Text: Dr. John Gallagher’s Baccalaureate address to the MC Class of 2022
Maryville College Professor of Management Dr. John Gallagher delivered the baccalaureate sermon to the Maryville College Class of 2022 on May 6, 2022. Here is the full text of his sermon, titled “Deep Water.”
Hello, everyone. Let me begin with a thank you to Dr. Coker, to my faculty and staff colleagues, and especially to the Maryville College class of 2022an its SGA leadership, for the invitation to speak today. It’s a meaningful and poignant honor for me to be here for two reasons. Meaningful because the invitation came from students that I know and have worked with, and poignant because this baccalaureate service will be my last as a member of the Maryville College faculty.
The tradition of baccalaureate goes back a long way – 600 years by some reckoning. It is traditionally a worship service of thanksgiving and gratitude in honor of the graduating class. So, to the class of 2022, this is for you – in glad celebration of what you have accomplished. I’m given to understand that at one time it was not unusual for a baccalaureate address to last for four hours. Please accept my apology because today’s address won’t come anywhere near that.
Unless you want it to.
So, the class of 2022, you are about to take your leave of this College and take your place in the wider world. I, too, am taking my leave of this place and perhaps taking my place in a somewhat smaller world. But the fact that we are taking our leave together at this time, the spring of 2022, has a great deal of meaning for me.
I cannot, of course, say that you are the best class ever, but you might be. You are certainly the best class I’ve ever given a baccalaureate address to. And you are the class that will forever be in my heart as the class that ushered me to the door, and so you are at least a very special class to me personally. And the class of which I am fond of in this particular way. I will always think of myself as a member in your class.
One might ask, how does one know when it’s time to go? For you, it’s when you’ve completed a particular course of study, and/or wrapped up a stellar athletic career, or because you’re just ready. I’m not sure how I knew when it was time for me to go. I’m sure it’s not original to say that there are a series of nudges over time that both lead you to a decision and then reinforce that decision. Let me share one such reinforcing nudge with you that took place last fall on the occasion of a visit to one of Dr. Astor’s history class sessions.
The course was titled the Long 60’s, meaning the material was not strictly confined to that exact decade of the 1960’s. The class that I attended was about the Nixon era, circa 1970 but culminating in Nixon’s resignation from the presidency in 1974. About the middle of the class, it dawned on me that I was the only person in the room who had lived through the very events being discussed. I thought to myself that when parts of your life are being taught in a history course, it’s probably time to go.
A few days after I was asked to speak, I met with several students and asked them what I should talk about. Their answers were interesting. First, was a directive – To not talk about COVID! Next, they suggested I might try to be lighthearted. But then, noting that we were leaving the College at the same time, they suggested I might talk about what I’ve learned in my time here or what insight I could pass on to them. Or perhaps I might offer some ideas about what they could reflect on as they leave this place.
It’s certainly traditional for a baccalaureate address to offer advice, or insight, or wisdom to the graduating class as they take their leave of the institution, but I was particularly enamored of this last suggestion, “What should we reflect on?” I do have some things to say along those lines, but not anything that I can offer from a position of authority or superiority. What I would like to say to you I take very seriously in my own life, but I cannot say that I am a fully accomplished practitioner of what I’m going to suggest to all of you. I have to work at this every day – but it’s because of that that I believe this to be important, valuable, and necessary. But I am still very much a work in progress.
The title that I gave to this address is “Deep Water.” At the time that I had to provide Suzette with a title I was unaware that Ben Affleck had just come out in a new movie with that same title, “Deep Water.” Had I known that I would have produced another title, so as not to confuse Mr. Affleck or anyone else.
The title of course comes from the Scripture passage that we just heard, from the Gospel of Luke, where after a long night of unsuccessful fishing, and after Jesus had taught the crowd, first from the shore and then from the seat of a fishing boat near the shore, he tells Simon (Peter) and the others, to put out into deep water and lower their nets. The outcome is life changing for Simon, as well as James and John, and most likely all the others. In their minds, this command is pointless, but in the end, astonished at the number of fish they caught, they leave everything to follow Jesus.
Let’s just reflect on this idea of deep water for a minute or two. I think there’s a fairly common modern (but maybe timeless) perception of deep water; as in, it’s a place to avoid. As a young parent, I didn’t want my kids to venture out into deep water. Same as my own parents before then. We were admonished, no commanded, to stay out the deep end of the pool, or to not wade into the ocean any farther than where we could safely touch ground. I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences, and many of you will say the same things to your children someday – there is a point where the water is too deep – a point you really don’t want to reach, but certainly a point from which you need to retreat from – to return to the safety of shallow water. It’s quite easy to therefore associate deep water with fear. Bad things can happen if you’re in water over your head, and so we learn to fear the deep water.
