Video: 2024 Billings Preaching Prize Competition
Each spring, the Office of Ministry Studies organizes the Billings Preaching Prize Finals, an annual preaching competition open to all HDS students who have not previously won. Congratulations to MDiv candidate Auds Jenkins, the 2024 Billings Preaching Prize Competition winner, and to finalists Nicole Marie and Eve Woldemikael for their incredible talents. The event also featured readings from Solomon Kwaghko, the Massachusetts Bible Society scripture reading winner, and Ivy Wang, the OMS reading prize winner.
This event took place on April 17, 2024.
AVR: Harvard Divinity School.
AVR: Noon Service hosted by OMS Billings Competition, April 17, 2024.
TERRY DIXON: Good afternoon.
ALL: Good afternoon.
TERRY DIXON: My name is Terry Dixon, and I'm a member of the Steering Committee that coordinates Noon Service. We welcome your feedback as we strive to cultivate a restorative space for prayer, meditation, and spiritual connection with our companions across the boundaries of our traditions.
Every week, Noon Service is hosted by a community at HDS. Today's service is hosting the Billings Preaching Competition Finals. And we thank the Office of Ministry Studies for creating today's service. We invite you to participate in as much of each service as you feel inclined.
Food will be served after the service. And we hope you will continue the conversations and deepen the friendships experienced today. I just have one announcement to share. RSL is hiring. They are seeking graduate assistant for administration in 2024 and 2025. It's 10 to 12 hours a week for $21 an hour. And federal work-study eligibility is required. So if you're interested, please contact Carrie Maloney for a position description.
Also, please check the weekly bulletin for other opportunities. And I now invite you to join me in saying our opening sentences. You'll find them in the booklet. Welcome to the Harvard Divinity School Noon Service. Each week, we aspire anew to be welcoming and vulnerable with ourselves and one another.
ALL: In this hour, may we find ourselves in a space of truth and openness.
MAN: As leaders, may we share our traditions in a spirit of hospitality for those who may not understand what we do or why, having the courage to be true to our traditions with an open heart.
ALL: As participants, may we be open and present with our peers in their own context and maybe be willing to experience the unknown in this time and in this assembly. May we embrace each responsibility with earnestness and compassion for our companions. Though, we may travel different paths, may we find solidarity, comfort, and hope in our common purpose as a community of seekers working towards collective liberation from white supremacy and other forms of oppression.
CALEIGH GROGAN: Friends, My name is Caleigh, and I too am a member of the Noon Service Steering Committee. The prayers and meditations of our community come from this binder which you'll find by the door as you enter noon service. Everyone is invited to inscribe a prayer, a longing, a need, or a wish to be read here each week.
As we still ourselves and gather in a moment of silence, let us call to mind the people of the Massachusett tribe past, present, and future. The original inhabitants of Boston and Cambridge. We honor them and the land itself, where we gather today.
Let us all open our minds, bodies, and hearts to silently receive these prayers and meditations. Prayers for Kevin's sister who is seriously ill. Thanksgiving for the Ministry of preaching and all who practice it in our community.
Prayer-- struggles with her father's illness. For all approaching graduation in our community, clarity, courage, and joy in all that is to come. Prayers for Shivani who recently lost her mother and her family.
Thank you for your offerings today. May we as individuals in a community of care exercise mindfulness in this moment to accept, feel, and acknowledge our shared responsibilities to one another, and to all living beings. It is now my pleasure to introduce Dean Teddy Hickman-Maynard from the Office of Ministry Studies.
[APPLAUSE]
TEDDY HICKMAN-MAYNARD: Thank you so much, Caleigh. And on behalf of the Office of Ministry Studies, I just want to thank all of the RSL team to Carrie Maloney, Chris Hossfeld, all of the Steering Committee members for the Noon Service, thank you for opening this space to us to host this event. I also want to thank all of you for being here.
The Billings Prize for Preaching is a long-standing institution at Harvard Divinity School. And so this becomes reunion. There are so many alumnix who are here. There are supervisors for field education both past and present, who are here to support these students and to share with them in this moment. So thank you to all of you for being here.
