This is the text of the commencement address I delivered at Pacific Union College on Sunday, June 14, 2007, in Angwin, California.  

President Osborn, thank you for that generous and gracious introduction.  It’s a grand privilege to be back in the august company of the distinguished faculty and staff of Pacific Union College, to share this wonderful occasion with families and friends of PUC, and most of all to celebrate with you, Class of 2007, this historic occasion.

Thank you so much for your invitation.  I’m touched and honored.  My time here at PUC represented three of the most fulfilling years of my life—and it was you who made it so. My PUC experience began with most of you four years ago, and I’m so glad we’re able to mark this occasion together.  I dropped out of PUC and “went South,” so to speak, but you’ve stayed on and completed the degree you came here for.  That’s no small accomplishment, considering only a small fraction of the world’s population hold college degrees.  I join your family, friends, teachers and church in congratulating you today.

Does the name—Teruhiko Okohira—ring a bell?  Yes, it’s a Japanese name.  Teruhiko was born into a wealthy, influential family in Satsuma at the southern tip of the Kyushu Island, known for its Samurais and sweet potatoes.  Teruhiko was born ambitious, just like his father.  He had this firy zeal to be successful in life and to increase his parent’s wealth by many times over.  Not only did he want to be successful in Japan, but also around the world.  He had an uncommon vision for doing business in the global setting before many in Japan thought of it.  Had Teruhiko Okohira been born few decades later, you and I might now be driving an Okohira or downloading videos onto a Teruhiko hard drive.

He was that kind of a man—full of energy and great dreams.  And it was his dream that led him to enter a business college, not in Tokyo, but in the United States at the age of 18 in 1883.  However, it was there that he began hanging out with a wrong crowd—the type that his father disapproved of—Christians.  When Okohira Sr. learned of his son conversion to Christianity, he cut off all financial support for his son, forcing him to find whatever job he can find just to survive.  So, on account of his Christian convictions, Teruhiko spent the next nine years in this foreign land, not sure about where all this would lead. 

But 1892 represented a real turning point in his life.  While working at a hotel in California, Teruhiko accepted the Seventh-day Adventist faith.  When he became an Adventist, everything seemed to come alive again.  In the teachings of Adventism, Teruhiko found a new purpose and meaning.  So the same year, he made yet another momentous, life-transforming decision of his life.  He quit his job and enrolled at Healdsburg College (that would later become Pacific Union College)—to work some way in meaningful service for God. 

To many of his 250 or so peers at Healdsburg, Teruhiko was an oddball—he was older (he was 27), stuck out big time as probably the college’s only Asian, spoke with a thick Japanese accent, having arrived here at late teens.  Yet everyone could see that this man had an uncommon fire in his belly.  During the first two years he was at Healdsburg, he would travel to San Francisco on weekends to teach English and Bible to the Japanese community there, which resulted in the establishment of the Golden Gate Japanese-English School in San Francisco. 

But Teruhiko’s growing passion lay elsewhere.  In 1894, he asked to speak for a Friday night vespers program toward the end of the school year.  In his less-than-perfect yet impassioned message, Teruhiko appealed to the student body for a volunteer to accompany him in returning to Japan to share the gospel message in his homeland where there were no Adventists.

None of the students responded to Teruhiko’s appeal.  But someone else did:  William C. Grainger, president of Healdsburg College since 1886.  Grainger had been Healdsburg’s second faculty member, having arrived just three months after the founding of the college on April 11, 1882—125 years ago, and now the 2nd president of the college.  According to PUC historian Walter Utt, he was a Lincolnesque figure who was more of a big brother figure to the students than an authority figure.  Students hung out in his home regularly, often showing up unannounced for food and friendly conversation.  Utt calls his presidency “days of glory.”

But Grainger, the highly successful president of the college, responded to the appeal by a twenty-something foreign student, and something marvelous and wonderful happened. Two years later, Teruhiko Okohira and William Grainger sailed to Japan as the first Adventist missionaries to the Land of the Rising Sun.  They first started with an English Bible school in the heart of Tokyo which led to the opening of the first Adventist church in Japan.  Today, there are 15,000 Adventists in Japan in 120 churches.

Why am I telling you this story? 

