Commencement Chapel 2025
BETH GREEN: Please remain standing as we welcome the Lord Jesus into our midst. Creator God, you are eternal before us and after us and in Jesus, God with us. In this service of worship to mark the start of the academic year, we bow before you and we name Tyndale yours, our work and our worship and our community life belongs to you. We ask that your spirit would bless us, strengthen us, keep us accountable and repair the brokenness of sin in us so that we may serve the church and the world for your glory. Amen. You may be seated. For thousands of years, the Greater Toronto Area has been the traditional land of the Huron Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently the Mississaugas of the credit River. It is part of the dish with one spoon territory. A treaty between the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas, and Haudenosaunee that committed them together to share the territory and protect the land. Other indigenous peoples and nations have subsequently entered this territory in the spirit of peace, friendship, and respect. It's on these lands and in this spirit that Tyndale seeks to engage in its work,. This land acknowledgement was developed specifically for Tyndale University in 2018 under the guidance of elder Dr. Terry LeBlanc, and in consultation with individuals from six nations and the urban indigenous community of the Greater Toronto Area. And we acknowledge that our campus is located on traditional indigenous land, and those of us connected to this community gather work and study in the context of this history, it's our privilege and responsibility to partner in the journey to reconciliation, sustaining a safe, welcoming, and informed place of learning for everyone. Well, a warm welcome to everyone to commencement chapel. This is the first chapel of our new academic year. Just a reminder too, that the community gathers at this time, 11:15 every Tuesday during the semester for worship, and you're welcome to join us, either in person or online. I want to especially welcome our new students, because this is your first ever official Tyndale chapel, and a big focus today is your academic life, offering your studies and research, along with those of our Tyndale faculty, to God. A particular thanks to the guests with us this morning who make that happen by providing financial support directly to our students. They are seated to my right here at the front, and they include two representatives from particular institutions that have partnered with Tyndale for many years, the Canadian Bible Society and the Pentecostal assemblies of Newfoundland and Canada, thank you. All of our guests today are partnering in this act of worship. Behind me on the platform, we welcome the president, Dr. Marjory Kerr, Academic Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Dr. Paul Franks, Sharon Chuah, Vice President of Student Development, and The Assistant Dean of the seminary, Dr Ashoor Yousif.
SAM MIDDLETON: These are the words of the prophet Isaiah. The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn and to provide for those who grieve in Zion, to bestow upon them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, And a garment of praise, instead of a spirit of despair, they will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.
SELWYN HORST: Be joyful always. Pray continually. Give thanks in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ, Jesus, do not put out the Spirit's fire. Do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good, avoid every kind of evil. May God Himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through, may your whole spirit, soul and body, be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who calls you is the faithful, and he will do it first. Thessalonians, 5 16 to 24.
MARJORY KERR: Thank you Sam and Selwyn. Good morning everyone. It is really good to be here with you at the start of this new academic year, and to have this commencement chapel where we worship, we celebrate our incoming students, and we commit the year to the Lord and all that will come ahead.
As usual, as I was preparing for today, I found myself thinking about our mission and how that relates to our individual and collective commitments to Tyndale. I was also thinking about how all of that comes into being because of Jesus, but I was grappling with how to pull those pieces together that were floating around in my mind. A few Sundays ago, I had the opportunity to visit Bayview Glen church where we sang the song during worship called, I speak Jesus. And that's when I had that moment of, yes, that's the link.
We speak Jesus. And so as I thought further about what that means, I went back and I looked at what I had said in two chapel services during September 2020, that's five years ago. Many of you weren't here then, some of you were, but I'm sure you have no memory of what I said five years ago. And even if you do, perhaps it's worth saying again. So my message this morning is picking up on some of those threads of five years ago, adapting them to where we are now, and I've called it we speak Jesus.
When we think about the mission of Tyndale, and we talk about it a lot, because the mission matters. It's our focus, it's why we're here, and it is our shared invitation to serve in this academic community as we live out that mission. Just a few moments ago, we heard scriptures from Isaiah and First Thessalonians knitting together what God has done for us through Christ. And I chose those passages partly because I do believe they're central to the intent of our mission statement. And in turn, I do believe that our mission statement challenges each of us to develop and use our intellectual, personal, and spiritual gifts in the context of Christian faith and scholarship. We're not here simply for the sake of higher education. We're here to be changed through the experience of Christian higher education.
For more than 130 years right up to today, staff, faculty, governors, and the leadership of Tyndale have worked passionately to fulfill the mission. That mission has been adapted and shaped over the decades, but the core components have stayed quite consistent, and this is what it says. Tyndale is dedicated to the pursuit of truth, to excellence in teaching, learning and research, for the enriching of mind, heart, and character, to serve the church and the world for the glory of God. The commitment to be a university that aligns Christian faith, rigorous scholarship, and a passion for service is not accomplished by a mission statement, and we can't assume that it's true simply because it's been written down, printed off and regularly spoken about. Mission statements only take hold when the people who are part of that community are themselves aligned with it. Our mission statement calls us to pursue truth, to demonstrate excellence, to enrich lives in the fullest sense, and to serve others, all for the glory of God. And we do it because of Jesus. Jesus provides for our salvation. Jesus calls us to extend God's love grace and the good news of salvation to others in principle and in daily practice, and Holy Spirit, equips, prompts, and enables us to do that as we grow in our faith and spiritual understanding.