I do want to acknowledge our participants before they get up. Because when they start to come, we're not going to introduce each one. So we're going to do it all now. And so, first, I want to present to you the winners of our reading prizes for the Massachusett Bible Society Scripture Award, we have Solomon Cojuangco. Stand. Stand, Solomon.
[APPLAUSE]
For the OMS Reading Prize, the winner is Ivy Wang. Stand. Please stand, Ivy.
[APPLAUSE]
And our Billings finalists, all three of whom will be receiving cash awards. So we are grateful to the Billings Family Foundation for making that possible. And so, yes, this is a new age. We are all winners.
And I'm so, so happy for them and also delighted for you all to be able to hear them. So if the three would stand up, Odds Jenkins.
[APPLAUSE]
Nicole Marie.
[APPLAUSE]
And Eve Woldemikael.
[APPLAUSE]
With those preliminaries out of the way, please enjoy this year's Billings prize for preaching service.
AUDS JENKINS: Luke 19, 1 through 10. Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was. But on account of the crowd, he could not because he was short.
So he ran ahead and climbed a Sycamore tree to see him because Jesus was going to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up to him, and he said, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down because I'm going to your house today." So Zacchaeus hurried down and was happy to welcome him.
And all who saw it began to grumble. And they said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who was a sinner." Zacchaeus stood there, and he said to the Lord, "Look, half of my possessions, I will give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much."
Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house because he too is a son of Abraham. For the son of man came to seek out and save the lost." It's tax season y'all.
[LAUGHTER]
So let's talk about our favorite tax collector.
[LAUGHTER]
So we learned three things about Zacchaeus right away. He's a tax collector, he's rich, and he's short. Honestly, Zac sounds like every fourth man on Hinge in Boston right now.
[LAUGHTER]
He works in finance or finance. His hobbies are sailing and eating overpriced Tapas. And he claims to be 5' 10" when he's clearly 5' 7".
[LAUGHTER]
Go off short king.
[LAUGHTER]
So hear me out. In my mind, Zacchaeus is like a biblical finance bro. He's a Patagonia vest wearing J crew khakis finance bro. But in all fairness, Zacchaeus is not just a finance bro, he's a finance bro that meets Jesus.
[LAUGHTER]
And it changes his life forever. So in honor of tax season, let's take a closer look at Zacchaeus. So what is a tax collector? In first century Judea, tax collectors were hired contractors that collected fees on the behalf of the Roman Empire. And everybody hated them.
Zacchaeus got filthy rich by skimming off the top of the taxes. And the Romans saw Zacchaeus as this nouveau riche scum. And his own people, his fellow Judeans rightfully despised him for profiting off their oppression.
All of these years of balling out, left Zacchaeus pretty hollow. Because when we meet Zacchaeus, he is scrambling up a tree to see Jesus. When we meet Zacchaeus, he is hosting Jesus in his home, and he is giving away half of everything that he owns. So what is going on here? Is this just an inspirational story about Jesus changing an evil person's life?
I mean, what does this have to do with us? We are not tax collectors. I failed AP calc. We're dev school students.
[LAUGHTER]
Can we just say love that for you Zacchaeus and move on with our lives?
[LAUGHTER]
While that's one possible interpretation, when I read this passage as a Buddha-ish woman of color in a capitalist white supremacist world on fire, I hear a story about getting free. And when I say getting free, I mean, free in the Buddhist sense, freedom from suffering, freedom from the illusions that keep us in the dark about our true nature as members of the family of things as interdependent beings.
So this afternoon, I would like to share three things that Zacchaeus teaches us about how to get free. The first one is to climb the tree. Zacchaeus is very aware that he doesn't have the perspective that he needs. He knows that something is wrong in his life, so he goes to meet Jesus.
He's like, listen, I don't know what I'm going to see up there. But I know that I need to see it. So he makes an ally of the tree. He's short on perspective.