First, the story of Okohira and Grainger embodies what PUC is all about.  Pacific Union College is a small school with a big dream for the world.  Yes, some of you have overtly religious, missionary dream for the world like Okohira and Grainger.  And you must take that calling seriously and responsibly.  But for others, it’s more about making this world a more disease-free place; yet for others, the dream is to extend peace and social justice in places of conflict.  Whatever your dream might be, it must be a dream that is bigger than your own selves.  Yes, some of you will become the type of affluent, successful business professionals that Okohira wanted to be.  But I pray that you leave PUC with an even greater dream—to use your gifts and accomplishments also as a means of compassion.

I also pray that you will dream big toward transforming Adventism.  Down the road, you may feel like you have no need for this church.  And you may be right.  But your church desperately needs you—just the way you are.  We need you to challenge some of the lifeless, rigid, calcified remains of the past that you see in your church.  We need you to help us grow into a community that can be meaningful, relevant, transformative in the world.  That brand of Adventism that some of you see and despise doesn’t have to be the Adventism of the future.  This is a growing, changing, expanding, progressive church that is waiting to be shaped by you.

But I do hope that your dreams will extend beyond the boundaries of your church, family and self. Do not merely dream about what you already know and can control.  That’s not dreaming; that’s just planning.  Have a dream for the strangers around you, for this society we live in, for this world. 

Take one issue, one cause, one problem, and make it your spiritual devotion.  There are 27 million people enslaved in human trafficking today.  Will that be your cause?  More than 400,000 have died in Darfur, Sudan, under what the U.S. government has called a genocide.  Will Darfur be your cause?  Here in California, we receive services of migrant workers and undocumented foreign citizens to maintain our way of life, including right here in Angwin.  There are obvious inequities of wealth and living conditions that we tolerate, because, well, we just do.  Will the plight of these families be your cause?  Or might it be the children and teenagers of your neighborhood and church who can really use a big brother/big sister figure?  Will they be your devotion?  Or could it be bringing art and theater and literature and music to a community in search of an identity?  Would you make that your mission?  For Okohira and Grainger, it was the people of Japan with whom they wanted to share the Adventist message.  What is your dream?

Promise me that you will not stop dreaming.  You will, whether by forces outside of you or within you, encounter the incredibly seductive power of nihilism that tells you to just give up trying, that it really doesn’t matter, that in the end there’s just a gaping, meaningless black hole.  Even if that were the case, humanity calls upon you.  God who holds the universe together calls upon you to partner together in this grand experiment of compassion.

Second, the story of Okohira exemplifies the power of one.  Now, more than ever, helped by the internet and satellite communications, it takes just one person with passion and commitment for the world to make meaningful changes in the world.  What difference will you make in this world—as that one person?  What will be your meaningful contribution to the world?  Some of you leave PUC with very clear ideas about it; others are still figuring that out.  Would you look at the person to the left of you?  OK, did you look?  You cannot wait for the person to your left to motivate you to do something positive in this world.  If you feel it, if you know it, if you’re moved, it’s you.  Look to your right now, please.  Did you look?  Remember that it’s not that person, either.  It’s YOU. 

You and I experienced in a real way when Jake Scheidemann, a PUC alumnus, gave a colloquy presentation last year on his home building project in Nicaragua.  That project began with one grateful person doing one act of gratitude for one town.  And then it spread.  During the colloquy, Pastor Mitchell—one person, another PUC alumnus—felt moved to appeal to you and you responded.  As a result, Maria Luna and her two sons have a warm, dry home to live in.

It took just one person who said, “Yes, I’ll go to Africa to take video footage of the health care work in the nation of Chad.”  As a result, PUC Alumnus Paul Kim’s film, Unto the Ends, is shown each year to hundreds of students entering Loma Linda University and right now dozens of students are volunteering at various hospitals in Africa, including two students at the Bere Adventist Hospital in Chad.

It took just one recent PUC alumnus who said, “I want to examine my Adventist heritage better and study the life of Ellen White.”  That led to the original production of “Red Books: Our Search for Ellen White,” a theatrical exploration that has touched so many of your lives this school year and will go on to do so for years to come.  It just took one person, Mei Ann Teo, a PUC alumna, to give voice to voices that have not been clearly heard in a generation. She has shown many of you the possibility that there are multiple ways of being Adventist and that ultimately “no doctrine or dogma can prevent” your connection with God or this community.

