navy children are supposed to be born it's kind of written into the press my dad was an officer he was really smart and really talented he looked a little bit too much like Tom Cruise and I'm not exaggerating he was a fighter pilot actually you know one of the cool people my mother was the first member of her extended family to go to college and earned a degree as a registered nurse with great pride they were young they were beautiful they were very smart and looking at my parents wedding pictures you would say oh those are the beautiful people in fact if your parents have ever forced you to watch Dick Van Dyke you know remember that show black and white Oh Rob come on a few that showed that demonstrated what life was supposed to look like in the 1960s those were my parents in fact every time I watch it I get a little bit nostalgic he was the quarterback of his high school football team she was a cheerleader he looked awesome in his dress whites and she managed to hold down a full-time job have five babies and keeper figure they had unlocked to that elusive door into the popular club club which was evident by the many parties that they attended and according to the wisdom of this world they had everything going for them this is the home into which I was born while my parents didn't actually have quite everything going for them you see in addition to being beautiful and talented my mother was also the third generation offspring of an alcoholic family and as a small-town french-canadian Catholic girl from West Warwick Rhode Island a town that still bears her family name on one of its side streets the life of a Navy wife quickly triggered in her the legacy of death that she had inherited the long separations the stress the constant relocation the perfectionism the parties and by the time I was five my mom was losing her battle against her heritage by the time I was 12 she was by all measures bouncing off of rock-bottom life-threatening car accidents arrests eventually she was blackballed from her profession and her five kids we were in serious trouble now if you know anything about alcoholics you know that they are not to be controlled and if you know anything about military men you know that they like being in control so in addition to all of the neglect and humiliation that comes from being the child of an alcoholic and I know I'm not the only one in this room with this story I also wound up living with all of the violence and abuse that comes from the very angry depressed man who's losing his grip on his world so the isolation of military life the neglect of alcoholism the violence of abusive parents that was my childhood and I'm gonna guess again and I'm not the only one in this room with this story now I don't want to give you the wrong impression about my family we looked great we were upper-middle class we had a nice house we went to good schools my sister's actually we're doing fairly well in school I too was a varsity athlete we looked good on the outside we were faithful Catholics I was baptized at six weeks old right on schedule First Communion at six confirmed at 12 Catholic schools CCD the works and I've been raised right I knew what good table manners were although I often didn't use them and I knew how to work but I saw things that children are not supposed to see and I heard things that children are not supposed to hear and worse I came to believe things about life and about me that God does not believe and by the time I was in my early teens I and my four sisters were well on our way to becoming statistics my oldest sister found shelter in the gays subculture of her high school my second sister was in constant physical conflict with my parents and involved with the bad boys and all the baggage they brought my younger sisters God helped them had I did bring Kleenex had no guidance and no parenting and no protection in a very broken world by my birth order for those of you who are studying psychology I was the lost child and I was indeed lost by the time I was 13 I was a full-blown bulimic I was desperately alone self-hating and regularly contemplating suicide but in the midst of this very lonely and very desperate scenario I wandered across the street and stumbled into an Episcopalian youth group that was experiencing the sweeping move of the Holy Spirit during the Jesus Movement in the Washington suburbs of the 1980s by now and I met some Christians some real Christians now you would think that I either had already met some Christians right I've been in church every Sunday of my life but reality was that there was no one in my circle in my experience who actually believed any of this stuff we were god-fearers but that was all and these Christians I met although they were only teen a themselves they were not theologically sophisticated they were not particularly wiser wealthy but they had experienced the love of God and they were bold enough to share it and they did they came alongside this teenager who was so determined to never be hurt again that I was careful to reject everyone else before they had the chance to reject me I was mouthy I was arrogant I was obnoxious I was unresponsive I could swear like a sailor you cannot impress me I wasn't even clean because I didn't have a mom I had absolutely nothing to offer these people heck I didn't even recognize my own need