Storm Bailey

Something New

by STORM BAILEY, Professor of Philosophy

My text today is Isaiah 43:18-19 18 Do not call to mind the former things

Or consider things of the past 19 Behold, I am going to do something new,

Now it will spring up

Will you not be aware of it?

I will even make a roadway in the wilderness

Rivers in the desert.

When I copied the note from last spring into my new datebook, I put Isaiah 48:1819. So last week when I went to read the text and think about it here’s what I read: 18 If only you had paid attention to My commandments

Then your well-being would have been like a river

And your righteousness like the waves of the sea, 19 Your descendants would have been like the sand

And your offspring like its grains

Their name would never be eliminated or destroyed from My presence. I have to say this surprised me enough to go back and try to find the original assignment message. This is just not the sort of passage that I have normally been invited to speak about (and as you can see I did get it straightened out). All this is pretty much irrelevant to my actual talk, except that maybe it makes it easier to note that it isn’t altogether obvious just how (or whether) the prophets of antiquity give us communication from God to Luther College. Now let me quickly say that I don’t mean this in a critical or snarky way. I think that all scripture shows us something about who God is, and I welcome the opportunity in this broken world to acknowledge God who creates new heavens and a new earth.

But representing the voice of God in scripture to people, communities, and institutions who have or profess (or don’t profess) various relationships to God is a delicate and difficult interpretive task. And it has long seemed to me that Luther Campus Ministries has an almost impossibly daunting version of that task, which it tackles with integrity and sensitivity. I am grateful—honored beyond words—to have so often been welcomed into that work in a number of ways, especially by speaking in chapel. I love speaking here, and I love coming here to hear others—that’s why I come. But here’s the thing I want tell you (is it a confession?): I don’t come to chapel to worship. I don’t worship in chapel—not in the formal sense. Let me tell you why. It’s not that I couldn’t; I’m not Lutheran, but as a protestant Christian most of what we do here is close to my alley, theologically if not culturally. So it’s not that I can’t, it’s that others can’t. Not all of us at Luther College are people who worship. Maybe I should say there isn’t one kind of way that we worship, and many of us (including me) are fairly picky about how we do or don’t worship, whatever we call it. So for years now I stand without my hymnal when we sing or liturgize or whatever and enjoy being here and listening to my friends and colleagues—and sort of pointedly not worship. I don’t mean any disrespect, and it might be dumb to try to stand in the place of people who aren’t even here. But there are things that happen here that are so valuable that I just can’t stand the thought of people in our community missing them because they don’t worship, or don’t worship in a particular way. I have heard so many stories and perspectives here that deepened my understanding of who is in this community and how they got here and why they stay here, or feel that they can’t stay. There have been days when I walked out the front of the CFL into the masses heading from the Union to class and just started saying to people “you should have heard that,” or “you don’t know what you just missed.” Now, in these times of recorded live-streams I have often gone into class and said, “Y’all should check out today’s or yesterday’s chapel talk.” In an earlier century, there was a time or two when I walked into classrooms that were already buzzing about what had just happened or been said in chapel. But this isn’t a lament for the chapel of old; we aren’t the community of old. I do have a vision, or a dream, of something new. I don’t know if it could happen—everybody’s so dang busy, and pressured, and tired, and worried. But would it help to hear each other’s stories, each other’s perspectives? Not just the ones that are sort of similar—but all of them. SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

Storm Bailey

Would our students be energized by hearing not just what we’ve learned by our disciplinary training and research, but why we ever decided to do it, or what we love, or what we think about God or why we think there is no God? Chapel’s not the place for that, not as “chapel”—I get that. And worship is important: look, I’m not trying to compromise on Jesus—I’m an exclusivist Christian (or close enough that I’ll take the label). I am grateful to have been welcomed into this college community. And I am confident of our sincerity in welcoming students, faculty, and staff of every religious commitment and no religious commitment. But I regret that we don’t have some kind of public forum where we all—

all—are equally at home, where we tell our stories and discuss our varying perspectives on our shared commitment. If our shared commitment was religious, a worship service could be that. But it isn’t.

Our shared commitment, I guess, is to liberal education. But could we do more than just each of us keep plugging at that in our departments and classrooms and offices? Could we learn from the best traditions of the Lutherans, and the long and diligent of labor of College Ministries, and forge some kind of space and time where everybody feels they can speak and listen? What kind of vitality would that bring to our academic mission? What kind of depth and seriousness would that bring to each of us in our own religious commitments? What kind of model and laboratory would that be in a larger society which seems almost certain to perish because people cannot or will not engage with fellow citizens who don’t share religious or political commitments? I don’t know how to do this, or even if it is possible for us. And approaches I’ve suggested here and there are probably bad ideas. But if we’re talking about making things new, well this is something I yearn for—somehow, some place in our community. Whether we have a formal space for it or not, let’s figure out how to make it happen, if that vision seems worthwhile to you. Thank you for coming; and thank you to College Ministries for the invitation to speak, and for your ongoing work in hospitality, in service, and in the forging of beloved community. I’m grateful to be a part of it.