On April 24, 1882 just 13 days after the establishment of Healdsburg College, Ellen White spoke to a gathering of Adventist leaders in the Bay Area about the college.  Quoting a newspaper article, White said, “The greatest want of this age is the want of men—men who will not be bought or sold, men who are true and honest in their inmost souls.”  These are the kind of graduates she envisioned for Pacific Union College.  Over the past 125 years, that vision has become a reality and it continues with you—one by one!

Third, this story show how we all are historically, existentially, and organically connected to each other.  Let me tell you the rest of the Okohira-Grainger story.  Through their work in Tokyo, a young soldier named Hide Kuniya became an Adventist and joined the work of the church.  In May 1904, two Koreans—waiting their ship to Hawaii in a few days’ time—meet Kuniya and both become Adventists.  One goes on to Hawaii, but the other back to Korea.  On the ferry back to Korea, the man, Mr. Sohn, meets an educated gentleman named Mr. Lim, who becomes an Adventist by the end of the voyage.  Lim establishes the first Adventist church in Korea and his ministry results in a Mr. Kim becoming an Adventist. Kim shares Adventism with another Kim, who introduces Adventism to a Mr. Bon who becomes an evangelist and goes around Korea preaching the Sabbath and second coming of Jesus … including to a Mrs. Lee who passes on Adventism to her three children—the eldest among them, my mom.  So here I stand before you because of the uncommon passion and service of Okohira and Grainger. 

You and I don’t need Kevin Bacon and his six degrees of separation to tell us how deeply and closely interconnected we all are.  That sense of deep connectedness heightens the sense of responsibility that we feel about my words and actions (as well as inactions).  Because we’re so interconnected, we cannot ignore the great inequities of the world with regard to access to healthcare, opportunities for financial security, housing and education.  PUC graduates who believe in the creatorship and lordship of God have to been champions for the environment, for public health, for social justice, for community development.  Why?  Because we’re all in this together and to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., “Not only is injustice anywhere a threat to justice everywhere, but also pain and suffering and despair anywhere is a threat to wholeness everywhere.”

The Book of Daniel in the Bible talks about a dream that the king of Babylon had.  In that dream, Nebuchadnezzar sees a great multi-metallic statue.  We see in the interpretation that’s given in the story that the different metals represent different earthly political powers.  The climax and punch line of that vision is found in these lines: “While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them.  Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth” (2:34-35). I’d like to point out two things about this rock. 

First, it is “not cut by human hands,” unlike other metals that have been forced into a certain shape.  It is a rock that is raw, free, original, natural.  It has its own character, its own individuality.  It is one that hasn’t conformed to the values of the statue. Rather, this rock, uncut and unmanipulated, has a value of its own.  It’s an independent, countercultural, radical rock that will not be judged by the statue.

Second, this is a rock that grows.  It is a living, breathing, organic rock that grows.  It is a rock that continues to mature and impact the entire world.  This impact is powerful and eternal.  It contrasts with the impersonal, lifeless statue that may be a nice museum piece, but has no living, life-changing impact upon the world.

You, Class of 2007, are that rock.  The Kingdom of God is not some institution, or some distant future happening.  It’s not even a religion per se.  It consists of independent, radical, countercultural, vibrant, ever-growing people like you whose lives make a positive impact in big and small ways in this world.

For 125 years, PUC has been nurturing such people—“those who will not be bought or sold, those who are true and honest in their inmost souls, those who will stand for the right though the heavens fall.”  I’ll be the first confess that I’m not that person.  But I humbly take up the challenge to grow into such an individual.  Won’t you graduates join me in committing to a people of the living, growing, countercultural Rock?

I challenge you to dream big.  I challenge you to be proactive in your involvement in the world.  I challenge you to take responsibility for the whole world, not just your own corner.  Be a people of the Rock.  Unfortunately, we’ll never hear all of your stories, except the ones that make the news.  But we’ll know that God who is with you will grow with you and impact the world through you, regardless of where that happens.

To paraphrase Christ’s words to Peter, you are a people of the Rock.  Through you, Christ will build and grow His Kingdom of peace, justice and reconciliation. 

The audiorecording of this address can be heard at:  http://www.puc.edu/Departments/Media_Services/recordings/06-17-2007.php