[LAUGHTER]
So he climbs the tree to get a new one. And what he sees from this new vantage point changes everything. So that's the first lesson, climb the tree. The second lesson is to open your home. When Zacchaeus is up in that tree, Jesus looks up, he makes eye contact, and he says, "Zacchaeus, come down right now because I'm going to your house."
And a bat out of hell, Zacchaeus gets out of that tree. And he hosts Jesus in his home. And in some ways, this is a total no-brainer. Of course, you want to host Jesus.
But in some ways, I do think there's a world in which Zacchaeus actually says no. Because remember, everybody hates Zacchaeus. When Jesus says he's going to his house, everybody in the crowd is just like, that's crazy. What are you talking about? Zacchaeus sucks. Why would you go to the home of a sinner?
And Zacchaeus can absolutely hear them. He can hear them saying that. And I think if I were Zacchaeus, I might have let shame stop me right then and there. I might have been like, you know what? Y'all are right. I'm not worthy, and I'm certainly not ready.
Jesus, maybe you should come back in a week or next week, next lifetime, and then we can talk. But Zacchaeus does not do that. He says yes. He says OK. He opens his home and his heart with all of its messiness.
And I believe that that's the second great lesson. Because when the teacher comes knocking or when something or someone comes along that invites you into deeper relationship, this is your opportunity to say yes because I believe that the divine longs to come home to us just as much as we long to come home to them. So that is the second lesson. Open your home and your heart.
The final lesson that we have from Zacchaeus is that to get free. We must give up what we cannot afford to keep. We must give up what we cannot afford to keep.
Zacchaeus has spent his entire career exploiting his neighbors and sucking up to the Roman Empire. But at least he's rich. But then he meets Jesus. And he is liberated to finally give up what is holding him back. He cannot keep the money that he acquired unjustly by allying himself with Empire and keep his soul.
The money is in the way of his freedom. And it's in the way of his wholeness. So he gives it away. And listen, this is as countercultural in this moment as it is in our moment. No one just gives up their money, their power, and their privilege.
And yet if we are being very honest with ourselves, these are often the things that stand between us and wholeness between us and right relationship with the world around us. So the final lesson from Zacchaeus is that giving up what we cannot afford to keep is the heart of freedom. It is the heart of liberation.
This past summer, I interned at a newspaper in Minneapolis. I wrote a story about white churches in Minnesota who are working on reparations for Black and Indigenous communities. It was a really difficult story to write.
There were many times throughout this months-long interview process where I felt very confused and discouraged. There were times when I was, you know what, y'all? I see you trying, but I don't know how this is going to end.
And yet I also saw things that made me feel incredibly hopeful because I saw people in process, people who are following in Zacchaeus's footsteps to repair the harm and to get free. They are climbing the tree. These white churches are getting new perspectives on their church histories, their family histories, and the history of white Christianity, and the settler colonial project in the US.
They are opening their homes and their hearts to Black and Indigenous leaders who are leading reparations and landback movements in Minnesota. They are not caught up in presenting the image of a perfect white church, but they are jumping into the work with all of its messiness.
And finally, some of these churches are beginning to give up what they cannot afford to keep. They are beginning to give up some of that money, that land, and most importantly, that power. And I still don't know how it will all end.
And if it will be enough, if indeed it could ever be enough, yet as these white churches are giving up what they cannot afford to keep, they are discovering that it is not a sacrifice. They are discovering that it is the heart of freedom itself.
As I close, I would like to return to our text. So after Zacchaeus makes his commitment to repair the harm, Jesus turns to him. And he says, "Today, salvation has come to this house because he, too, is a son of Abraham." Jesus does not say today Zacchaeus is saved because he donated a crap ton of money.
[LAUGHTER]
No. But he does say that salvation, freedom has come to his house because Zacchaeus is a son of Abraham. Zacchaeus does not become a son. He was always already a member of the family. Jesus is saying Zacchaeus is free today because he has finally come home to himself.
