We are…?
The Last Sunday after Pentecost
November 25, 2018
If you happen to be wearing a Penn State fan gear out in public you need to be prepared for complete strangers coming up to you and saying in a loud voice “We are” and they will expect you to answer back “Penn State!” If you go to a Penn State football game you will hear the students cheer back and forth “We are” … “Penn State.” I have been told that the volume in Beaver stadium where Penn State plays, when students are cheering, is equivalent to the sound on an aircraft carrier deck. As many of you know, my son William is a junior at Penn State. I love Penn State. I love what it has done for my son, and I am always impressed by the alumni I have met from there, including our own Senior Warden of our church Bill Shaw. But anyone who has followed the news for the last decade will know that there have been some very painful, shameful and dishonorable events in recent history for that university.
But what I want to tell you about this morning is the story behind Penn State’s eponymous cheer “We are Penn State” and how it goes to the soul of what Penn State sees as its core values. In fact, after the Sandusky scandal, an artist was commissioned to create a “We are” as a visual reminder of this ideal. It is a statue that is so large that when a family stands in front of it for photographs, you can clearly see the letters spelling our “We are”.
The story of “We are Penn State” came up in the news a few weeks ago and you may have seen it. The story centers around a player named Wally Triplett who died on November 8th,earlier this month. He was an African American who was born and raised in LaMott, PA which is a wealthy suburb of Philadephia. He and his family lived there because they were among the many black people who served the wealthy whites in that town. As the story goes, Triplett had a spectacular senior year football season at his High School and the offers from universities poured in, including one from the University of Miami. He realized, because of his address that some universities, including the University of Miami in Florida, had assumed that he was white. Triplett knew this was the case, so he wrote back to inform the University of Miami that he was not able to play for them because he was not white, and as can be expected, upon receiving Triplett’s letter, the University of Miami immediately rescinded their offer based upon the color of his skin. But the good news for Penn State is that when they offered him a place, Triplett was free to take up the offer.
When he arrived at Penn State,one of the football teams they were to face his first season was the very same University of Miami. The university, like many of the southern universities, said that they would only play Penn State if they left their two black players at home. So the Penn State team had to decide what they were going to do. So they got the team together, the white players and the two black players. Once they were gathered, the captain of the team, Steve Suhey said to the team “we are going to play all, or we are going to play none.” And then the team voted and unanimously decided as a team, they were not going to play.
Eventually, the team needed to make a definitive stand on what they were going to do in the future, and the captain, Steve Suhey, in frustration asked “are we going to have to keep having these meeting about what to do?” And he followed it up by saying “We are all or we are none. We are Penn State.”
The story goes on and you can google it and learn more about how the “We are” story continues.
But the important thing is that this story of Penn State speaks to the heart of what they are proud of –what they want their students to know about the identity of their future alma mater. It is one of the first stories that parents and students are told at freshman orientation. It is the story of who Penn State has been at its greatest, and who they strive to be when things are rough, scandalous and tragic.
Who you are is important. I have a friend named Kevin Nichols who is now the Bishop of Bethlehem, PA, and when his son was younger, before they went anywhere out in public he would say “Keaton, [his son’s name] remember who you are, and where you are.”
The story of who we are is important. And this Feast Day of Christ the King was established for this purpose. In the early 20th c. the Pope was worried about the rise in secularism, nationalism, as well as fascism which was on a rise, and he wanted to remind the church of who they were. He wanted to remind them that their kingdom was not of this world – and that their Kingdom was heaven, and their king was Christ.
So when the Pope established the Feast of Christ the King or what has been called the Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, it was his hope that the feast would remind us that the Kingdom values that we should seek to emulate, to bring to life, to live our lives by, are Christ’s: a kingdom of compassion, love, equality,justice, and sometimes holy obstinacy. It is a kingdom that asks us to live according to our Christian values and not the values that would help us get ahead in life, or to win prestige, or acclaim at expense of our faith. They are values that will sometimes butt up against the status quo or even our own ambition.
And so the Feast Day of Christ the King invites us to think seriously about who we are as Christians. What is our “We are” story? What are the truths we hold dear in our hearts that influence the way we live, what we say, what we strive for, and what we hope to be.
Next Sunday we are in the season of Advent. And during those four weeks we are invited to consider who we are and what we stand for.
So I invite you this week, in a week after being with perhaps your families, or your friends for Thanksgiving, I invite you to entertain a very simple question – what are you most grateful for, and what does that deep abiding sense of gratitude tell you about your core values. How would you answer “we are…” or “I…am.” And over the next four Sundays I hope to explore this theme with you as we journey to Bethlehem to welcome the Christ Child.
Amen
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