but in reality I was desperate for someone to look past my grisly exterior and seen my wounded heart and these teenagers teenagers actually did just that and they did it in the most simple fashion possible they became my friends they welcomed me into their group they invited me to their stuff they hung out with me they loved me and in their eyes and in their actions I began to see the possibility of something different and their kindness I caught a glimpse of the kindness of God and their welcome I began just barely to believe that God might be willing to welcome me and in their fellowship I began to understand what being a Christian might mean so I was drawn to them and thereby I was drawn to their God now as is obvious by myself description I was no prize no one would have described me as influential important definitely not cool tough but not cool you would have had to have very good vision indeed to see any sort of special potential in my life I was an underachieving student with poor social skills and worse personal hygiene yes that was me and these kids who witnessed to me none of whom were wise by human standards either nor were they influential or of noble birth I was someone who no one would have predicted had the ability in my life to make a difference no one I was also someone it wasn't easy to be with but in their friendship toward me my stubborn wounded heart started to open so how did I finally come to a point of commitment well remember how I told you that these people kept inviting me to their stuff and I couldn't figure out why well one of the stuff they invited in to to me too was one of the early Jesus festivals where some farmer out in Mercer Pennsylvania cut down all his corn and offered his fields to us to have this big Woodstock kind of festival except for Jesus was at the middle of it and so we all headed out and they set up a big arena and huge sound speakers and and we set up tents and all these folks convinced my parents that there would be tons of adult supervision Yeah right none zero zip I can still remember walking through the cornfields and my flip flop feet and cutting my feet on the old corn husks that were still sticking out of the ground so the stage the meeting tents and we had at it so I went with all of my new friends my friends who I thought thought I was already a Christian because you see I'd already been hanging out with them for about two years and I had figured out that to be an insider you actually had to be a believer so I kind of had it on the down low that I wasn't actually one yet they I thought they actually thought that when in reality of course they were inviting me to this Jesus festival because they knew I wasn't a believer yet so we headed off to Mercer Pennsylvania lots of tents we had an absolute blast completely illegal fires roasting hot dogs in the middle of the field bathing in the river singing until 3:00 in the morning we had so much fun we also got incredibly bad sunburns because no one in the group was responsible enough to bring like a hat or sunblock or any of that stuff okay so off we are Jesus festival Mercer Pennsylvania and I loved what I saw loved what I saw as I experienced my friends passionately worshiping their God focused on the word loving each other with a type of self-sacrificing humility I had never seen in my high school I quickly realized that these people had something I did not and I wanted it I wanted it bad but I was too proud to walled off and too scared to ask so I was super conflicted now an important part detail of this festival that you need to know is that at the end of the weekend they had planned a baptism and one of the cow ponds in the middle of the farm and I knew that this was coming but my entire experience with baptisms involved very small babies lots of satin and this birdbath thing that they called a font and I honestly had never paid much attention so on Saturday afternoon as I began to feel this sense of desperation after the worship time at the central arena I went off to pray now I've not done a lot of praying in my life so I is anything but an expert but when I managed to find a private place kind of tucked between some leftover trees and some shrubbery I began my first fledgling pursuit of the heavenlies and I told God exactly what I just told you whatever it is those people have I think I really need it and I know I really want it and they're in gym shorts in a t-shirt on the side of a cornfield the one who cast the cosmos into place answered me no he actually answered me like I heard his voice and he said to me if you want what they have that baptism at the end of the weekend I want you to go I want you to step forward and I want you to ask to be baptized and I was like what thousands of people watching me my friends who I thought thought I was already a Christian watching me all these folks paying attention to me me the kid who never wanted anyone to notice them me with the wall that was so high and thick no one was ever gonna get past it so what did this crusty adolescent say in response to the voice of the Almighty no no way and I got up and walked away this is crazy there was no way I was gonna go forward in front of all those people no way I was gonna announce to my new friends that I wasn't actually an insider no way I was gonna make a public spectacle of myself no