In a world on fire, what we need today are more people who are coming home to themselves, who are unwilling to live in denial any longer, and who are coming home to their true nature as members of the family. Because this is not just about individual freedom, this is about collective freedom. This is about taking very seriously the Buddhist image of Indra's net, the infinite jeweled net that illuminates our true nature as inextricably connected across every single lifetime forever and ever.
And when I see the fishnet pattern of the keffiyeh, I see Indra's net. I see a call for us to remember interdependence, and I hear a call for freedom. Because freedom is our birthright. Freedom is who we are.
Once we realize this, we actually become unable to deny that freedom to anyone else because we know that our freedom is linked. Like Zacchaeus, we then do the work of repair. And we get free together until all beings are free. May all beings be free.
[APPLAUSE]
SOLOMON KWAGKHO: All right. From the Gospel of Matthew, the Bible. Walking along the beach of Lake Galilee, Jesus saw two brothers, Simon and Andrew. They were fishing.
Throwing their nets into the lake, it was their regular work. Jesus said to them, "Come with me. I'll make a new fisherman out of you. I'll show you how to catch men and women, instead of patch and bass." They didn't ask questions, but simply dropped their nets and followed.
A short distance down the beach, they came upon another pair of brothers, James and John, Zebedee's sons. These two were sitting in a boat with their father, Zebedee, mending their fish nets. Jesus made the same offer to them. And they were just as quick to follow abandoning boat and father. May the Lord bless the reading and the hearing of his words in our hearts. In Jesus's name, Amen.
This is my favorite moment just looking at you all right before. My reading today is from the Dhammapada, the minor collection sayings of the Dharma number 10, the rod translated from Pali by Bhante Sudarso.
Everyone dreads violence, everyone likes to live, recognizing that you are similar, do not harm or cause others to harm. What person can be found in this world that is restrained by conscience who wakes up when criticized like a fine horse struck by a whip. Like a fine horse struck by a whip, be ardent and filled with urgency by means of faith, virtue, determination, concentration, investigation of Dharma, perfect knowledge, perfect conduct, and thorough awareness abandon this immense suffering.
Irrigators guide water, Fletcher's shape arrows, carpenters shape wood, those who practice train themselves. [SINGING] Knowing each act of perception is a weaver of worlds. I undertake the training to refrain from harming living beings. I will protect all life.
One of the five precepts adapted by Catherine McGee. My sermon is titled in praise of vermin. Rats, spiders, leeches, cockroaches, mosquitoes, flies, fleas, tapeworms, maggots. What is it like to hear this lis?
[LAUGHTER]
For some of you, it's fine. And for some of you like myself, it's a bit gross, maybe even disgusting. But which one of them gets you?
[LAUGHTER]
Is it the rat? My cat likes to drag in little rats from outside. And last spring, I woke to one crawling my bed towards my pillow dropping feces behind it in its fear. Is it the cockroaches?
A friend of mine lived in an apartment where they filled at night. And she woke up to one burrowing in her ear. Or is it leeches, ticks, or mosquitoes who suck your blood to feed it to their children? Or maybe it's just maggots who are just waiting to feast on your cold dead flesh?
[LAUGHTER]
They picked me.
[LAUGHTER]
What do you do when vermin invade your home, your bed, your food, even your body? Do you scream? Do you smash them, trap them, exterminate them, or destroy their homes? The despite the vow that I've taken hundreds of times that I sang to you when it comes to vermin, I've done all of them.
Living on a shared property a few years back, the mother of my four-year-old neighbor asked me to kill black widow spiders when I saw them because they can kill children. And I agreed even though I grew up in a home filled with black widow spiders, and not one ever bit our family.
So gardening one day, I lifted a big pot and found a beautiful mama with her red and black body glistening in the sun. And as I lifted my foot to kill her, I saw her see me and prepare herself to die by drawing in her legs. And still, my foot came down.
And for weeks, the vision of her haunted me every time I closed my eyes. And just a few weeks ago, I was sitting in my house with friends on a cold night eating soup when my cat brought in another rat and dropped it at our feet. And all of us scattered armed with Tupperware, chased this fast rodent through the space until we had a cornered behind two sliding doors.