So because of Jesus, we gather here as a community representing dozens of Christian expressions and denominations, and within that the breadth of practices, traditions, and interpretations of the Christian life, we're unified in that breadth of our diversity because of Jesus and because of our belief in what Scripture teaches us of who he is. But it's not enough to know. We have to do something with that knowledge and experience, and it needs to show up in the way we live our mission. So for that reason, I want to take a few moments to consider the character of Jesus and how that shapes our response to the mission. So we'll look briefly at three characteristics, integrity, welcoming presence, and focus on mission. Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list of Jesus' character, but it will serve our purpose today.
So first of all, beginning with integrity, integrity often includes descriptors such as honesty, truthfulness, and authenticity. It can include the idea of humility and genuine goodness, wherein people are legitimately seeking to enrich the lives of others. It can be the ability to be respectful while remaining firm in one's convictions. For example, being able to disagree well when others don't share our perspective, and often it includes balancing accountability with compassion, instead of assuming the worst, seeking to understand, and responding with grace, even as we address what may need to be addressed. So each of these aspects of integrity is part of the character of Jesus. We see it in all the writings of his life. So because we speak Jesus, we're challenged and encouraged to incorporate the integrity of Jesus into our own lives and interactions, personally and institutionally, we won't always get it right, even though we may feel we often do it well, and when we miss the mark, we will do our best to fix it. Because we speak Jesus. Because of Jesus we continue to pursue our mission with integrity. Otherwise the very real risk is that our claim to pursue truth, excellence, and service might simply become an expression of arrogance.
A second characteristic of Jesus is that he provided a welcoming presence. Whether Jesus was welcoming the children, enjoying the hospitality of outsiders, engaging with the struggling wanderers, the privileged or just the everyday person, he extended a welcoming presence. We are an evangelical Christian institution, and every individual who wants to study here and meets the requirements for admission is welcome. That is not a contradiction. That is one of the ways we live our mission and serve the church and the world. It's one of the ways in which we speak Jesus by extending a welcoming presence. Over the past year as a full community, we've worked together to craft Tyndale's own statement of Christian hospitality, as a reminder the last couple of sentences say this, we celebrate a diverse community where all are seen, heard, and valued. As Christ welcomes all, we emulate him in the way we practice hospitality, as we speak Jesus through our words and actions, we extend Jesus to everyone.
And a third characteristic of Jesus is that he was focused on mission. Examples of this include his perseverance through the temptations at the start of his ministry, his teaching, healing, and encouragement of everyone he encountered. His intentionality in preparing his followers for his betrayal, death, and resurrection, all this while steadfastly pursuing his ultimate purpose on Calvary. In Luke nine, verse 51 we read this, as the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. What's important here is that Jesus did all those good things, all those aspects of his ministry, while also staying focused on what he knew to be his primary purpose and goal. Jesus knew exactly what he was walking toward, and he did so resolutely. Our mission statement enables us to stay focused on the most important things the intended outcome of service, which includes working through the challenges, obstacles, and disappointments that will inevitably come just as we celebrate all the accomplishments and joy and achievements as we continue to pursue truth, excellence in teaching, learning, and research for the glory of God. The mission is achieved as we speak Jesus through our words and our actions So integrity, welcoming, presence and focus on mission. To some extent of course, these characteristics could apply to any good leader, but they're perfectly demonstrated in Jesus, God's Son, and if we encompass them in our lives, then they in turn, equip us to accomplish our mission, which is specifically to serve others for the glory of God.
Listen again to those words from Isaiah, chapter 61. The spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn and provide for all those who grieve in Zion, to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. Isaiah recorded these words and centuries later in Luke four verses, 18 to 19, we see it recorded that Jesus read Isaiah's words again in a synagogue as he was beginning his ministry. We could spend a lot of time thinking about and speaking about these verses, but let's just consider briefly what they can say to us today in our current context.
First, the Lord has called us to say something, to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for captives, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. In our context, we can take from these verses that there is a call to speak hope to each other and to those around us. This is part of what it means to speak Jesus. But we also see in Isaiah that words are not enough for each of these three calls to proclaim a message of hope is followed by calls to action, to bind up, to release, to comfort, to provide, to bestow, and this is also what it means to speak Jesus, to move from the risk of being mostly talk and little action, into living out God's presence with and for others.
In this community, I'm inviting us today as we enter into this new academic year, to be diligent in living out our mission in such a way that it will be seen and heard and known that we speak Jesus. I'm inviting each of us to pursue truth that will enrich hearts, minds, and character. I'm inviting each of us to live out what we do already know, and to seek to develop that further as we demonstrate a renewed commitment for justice and dignity for every person as we serve the church and the world for the glory of God. Hand in hand with our commitment to learning and scholarship and with the diversity of perspectives, experience, and context represented on this campus, we share the common interest to be changed by Jesus, to extend Jesus' love to every person, to encourage each other to be Jesus in our communities, in His love, and to constructively challenge each other to be better as we grow in him. We speak Jesus, may it be so. Amen.
