 Dr. Mary Scherz is an alumna of AMBS. She's also a graduate of the Vanderbilt University, where she did her PhD in New Testament. In 1998, Dr. Scherz came to AMBS as an assistant professor of New Testament, and in 2000, she was advanced in rank to full professor of New Testament. Dr. Scherz, Mary's, her teaching and scholarship are centered in her deep love for the Bible, her love for the Church, and most importantly, her love for God. She also loves her students dearly. Mary is known for her wonderful prayers that she has crafted and revised for the start of each class session that she teaches, and these beautifully blend together her beliefs, her passions, her new discoveries, and her wisdom. A newer development in her teaching is the practice of artful response, which is an active interplay between the study of Scripture and an artful interpretation that has come from the study of that Scripture. Mary has taken to heart the words of an Old Testament scholar, Ellen Davis, who says that we read the Bible as if our lives depended upon it. As Mary says, of course, our lives do depend on it. Mary became the director of the Institute of Mennonite Studies in 1999, and under her leadership, IMS has flourished, and I will name a few of those contributions a little bit later in our service. Mary and Dr. Perry Yoder published, Seeing the Text, Exegesis for Students of Greek and Hebrew, and her greatest labor of love is her commentary for the Believers' Church Bible Commentary Series, a commentary on the Gospel of Luke, which many of us who have had the privilege to read parts of already look forward to its publication. Mary will be retiring from AMBS at the end of this June, and we will miss her wisdom, her hearty laughter, her pointed questions and comments, and most of all, we will miss her wisdom. Blessedly, she's going to be teaching a course next year with Safwat Marzouk as an affiliate faculty. It is with deep affection and gratitude that I ask you to join me in welcoming Dr. Mary Shirts as our 2017 Anabaptist, Mennonite Biblical Seminary Commencement Speaker. It is indeed an honor to be here. I told Perry Yoder I was doing this and said, I was accepting the assignment with both joy and terror, and he said, Oh, no problem, Mary. First, they won't remember what you said, and second, they all love you. So I'm counting on both from the Anabaptist prayer book. Incarnate God, you fill the world with the deepest blue of world and soul. Help us to claim the sturdy hope that Mary held in her heart and saying out in witness that we too might rejoice, that we too might become disciples, that we too honor the one coming as dawn from on high. I happen to be fond of that collet and that prayer book. When you live where it is very, very flat and there are fewer houses and trees and people, the sky gets to be quite a bit bigger. There you have a full sky, a whole sky, not just pieces of sky or sky scraps like in most places. You can stand in one spot and turn a circle and see the horizon all the way around. If you live where there are no thugs, and it is perfectly fine to be around outside any time of the day or night by yourself, even if you are quite young, you discover the deepest blue of world and soul. It can happen at dusk or dawn on any clear day, but with more intensity in the colder months. It happens in the other direction from the spectacle of the rising sun or the setting sun. It is that elusive ever changing blue beauty after the stars fade or before they emerge. Cobalt, Navy, Sapphire, Indigo, Azure, Cerulean, all of them together and none of them alone. For it's not only a matter of shade and tone and color, but also luminosity, a luminosity of growing and fading light, a luminosity of sun and shadow. This deepest blue of world and soul is not something that you can keep separate from you. It fills the universe and because you are a part of the universe, even if only a speck in the universe, it fills you too, seeping into every pore and inhabiting every cell of your body. It is not so flat in Northern Indiana. The sky is more scrappy here. There are more people and maybe a thug or two, but some clear winter afternoon as the sun is about to set, get on the toll road and head straight for Ohio East. Put your vehicle on cruise control and go as far as you need to go until the deepest blue of world and soul finds you. This is of course the language of epiphany and revelation. We have throughout history frequently struggled to know how to talk about these mysteries or what to do in relationship to them. Some people talk about thin places, others build shrines, some make pilgrimages. Jesus talked about the finger of God, surely as strange a phrase as the deepest blue of world and soul. In the prayer that Jesus taught us, epiphany and revelation and our response to epiphany and revelation are the aboutness of the phrases as in heaven also upon earth. The sturdy characters of Luke's birth narrative, Zachariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, Anna, and Simeon knew better than most this deepest blue of world and soul. They understood better than most that epiphany and revelation take place in that thin place where the weariness and wonder of the world as well as the sorrow and the hope of human being meet the face and the grace of God. Two of these characters, first Mary and then Zachariah after his pregnant silence, articulate in song poetic fashion or what we call canticle this deepest blue of world and soul. In the patriarchal politically volatile and conservative religious environment of first century Palestine, Mary's pregnancy had to have dangerous implications for her. This unexplained and