Photo courtesy of Point University
On May 9, I was honored to be asked to give the commencement address at my alma mater, Point University. This semester marks my retirement after 50 years of continuous employment at Point! I was also humbled to be awarded an honorary doctorate from the University. Several friends asked me to share my commencement sermon here. You can also view it on Point’s YouTube channel.
Madam President – I might add that I am the first Point commencement speaker to be able to say “Madam President! – fellow members of the Point University faculty, administrators, and staff with whom I have had the blessing of serving with for a while, guests and family members of our graduates, and most of all, members of the Class of Fall 2025 and the Class of Spring 2026, and members of the honored class of 1976 here to celebrate fifty years of life since graduation – I am more honored than I can say to stand before you this morning on such an august occasion.
Were I sitting where you are and not standing where I am – my head would be spinning with questions like, “How long will this take?” After all, I’ve been to at least fifty Point graduations – actually closer to sixty, when you think about the years we also had December graduations. I’m confident I would be hoping, perhaps praying, that whoever the speaker is, please don’t let him or her review fifty graduation speeches that have been heard over the years. I thought about reviewing “my ten favorite graduation sermons” – David Letterman-like – but I’m not sure I have ten.
But I do have a quick story from my freshman year as a student at what was then Atlanta Christian College. The story comes from the second semester of my freshman year, the spring of 1970. Many of your parents weren’t even born back then. The spring term started off with a special lectureship and a few nights of “spiritual emphasis” as it was called back then.
My first semester – in the fall of 1969 – had been an eye-opening experience. Growing up in the middle of nowhere on a dairy farm in Berkeley County, South Carolina, I was enthralled by the big city of Atlanta. I attended churches whose Sunday attendance was larger than the population of the entire little town I grew up in and the total student population of the seventh- through twelfth-grade school from which I graduated. To describe me back then as socially awkward would be a kind thing to say – perhaps still is. Shockingly, I excelled academically – contrary to what my high school GPA and SAT scores would have suggested. I even made an A in Ralph Warren’s Comp 101 class – in which there was a student taking it for his third time and still did not pass. I started making friends, some of whom are my good friends to this very day. I met a brilliant, very talented musician, and stunningly beautiful fellow freshman. I would eventually get the nerve to ask her out in our junior year. We would eventually get married after graduation and spend forty-eight years and two weeks as husband and wife and have two incredible children, who are the best thing I will leave behind in the world when my life ends.
But . . . here’s what amazes me. Over Christmas break, I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay at ACC. Maybe my sense of a call to ministry was a misreading of God’s intentions for my life. I grew up thinking I could be happy as a farmer – and still think that could have been true. I also thought about becoming a lawyer, but wasn’t sure I would have been admitted to a pre-law program anywhere based on my grades and SAT score. However, my Dean’s List GPA my first semester of college made me think, “stay at ACC one more semester and you can transfer.”
None of that, however, was the cause for my real concern about staying at ACC. I grew up in a very Christian family. My parents, my grandparents, most of my aunts and uncles, the faithful people with whom I went to church weekly had set a wonderful example of faithful living. But their view of how to live out life as a follower of Jesus and what I discovered as a student in an evangelical Christian College in the late sixties and early seventies were vastly different. The term “daylight and dark” comes to mind to describe the difference.
The student handbook back in those days would have given the Jewish Talmud a run for its money when it comes to making up rules for every possible thing a person can do with his or her human body. Playing cards was frowned upon, as was dancing. Shorts could not be worn on campus and women wore dresses to class. You weren’t allowed to wash your car on Sunday. Men wore coats and ties and women wore their “Sunday best” to dinner in the dining hall on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. I could go on – but you should now get the point. We weren’t the only Christian college like that back then, and frankly, some still exist. It is as though no one ever read Paul’s comments in Colossians 2 that suggest that man-made rules and regulations have no power over our sensuality.
For the lectureship in January 1970, a scientist from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was the speaker. His name was Dr. George Sweitzer, a relative of the great Albert Sweitzer. He talked about science and the Bible. Back in those days, before night school and online degrees, it wasn’t unusual to have a group of older guys whose mid-life crisis had been interpreted as a call to ministry. We had a good group of those guys. To say that they could be a bit rigid and judgmental in the midst of a bunch of 18- to 22-year-olds would not be an exaggeration. I thought Dr. Sweitzer might be the smartest person I had ever heard speak. Our one science-oriented professor at the time, the late Roy W. McKinney, thought his presentations were excellent.
But not these older students. At the final session, where there was mostly Q&A, even as a relatively dumb freshman, I thought these guys were a bit rude. Sometimes our narrowness means that we expect people not only to say the right thing, but to say it like we want it said. Sweitzer apparently didn’t know the right lingo to use with these guys.
Finally, Sweitzer said something like this, “Folks, I’ve enjoyed being here.” (Perhaps with his fingers crossed.) “But I need to head to the airport to go home and want to leave you with one important thing.” Then he said what would prove to keep me at ACC and affirm my sense of calling. His exact words were, “Stand firm on the Jesus event. Hang loose on everything else.”
It is possible to hear that and see it as an encouragement to pat Jesus on the back and tell him, “What a good boy you are,” and move on to live in reckless abandonment of any idea of being a kingdom person doing kingdom things.
But to do so would be wrong.
You see, you can’t “stand firm on the Jesus event” unless you know, you understand, and you believe who Jesus is and what difference He makes. The Jesus event is not a story that calls for neutrality. Rather, it calls for a radical shift in vision, a radical shift in values, a radical shift in how we treat others, including our colleagues, and a radical shift in virtue. No offense to Rotary Clubs – I once was a Rotarian and even served as president of our club for a year – but Jesus did not come to be the popular speaker at the weekly meetings of Rotary Clubs around the world. That’s why Point’s mission, to educate students for Christ-centered service and leadership throughout the world, calls on each of us to know who Jesus is and what difference He makes as we “stand firm on the Jesus event.”
When I stop and think about who I was when I was sitting where you are in 1973 for my college graduation, and who I am today, I can only stand in awe of who Jesus is and what difference He has made in my life. In the words of an old gospel hymn, “I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene, and wonder how He could love me, a sinner, condemned, unclean.”
Some of you have heard me say that one of my life principles is that when I first look in the mirror every morning, I remind myself that I don’t deserve to get to do the things God has called me to do. (I certainly thought about that idea a few hours ago this morning.) When I go to bed tonight, I will wonder, “Is this the day God had in mind for me when I was born?” I would be happy if that were the case.
In a recent article from Christianity Today, I read these words from the late Dr. John Perkins, perhaps the greatest Civil Rights leader in the United States since MLK himself. Perkins, from a hospice bed just a few months ago, emphasized that it was not him who had made a great difference in our culture, but Christ. Then he said, “If we are going to help others understand who Jesus is, our own lives must reflect His character and love.” He then suggested that the reason we must love our neighbor – including our political opponents and others – is because, “It is at this precise moment that the watching world gets a glimpse of Him.”
Were you to push me in a corner and insist that I could not escape until I told you why I have remained steadfast, with integrity, in my 50 years of ministry at Point, I would simply say, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God unto salvation, to the Jew first and then the Gentile.” (Romans 1:16)
Paul declared those words to the greatest human power of his day. The emperor liked to think of himself with words like power and salvation, perhaps with a bit of a god-complex about his own identity. My prayer is that you will join me in borrowing those words from Paul and declare to the powers and principalities of this world, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God unto salvation.”
May God bless each of you as together we throw caution to the wind and muster the courage to learn “to stand firm on the Jesus event, and hang lose about everything else.”
Wye Huxford 