And to get it out, though, I had to narrow the space so that it would come out of hiding. And every time I moved the door, the rat screamed. Have you ever heard a rat scream? It sounds like an infant in searing pain.
And yet I kept going. And it physically hurt me to move that door. But I kept going because I felt entitled to control my home, my safety, my health to alleviate my fear. And so I risked breaking this little being's back or legs just to regain the illusion of control.
Just see another rat, was fine. I took it outside. And as it scampered off into the night, the illusion of control returns. So along with my so-called compassion.
[LAUGHTER]
Everyone dreads violence. Everyone likes to live. Recognizing that you are similar, do not harm or cause others to harm. My friends control is not a good foundation for compassion or ethics. I will say it again. Control is not a good foundation for compassion or ethics.
And when the Dhammapada says everyone, it means it all beings. Humans, animals, plants, spirits, God. It means parents, childrens, aunts, uncles, friends, cousins, lovers, spouses, co-workers, classmates, bosses neighbors, mentors, teachers, teammates, doctors, clients, customers, landlords, partners, former friends, former colleagues, frenemies, opponents, competitors, bullies, victims, perpetrators, social media trolls, demigods, dictators, spiders, mosquitoes, ticks, and rats, all of them.
And to be clear, it's not asking us to be nice or give up a vision of just world, but it is asking us to be honest about the price of making the rat scream or letting the foot come down. What person can be found in this world that is restrained by conscience who wakes up when criticized like a fine horse struck by a whip? It's asking us to implicate ourselves, to be knocked awake by our own bad behavior, by our own faltering ethics. And where can we see that more clearly than how we are with [? Fermín. ?]
You see, the thing is they threaten us with the intimacy of their community. They want to be near us, climb our walls, consume our trash, shelter in our homes, and feed off our flesh. They see our resources and have a different opinion on how they should be used.
[LAUGHTER]
And in our response, they show us show us who we become when different opinions threaten the illusion of control. So what is it that we do? Do I ban, cancel, unfriend, tune out, ridicule, dismiss, alienate, cover my eyes and plug my ears to their suffering? And if you don't think you ever do this, ask yourself what you plan to do when the mosquitoes come out this summer.
But really, what do we do? Vermin show us just how hard it is to live in community without violence. And the Dhammapada speaks in lofty language because it knows the magnitude of the task it's asking us by means of faith, virtue, determination, concentration, investigation of Dharma, perfect knowledge, perfect conduct. And thorough awareness, abandon this immense suffering.
And it's an interesting end, what is this immense suffering? I propose it is the suffering we feel when we cling to control that blocks us from love. It is the pain I feel in my body when the rat screams and the spider braces. And it is the pain I feel when I refuse to acknowledge the complexity of interconnected communities.
And I learned something about control and love this fall when my partner and I did IVF and suffered a miscarriage. Our chances of creating a viable embryo were slim. But by some miracle, we ended up with one. And on the day we implanted it, I watched on the ultrasound monitor as a cluster of 100 cells, that if it survived, would grow up to be our son placed inside my womb.
And as we drove away from the clinic, I was gripped by the realization that I could do nothing to ensure it would live. I could eat and sleep well and offer love and nourishment. But ultimately, I had no more control over this baby accepting my body than I do over the eggs hatching in the nest these spring.
But I could kill it. I could drink a fifth of vodka, or I could get in a hot bath, and it would die. And in this realization, this little spark of a son taught me something crucial that day. We cannot make another stay or love us. Think the way we do, speak in ways we agree with, or behave how we think they should act. And the only true control we have over another is violence and death. So if we aren't willing to do that, all we have is to offer the best of ourselves. Let go and be willing to be inconvenienced and be willing even to grieve.
We see the limits of our love when we look at ourselves through the eyes of those who inconvenience us, revolt us, or ask us to bear pain for the world. And community life based on Love that includes those with whom we disagree is murky and inconvenient. It demands something extraordinary of our lives and our hearts.