way and so I got up from that place of prayer and I walked away can you believe that God actually spoke to me and I walked away but I was ill at ease because the Holy Spirit is an actual person I was really nervous my evolving plan was to forget this has it ever happened return home in the car Caravan the next day with all of my defenses sin and brokenness safely in place and pretend I'd never actually heard God talk to me my plan was not to make an idiot out of myself by going forward in that baptism but I couldn't quite make peace with that plan in fact I could hardly sleep that night in my little tent and sleeping bag the next morning I did the usual like join the crew in the arena I sang the songs and when everyone else dissipated sitting on one of those blankets I turned to a girl next to me she was older than me the austere age of 17 and I said to her casually and theoretically speaking ah do you think my baptism at birth was enough to get me to heaven now have I mentioned to you that I was not theologically sophisticated yet I now have many answers to this question but at that point in time the only thing I was worried about was fire insurance yep so sue Eriksson at the age of 17 looked at me bore into my eyeballs and said you know sandy I don't know the answer to that question but if you think that the Holy Spirit is leading you to get baptized you better do it and with those words It was as if the floodgates of a lifetime of hurt and betrayal and abandonment burst open and I who was so tough and so distant and so insulated who wouldn't do anything to draw attention to myself and literally hadn't cried in a decade and if you come from my background you know why because crying doesn't help it just makes it worse I erected into wracking snotty sloppy sobs I couldn't speak I couldn't explain myself this wasn't pretty crying this would not wind up in a movie but my friend the Christian put her arm around me and walked me the mile over to the baptismal service with Meese nodding and sobbing and heaving the entire way slop t-shirt wipe the nose and when we got there there was this huge crowd gathered around the cow pond and they're all lost and worshiped this is a Jesus moment okay no one's got their eyes open everyone swing back and forth there are hundreds of people and while I'm sobbing and snotting and crying I'm and don't want to draw one ounce of attention to myself excuse me pardon me I have to get to the water I have to get baptized please I made such a scene and by the time I got to the edge of the water one of the guys in the water I now know he was a local pastor but back then I was a Catholic kid raised in a Jewish neighborhood I didn't even know Protestants existed I didn't know there were local pastors this guy pulls me into the water and he starts asking me the essential questions he said do you believe in Jesus have you repented of your sins are you ready to start a new life with him and with tears flowing and snot streaming yes yes yes and so that man don't under that muddy cow pond if you've ever been in one and I came up a brand new creature and the gates of heaven opened and the scruffy adolescent fell the love of God flooded her broken world and I cried and I cried and I cried it was like someone had pulled the plug on a terrible infection and I just needed it washed clean and so on the ride home in the caravan the next day with my face toward the window because I didn't want everybody to see that I was still crying I remember whispering over and over again to this God whose voice I now recognized please don't ever go away please please now I would love to tell you that I returned home and was welcomed by parents who were thrilled to see the change in my life who were grateful that someone somehow had reached me in my anger and my hurt and I wasn't going to become a statistic but the truth is that I went home to the same alcoholic and abusive situation from which I'd come and in less than two months my mother took her own life and in less than six months my father told me that this new address he found very disruptive and he wanted me to either change this new attitude of mine or to change my address and in the naivety of my new faith I trusted God and I chose the new address and so I found myself essentially an orphan at the age of 16 but something profound had shifted in my orientation that faithful day in August at that Jesus festival my citizen had shifted to another Kingdom I knew I was not alone and God navigated what by all assessments were impossible circumstances for my good first God found me a new family at the very last second when I was prepping to move into my car not a good plan by the way I was invited to go live with the family that I babysat for four years and this was a healthy home not a perfect home but a healthy one they didn't beat their kids no one ever got thrown down the stairs they remembered to pick their children up after nighttime events adults actually cooked meals and did laundry and I had that last chance in those last two years my child hood to actually redefine normal and for those of you who come from my background you know that redefining normal is your greatest challenge these people became my surrogate parents I was able to finish high school which was actually quite dicey because I was an illegal resident by the way another