But we also frequently use the metaphor to refer to someone who is struggling in some way, over a mistake made perhaps, or whatever – we often say about ourselves or others; I’m in over my head, or he or she or they are in over their heads. We mean we are overwhelmed. And we might be overwhelmed by many different and varied things – too much work, too many expectations, too many people asking for our time and attention, too many financial worries, or family worries. We might even mean overwhelmed by tragedy and suffering. When something truly gut-wrenching happens, we can feel like we’re in over our heads, like we can’t swim, like we don’t know how to stay afloat. We are so far from the safety of the shoreline, the shallow water, that we despair. We grieve, we are angry, we are hurting.
Now, please know that anything further that I say is not in any way to suggest that we downplay any such things. I am not going to say that you should simply confront and conquer your fears, or that we should ever just dismiss loss and suffering. Not at all.
But I am still going to say that I think you should seek to live as much of your life as possible in deep water.
Why would I say such a thing? Well for one thing it’s possible that miracles happen there. Life changing miracles. And going back to the earliest times, many commentaries on this passage focus on the miraculous catch of fish from this deep water. But I think there’s something else going on here– not to dismiss miracles by any means. So, I don’t mean to cheapen our fears or dismiss pain and suffering or to dismiss miracles at all. I think those are all the disclaimers I need to issue.
I am going to suggest that in this scripture passage, the disciples don’t understand deep water in either of those two ways – as a place of fear or a place of loss and suffering. I just don’t detect that. These disciples don’t seem to be afraid – after all they are fishermen, they live on the water, presumably they go where the fish are and often times that’s deep water – I can imagine that they have grown to have such a knowledge of their boat, and of the water, the weather, the time of day, that there is nothing fearful about deep water for them. Nor do I detect any sense that deep water is somehow related to loss and suffering. Their response to Jesus’ command is not to express grief or sorrow.
I think they don’t want to put out into deep water simply because they think it’s hopeless. They have been fishing all night and caught nothing. Their response is like, “you’ve got to be kidding me – we’re not going to catch anything!”
So, in this instance, they see putting out into deep water as an exercise in futility.
This is exactly what I have in mind when I suggest you spend as much of your life as you can seeking out the deep water; taking on whatever appears to be futile to others, whatever everyone else has given up on, or dismissed as impossible or too hard.
And in my mind, in contemporary society particularly, I don’t think there is any water deeper than reaching out across our real and our perceived differences to genuine encounter and engagement with other people. Reaching out to each other across all our differences and divisions seems particularly hopeless and futile. Deep water is where we must go to move beyond those differences, to heal those divides.
Living in deep water to me means seeing each other apart from differences. Apart from any differences of color, nationality, culture, language, religion, or religious denomination, and apart from any of our markers of identity, or genetics, or circumstances, or political persuasions, our particular experiences, or any of our deeply held convictions about what is good, and true, and right. One of the first steps towards living in this deep water is recognizing some things about each other that are not immediately obvious.
I’d like to ask you, class of 2022, and anyone else in the audience who would like to join in, to participate in an exercise. It’s an exercise I’ve used one time before at some long-ago convocation welcome when I was faculty chair. Please turn to either your right or your left – and make eye contact with someone adjacent to you. Hold that look – this won’t take long. But now, tell yourself that this person you’re looking at is in some way at this moment or in this day – is the greatest among us. This is likely in a small way, but maybe not. They may be the most well rested, the most at peace, or maybe or the most accomplished, or the most recently recovered from some illness or disappointment. Now look at the same person again and tell yourself, that this same person, at this same time, in some way, is also the least among us. They may be physically suffering, or the most fatigued, or maybe they just got the worst possible news about a close family member. We don’t know the details, and we don’t have to know the details, but we can rest assured that this is true.
But notice that in this exercise, I didn’t ask any of you to give up any part of who you are. I simply asked you to acknowledge the person next to you; to acknowledge something about each other that is larger than any differences. So, bridging our differences does not mean that you have to give up something of yourself – it doesn’t mean that you have to give up what you believe, or soft pedal it, or downplay it. You don’t have to make yourself smaller. To the contrary, you have to enlarge yourself, enlarge your capacity to take in more of each other.
When we do this – when we enlarge our capacity to take in more of others – when we reach out across our differences, we create something new – perhaps an insight, an understanding, a connection, or an experience that has never existed before. Edith Stein, a German philosopher in the 1920’s and 30’s who was murdered at Auschwitz in 1942, understood this as empathy – what others have referred to as experiencing the experience of another in its originality. Empathy understood this way allows us to see another person, no matter how different, not as threat, but as a gift.
This is deep water. This is what I fear many of us would be inclined to dismiss as hopeless or futile. So, why would I urge this on us? It is a life of creativity, a life of imagination, a life of affirmation, a life or growth, and life of empathy, and a life of justice. It is a life of interdependence and abundance. A life where we need each other because that’s the only way we can haul up these nets. So full of fish. Nets so heavy, so full, so abundant, we cannot lift them alone.
This is not anything heroic. This is not some grand scale project. This occurs moment by moment with every breath we take and every encounter with someone else. This is what, in the Christian tradition, we rightly call “loving your neighbor.”
Yes, this is deep water. But for all of you in the class of 2022, myself included, we are ready for this. Ready to make this our life’s work.