unexplainable pregnancy put her in a precarious position. Right after Mary said yes to God, Luke tells us she got up and went hurriedly into the hill country to Judah to stay with Elizabeth and Zachariah. If we attend to this detail in our Christmas storytelling, we mostly assume that Mary's hurry is a matter of youthful enthusiasm and energy and perhaps even impulse. We see her visit as part and parcel of her rejoicing. But this hurry trip takes place before her song. It takes place before the Magnificat. It may well be a better reading of the text to let it raise the question for us of the danger that saying yes to God entailed for Mary. Despite her own far from secure present, and despite her own far from certain future, Mary with determination and courage interprets her experience as not only good news for herself, but also good news for her nation and for her world. But that is after the trip to Judah, and it is after Mary and Elizabeth have talked. My soul exalts the Lord, she sings. My spirit has begun to rejoice in God, my Savior. Mary takes what has happened with her yes to God, into her body and into her soul, and from that deepest blue begins to imagine a world free from fear and abounding injustice. This canticle holds within it the grounded vision, the passionate tender care that filled Mary both the first disciple that she was, and also Jesus first teacher that she was as well. Luke then turns our attention back to Zachariah and Elizabeth. Well, Mary and Elizabeth have profound have been having profound theological conversations with each other for three months. Zachariah, the priest, has been silent all this time, forced as it were to listen, to ponder the weariness and wonder of the world, to ponder the sorrow and joy of being human. He has had time to remember that day in the temple, his own less than adequate response to epiphany and revelation. There is every evidence that Zachariah emerges from this deepest blue stronger and wiser. When he returns to voice, it is indubitable that he has been transformed by the face and grace of God. When he finds voice again after the birth of his son, after the kerfuffle about the name, after blessing God, after the neighbor's fear, he, like Mary, breaks forth into a lovely canticle, the one that we know as the Benedictus. Whereas Mary's song about her child imagines a world free from oppression and hunger, Zachariah's song about his child imagines a world free to worship and serve the Lord without fear. Your child, he sings, will give God's people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins. Because of God's tender mercy, the dawn will break upon us from on high. Both Mary and Zachariah emerge from the deepest blue of their epiphanies with revelation that forms their sturdy hope in the dawn breaking from on high. The two boys grow up together in their own rustic informal learning environment with two generations of adults with maturity and wisdom. Taught well by these dear ones, they grow to understand both of them that thin place where the weariness and wonder of the world, as well as the sorrow and hope of human being meet the face and grace of God, the dawn breaking upon us from on high. Dear graduates, this year last year of seminary studies has not been an easy one, particularly, not easy in many ways. We have had our own experiences of the weariness and wonder of the world. We have had our own experiences of the sorrow and the hope of human being. If we were supposed to provide you with an ivory tower in which to study theology, untouchable apart from the world, we have failed miserably. This year we have been made aware if we lacked that knowledge of the fragility of life. Our small world has been rocked, a highway in Virginia, a hospital in Scotland, a violent day in Congo, far away places, dear friends, deep wounds. And then just this week, last Tuesday, this week of celebrating your graduation, we mourned our beloved Alan Crider, experiencing in so many small and large ways our sorrow in his death and our joy in his life. I am very aware that Alan was here in this place at this podium just last year. My last conversation with him had to do with this address to you today. He leaned in. And with his gentle intensity said, Mary, tell them to love the Bible. And so I do, dear ones, love the Bible. Continue to develop, to nurture, to feed, to practice your own lifelong passion for the ancient words of this biblical text. Not just because scripture has authority. And not just because scripture is the inspired word of God. And certainly not just because you are graduating from Anabaptist Mennonite biblical seminary. Keep reading these pages, pondering these words, memorizing these passages. Keep hanging out with Mary and Zachariah and all the others. Keep probing these mysteries, singing these canticles, praying these Psalms, telling these stories. Keep loving these words because they are themselves the deepest blue of world and soul, holding weariness and wonder, sorrow and joy, containing the whole of life and offering for the whole of life epiphany and revelation continuing and ever new. As you leave us, dear ones, hold close the weariness and wonder of the world, the sorrow and the joy of being human. And there in whatever exciting thing you do next in your ministries, in your lives, in your relationships, in that deepest blue of world and soul, you will meet the face and the grace of God. You will find sturdy hope. You will find the joy of being a disciple. You will find ways to be a witness. A witness to the dawn, which breaks upon us from on high, so blessings. Blessings, dear ones, all our fondest blessings. Amen. Thank you.