But we are here as training ministers and scholars of wisdom traditions because I believe we want to understand something about the extraordinary reaches of love. So we must take the Dhammapada seriously when it says irrigators guide water, Fletcher's shape arrows, carpenter-shaped wood, and those who practice well, practice in ethics, train themselves. So let ourselves be trained by the complex demands of inconvenient community.
Our siblings in birth sickness and death rats, spiders, ticks, leeches, cockroaches, and fleas may they teach us what it means to love them. And in doing so, love one another. [SINGING] Knowing each act of perception is a Weaver of worlds. I undertake the training to refrain from harming living beings. I will protect all life.
[APPLAUSE]
IVY WANG: Wow.
[GIGGLES]
So beautiful. This is a reading from one of my favorite books of all time that has brought me to the Divinity School. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.
It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of creation, and it turns to radiance. For a moment or a year or the span of a life, and then it sinks back into itself again. And to look at it, no one would know at anything to do with fire or light. That is what I said in the Pentecost sermon. I've reflected on it. And there is some truth in it.
But the Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes, the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it, except a little willingness to see only who could have the courage to see it. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Love Dogs by Rumi. One night, a man was crying, Allah, Allah. His lips grew sweet with the praising. Until a cynic said, "So I have heard you calling out. But have you ever gotten any response?" The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep. He dreamed he saw herder, the guide of souls in a thick green foliage. Why did you stop praising? Because I've never heard anything back.
This longing express is the return message. The grief you cry out from draws you toward union. Your pure sadness that wants help is the secret cup. Listen to the moan of a dog for its master. That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs. No one knows the names. Give your life to be one of them. What does it mean to be a love dog? Rumi's command is a serious one. He doesn't say act like a love dog, he says give your life to be one of them even if nobody knows the dog's name, even if nobody ever knows your name.
The way you craft your life to be a vehicle and a vessel for love is what brings the divine close to you. The man in the poem quits praying because the cynic asks him a question he can't answer. The cynic doesn't tell him to stop praying. He interrupts the sweet act of praise and says, you've been trying, but has it worked? Why would you spend your time saying those prayers going to that protest, asking for what you want, and might not get?
See, the cynic doesn't tell you not to do it. The danger of the cynic is that he makes you think giving up is your own idea. Cynics are often smug. They'll be the first to come up with a million reasons why you shouldn't do something. The cynic is just being practical. Why would you ask if you never get a response?
Love dogs are those who cherish the Earth even as we watch it die. Love dogs are those who show up to protests even when they're ignored by public officials and taunted by the threat of doxing. Love dogs are those who are willing to be disappointed time and time again because they are so compelled to believe that something better is actually possible.
The cynic says this liberation you talk about will never happen. The love dog says, I don't know if it will happen, but I want it so very badly. To be a love dog is to be brokenhearted all the time.
But beneath the cynics apathetic smart-aleck nature, the cynic who never gets their hopes up about anything because they don't want to be disappointed. The cynic who seems OK to accept life as it is because they would rather live with the familiar problems and take a risk and deal with new ones. This cynic deep down is overwhelmed by emotion.
We think of cynics as uncaring and detached. But the cynic is not really apathetic. The cynic has no God to pray to, no wishes to be granted, no faith in justice ever being served. The cynic is furious.
This winter, I have felt a cynic inside of me. I felt too defeated to keep marching in the streets as I'm astonished that 40,000 Palestinians dead is still not enough to make those in power call for a ceasefire. This winter, I have felt a cynic inside of me. In January, I traveled to South Africa and Zimbabwe.
As I walked through the apartheid museum in Johannesburg, which put all the systematic, exploitation, and abuse of Black bodies on display, I felt myself filling with a fire of hate for the White colonizers and their descendants who to this day still own the vast majority of the land. My heart raged as I drove through rural Zimbabwe and saw smoke rising from a coal mining facility owned by a foreign company in the middle of a protected nature reserve, extracting wealth from the land and providing the local people with nothing more than polluted air to breathe.