miracle for another time and when God made it clear that I the orphan was to go on to train for ministry who knew you could do that who knew there were things like Bible colleges and ordination and Protestants yeah who knew these folks drove up every fall to my little Christian college for parents day and it turns out that between my mother's Social Security benefits a janitorial job at a local office building in an RA position I was able to get through college and it further turned out that I was accepted for credentials as one of the very few at that time female ministers in the Assemblies of God but when it became apparent that I was a little too interested in academics that would be gordon-conwell Theological Seminary and my interest in PhD studies and a little too prone for leadership for the comfort zone of the culture that I was now part of God opened up another impossible door and that was Harvard University Harvard University live in my car Harvard University just st. and so after seven count them seven years of hard labor learning everything from historical Hebrew grammar to iron age archeology but most important to see my faith through the eyes of a skeptic which is a very important skill I launched my own career training ministers first at Asbury Theological Seminary oops sorry that's Gordon Conwell and Harvard East Coast other side of the Rockies I went to Asbury Theological Seminary which is in Lexington Kentucky yeah there you go then down to Wesley biblical seminary which is in Jackson Mississippi then to Wheaton College you've heard of that one probably because it's not quite as far away by the way Chicago is not the East Coast and then Westmont College came calling they you thought I was a pretty good fit and so we came although I had no idea that you can actually wear flip-flops all year round it's true and I didn't realize that only people from outside California call it Cali I'm putting that away we came and for one of the bigger transitions of our lives we came and we are so grateful to be a part of your community so bringing this to a close here how did this grimy kid well on her way it's becoming a statistic with no perceivable future find out about Jesus and eventually become Who I am and the answer is because God chooses the foolish things of this world to confound the wise and how did it happen because some very average everyday extraordinary people not wise by human standards or influential or noble not a varsity athlete or a valedictorian among them dared to love me and they saw in me this lowly one this one despised someone worthy of God's attention brothers and sisters think of who you were when God called you and know that God has chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise he's chosen the weak things of this world to shame the strong he chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are so Westmont College we are just getting to know each other now but I hope that you can hear me when I tell you this it might be a little soon but the Holy Spirit will hopefully help God is not impressed with your credentials nor is he daunted by your deficits it's not about who you work it's not even about who you are it's about who God is and therefore who he is making you to be it really doesn't matter if you were a teen star finalist or a grimy relationally challenged underachiever that would be me he's chosen the weak things of the world to confound the wise and I stand in testimony to that truth so are you still standing on the edges hoping that no one will notice that you're not actually in yet hey dude come on in the water's fine are you sitting here this morning thinking that you are such a mess that there is no way your life can make a difference you are so wrong he is building his kingdom and if you were willing he will build his kingdom in you and if you remain willing he will build his kingdom through you can I pray for you father as we pause in the silence of the space in the privacy of our own seats in the privacy of our own hearts Lord Holy Spirit I know that you have called out to every person in this room and I know that the answers that you have gotten in response have been so next but the crazy thing is you can hear every one of those answers father will you impress on our hearts this morning that it's not about who we are it's about who you are will you impress on our hearts this morning that the arms of the Father are open wide and that he is willing you are willing and able to embrace every one of us father will you impress on our hearts this morning that there are gifts gifts that have been planned to deep in every life in this room and your greatest joy is to deploy those gifts for the glory of God and the cause of the gospel and the transformation of a broken world and lord I pray especially this morning for those whose stories echo my own and I pray that you will wrap your arms around those hearts this morning and let the tears wash the hurt away and let the dawn of the Sun Rise fill their hearts and minds today and it is in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit that I pray amen amen thank you [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Westmont College

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Length: 33min 18sec (1998 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 13 2018