Is this what hard-won independence looks like? I felt so hopeless and powerless. I wondered what all the human life sacrificed for an ideal of freedom even means. And here in this country, where we see Black Lives Matter, banners in buildings and institutions who after months of countrywide protests put Black people in positions of power only to remove them four years, two years, or even only six months later making the institutional promises of racial justice work appear to be no more than superficial acts and performances of wokeness on behalf of those who have no real interest in actual change.
I don't like to think of myself as a cynic. But I've watched myself becoming one. When I fill with rage that has nowhere to go, and it feels that nothing I could do would make any difference, and that I'm powerless in the face of history. And its overwhelmingly brutal legacy.
And this rage without a safe home crystallizes into hate. I feel my body contracting with a hateful hopeless rage, and it scares me. So what do I do with my hate. I've been told my whole life that hatred is so bad. It's the one thing you should never feel.
We the good people, we don't hate. And that's the difference between us and them. But I know that I hate. So what do I do with my hate?
Only through sitting with the discomfort of this question, do I start to unravel the thread that plagues the cynic? I hated the White colonizers, the wealthy landowners, the resource exploiters just like I've hated those who have enslaved other humans or led to the destruction of people and cultures we will never have back. Just like I hated the suburban city I grew up in where my African heritage was met with disparaging comments, and an insulting ignorance.
And I got scared that the hatred within me could lead me to act in the very same ways of those I despised. As I walked through the icy cold streets of Cambridge in January grappling with the burning fire of hate in my heart, I realized I felt hatred for the White colonizers not because they are any worse or any better than any other people on Earth, but because I know that Black Africans are and have always been people that deserve to be respected, and revered, and to have full autonomy over their land.
Because I believe with my whole heart in their beauty and power that I cannot accept for one second that I live in a world where this truth has been so deeply violated. The violation of this truth is so outrageous that it causes hatred to well up inside of me. But the hatred is really a reflection of my love. It is the love I have for people that makes me so angry about their mistreatment.
It is actually the cynic in me, the hating vengeful angry part of me that loves this world so much. What you hate the things and people that you absolutely cannot stand, the things that make you burn with fury inside, that is a roadmap showing you the direct route to that which you cherish and love the most. The cynic and the love dog are not opposites. The love dog is heartbroken, but so is the cynic.
The cynic is a love dog who stopped crying out because he stopped believing that his beloved master would ever return. But the cynic is also a love dog in the making. The task for the cynic is to allow himself to be broken open by his numbing hatred, and to feel the pained love that has been forgotten beneath it.
Our rage is the gap between the world we know we deserve and the one that we have. If you hear your inner cynic hating this world so much you want to stop caring, I urge you to dig deeper. And you may discover that there is something true for you that has been violated. Something that you sense that is pure and beautiful and right, and that it has been so mistreated and disrespected that you want to freeze your heart to avoid that pain.
I had to tell myself that it's OK that I hate sometimes. But we have to uncover the love that is buried beneath the hate. That love contains our vision for what this world must become.
There are a million very good reasons to be a cynic. Because we feel our voices don't matter. Because we don't know what to do and nobody will tell us. Because the world is so unfair. Because we did try and nothing seemed to change.
But when we turn into cynics, we renounce any possibility of ever seeing the world we dream of become real. The cynic pretends not to be heartbroken while the love dog knows my heartbreak is my love. The real question is not, are you brave enough to be heartbroken?
But are you brave enough to be alive? The cynic, the one who doubts when we listen to the cynic inside of us, our life is cheap. Give it away. Give it all away to be a love dog. Give your life because, otherwise, you're not really living.
Be consumed by your longing. Be on fire with your love with the rightness you feel this world deserves. Because it not only makes that possibility real, it makes you real.
In just a few months on campus this fall, I witnessed a multiracial, multi-religious community of care and love that didn't exist here before because believing in and standing up for the humanity of Palestinians also meant believing in and standing up for each other. With our hearts broken open, I saw sacred glimpses of what a world centering love and justice would actually feel like. Our dreams of liberation are our connection to a liberated world. One that doesn't exist, one that may never exist, but that we can make real in fleeting moments in tight hugs in honest tears in acting from generosity and deep care in speaking up for truth and loving ourselves and each other.
I don't know if we'll ever see justice for the great wrongs of this world if wealth and power will be equally distributed, if stolen Indigenous lands will be returned, if my racist middle school classmates will apologize for sticking pencils in my hair. I don't know if we'll ever see justice. But I do believe that it matters who we become in the process of trying to create it.
When we allow our sacred visions of liberation and love to bloom inside of us, we become the forces of love this world so desperately needs. The cynic is not wrong to ask a question. But if we don't make the cynic within us, uncover our anger, our hate, our heartache, we will never manifest the divine reality of love and liberation on this Earth. But the real lovers, the love dogs will live and breathe and die in love. Give your life, give all of your life to be one of them.
[APPLAUSE]
TEDDY HICKMAN-MAYNARD: And so we've invited alumnnix, and supervisors, and friends scattered throughout this audience. We've invited you to do the impossible. We've asked you to judge that.
[LAUGHING]
If you are one of those people, you have a QR code, we ask that you visit the website now and enter your selections. But we don't want to sit here waiting for them to finish the judging. And so we need something for you all to do. And so here's a song.
[LAUGHTER]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
(SINGING) I want to hear you louder than the noise, I want to feel you. Closer than the air, I breathe deep within my soul, Bernie. Speak to me, let my heart be awakened by the whispering of love.
Pull me close to your heart. Let the silence now be filled with your voice. Found in surrender. My heart is full of yours caught in the moment, and captivated by the unseen. Your loving heart for me reveal.
Speak to me, let my heart be awakened by the whispering of love. Pull me close to your heart. Let the silence now be filled with your voice, your voice.
The words I hear you say. You've been speaking now for all of time, all of time. The words I hear you say you've been speaking now for all of time, all of time you with me.
You're for me. And you have a plan for me. And I will never walk alone. You with me. You for me, and you have a plan for me. And now I will never walk alone.
Speak to let my heart be awakened by the whisperings of love. Pull me close to your heart, and let silence now be filled with your voice, your voice. Speak to me, let my heart be awakened by the whispering of love. Pull me close to your heart. Let the silence now be filled with your voice. Field with yours.
[APPLAUSE]
That timed out well.
[LAUGHTER]
The 2024 winner of the Billings Prize for Preaching is Auds Jenkins.
[APPLAUSE]
We have flowers for all of you. And so I'm going to ask you the reading winners, Solomon and Ivy, if you would come and receive your gifts. Solomon and Ivy, give them another hand as they come.
[APPLAUSE]
And our preaching finalists, Nicole Marie and Eve Woldemikael, would you please come and be recognized?
[APPLAUSE]
And give it up one more time for our winner Auds Jenkins. Come on, Auds.
[APPLAUSE]
And all five of you after the service has concluded. Please don't leave. We want to get your pictures. So don't run away. Thank you to everyone for coming and for your support. We turn it back over to the Noon Service Steering Committee to close us out.
TERRY DIXON: Thank you, Dean Teddy and all of the participants and to everyone in the Office of Ministry Studies for hosting today's service, and to each of you for joining us here today. Next week, the HDS gardens group will be hosting Noon Service. So we hope you can join us then.
AUDIENCE: In the garden.
TERRY DIXON: In the garden even better.
[LAUGHTER]
Regardless of the weather?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, [INAUDIBLE].
TERRY DIXON: OK, in the garden or the common room where the permitting. And we do encourage you to stay afterwards for some food, and refreshment, and to continue this time together. You may return when you leave your bulletin cover in the basket by the door. But please feel free to keep the insert.
And now, if you would join me please in saying the words to leave and live by, which are found in your bulletin. Thank you for your authentic offerings today. May the power of what you've shared direct and sustain us from this time forth until we meet again. Go in peace.
[APPLAUSE]
AVR: Sponsor Office of the Chaplain and Religious and Spiritual Life.
AVR: Copyright 2020 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.