Return to Stepping East

"East of Calvin"
(Genesis 4: 1-16)

by Quentin J. Schultze
Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences
Calvin College

An address delivered on May 1, 2001 at the dedication ceremony for the start of construction on the DeVos Communication Center, the Prince Conference Center and the pedestrian overpass spanning the East Beltline.

We now step east, across the Beltline, and toward East Paris. Of course the college has headed east before, including when it moved from the Franklin campus to Knollcrest.

Before pouring any foundations, perhaps we should make sure that we're headed in the right direction.

Horace Greeley once advised Americans to "Go West." And the West still enchants us-the frontier, mountains, cities like Colorado Springs, Seattle and San Diego, and parks such as Yellowstone and Yosemite. In many of our dreams the West seems closer to heaven.

But then there's Los Angeles-the city of angels, where smog chokes drivers locked in five lanes of crawling traffic, and where two-thirds of all land is now covered with cement.

Or Dallas. Ivan Illich describes Dallas as a place where people "spend their days next to a telephone in an office and their nights garaged next to their cars."

The truth, of course, is that no matter which direction we head, we carry with us the materials for both heavenly and hellish foundations. We are Cains and Abels.

John Steinbeck called his novel East of Eden "the story of my country and the story of me." Similarly, we can say that the eastward story of Cain and Abel is our story. We will be either faithful, humble and generous People — like Abel — or bitter, jealous and self-righteous people, like Cain.

As good Calvinist folks (if that's not an oxymoron) let's remember that sin is crouching at the door. We are east of Eden. Cain saw land primarily as something to conquer, not to cultivate faithfully. He couldn't quite give it all to God. That level of sacrifice was too much for him. He held back. If we do the same, we invite curses rather than blessings.

God owns every square inch of this side of campus — even before it's built up. We need to dedicate to our Lord everything we do here. All of the design. All of the construction. All of our planning for education and Conferences — every bit of it. This is the path of utter faith in the Lord of Hosts.

In the DeVos Communication Center, we will see this kind of faithfulness taking shape on every floor. The DeVos Center will not be a one-technology building focused solely on the latest digital fever. In fact, upon entering the Center most people will be surprised to see an open kiva-like a mini outdoor amphitheatre located indoors. Even in a high-tech age, our abilities to speak clearly and listen carefully are crucially important. We cannot serve the cause of Christ by communicating merely through computer networks or via CD-ROMs, although these newer technologies are certainly important.

In addition, the DeVos Center will help us to serve our neighbors who have special needs as speakers and listeners, such as stroke victims in need of speech therapy and those whose hearing might need technological assistance. Our Communication Disorders students and faculty will give their human insights and technological skills to the community in special labs and clinical facilities.

At the same time, we will see a production studio as well as state-of-the-art digital editing systems for audio, video and text — what some call multimedia communication. Even the classrooms in the DeVos Communication Center will be designed to integrate advanced presentational technologies with lectures, discussion and group activities, the real backbones for effective learning.

Since Christ is Lord over every mode of human communication, and because each form of communication has its own role to play in church and society, we have dedicated the design and technologies of the DeVos Center to serve every aspect of our God-given ability to share our faith and cultivate the Creation. While most new communication buildings will soon become high-tech dinosaurs as technologies change, the DeVos Center will embrace flexibly the range of human communication, from voice to satellites. This is certainly a Reformed vision. But it is also a wise vision that recognizes how God made us, not merely what we can make with our own ingenuity.

It makes sense that Rich and Helen DeVos would join us in this project, for throughout their lives they have been keepers of both God's Word and human words. I have come to know Rich through our endeavors on behalf of Gospel Communications, Inc., one of the most flexible, savvy and forward-looking Christian media organizations in the world. I discovered that Rich is a consummate encourager as well as a lucid and persuasive public speaker. Rich and Helen have spoken to West Michigan repeatedly through their activities on behalf of all kinds of organizations. They witness ecumenically to the Gospel in word and deed. As St. Francis once put it, we should preach the Gospel always — and if necessary, use words.

The way of Abel is the always the path of gratitude and responsibility. Cain was not truly thankful for what he had. Abel, on the other hand, felt a deep responsibility to care for the Creation by anchoring his foundation in God. Abel knew who his brother was; even more, he recognized his sibling as his neighbor. Our neighbors include not just those who live nearby. The Christian Reformed Church is our neighbor, as are other local churches and the church universal. So are the residents of West Michigan. So are the staff and students of Calvin College. Our neighbors include everyone who will attend conferences here and stay overnight. Our neighbor includes, as Frederick Buechner reminds us, everyone in need, and that's the entire human race. God expects us to be grateful and responsible people who love our neighbors. And in order to do that, we must step east, into the fallen world, where the needy reside.

After all, our neighbors are watching us. The Beltline will now truly run through campus. Our neighbors will no longer wonder what goes on at Calvin. By the grace of God, they will see us doing it. Our step east is a witness to our neighbors from near and far. As College Architect Frank Gorman rightly reminds us, this spot along the Beltline is now our front yard.

In this context, the Prince Conference Center will quickly become the center of Calvin hospitality, our front porch and living room for the world to share. The Prince Center will say to our neighbors and to us that gathering together is a crucially important aspect of our createdness. Too often in the academic community we think of conferences primarily in terms of exchanging ideas, debating conclusions and demonstrating intellectual stamina-if not in terms of contests to see who can survive on the least amount of sleep.

The Prince Conference Center will remind us more of a country inn than a convention hotel. The large, open reception area with piano and fireplace, and south-facing glass wall, will undoubtedly be a haven for discussion and relaxation as well as for heady dialogue. The flexible meeting areas will not be the usual ballroom cut-ups, but warmly lit, cozy nests for humane conversation.

Of course some of our guests will be staying overnight in the Prince Center. Weather permitting, when they rise in the morning, they can walk through the nature preserve and commune with their Maker and Savior in a peace and serenity that few campuses can claim. The more I studied the drawings of the Prince Center, the more I realized that we are essentially linking the tradition of the Sabbath with the academic enterprise.

So it made sense that Elsa Prince would join us in this on-campus testament to hospitality. Elsa is not just a gracious and God-fearing person. She is a queen of hospitality. If there ever was a warm soul who could bring Sabbath to a Calvinistic college, Elsa is that person. Those of us on the faculty tend to be academic entrepreneurs who profess irresistible grace but who work as if our salvation depends on our efforts. Maybe the Prince Center will help us to chill out and warm up with our guests on campus. I say all of this rather self-righteously since I am still, technically speaking, on sabbatical for the year! Then again, I am back on campus temporarily to "work" at this speech; so much for self-righteousness.

Together the DeVos Communication Center and the Prince Conference Center will enable us to serve more people and to do so more hospitably and neighborly. We can much more easily offer short courses, non-credit workshops, teleconferences and traditional conferences. And the guests who drive to campus will be able to find a place to park. That, too, is hospitality.

Since my own conversion to Christ in the 1970s I have increasingly come to believe that the heart of Evangelicalism, together with the mind of Reformed Christianity, is an explosive combination. The DeVos Center will remind us of our charter under God to preach the Gospel through everything that we do. And the Prince Center will help us to recall again and again that the Gospel is love, not just doctrine. Moreover, located adjacent to the nature preserve, these two centers can direct our hearts and minds to the kind of shalom that we will experience fully only in heaven. Whispers of the eschaton will speak to us just outside of our windows.

The DeVos Communication Center and the Prince Conference Center, along with the bridge that we will raise on this section of God's land east of Eden, are important steps in our neighborly walk together. This building project should remind us to be neighbors in our going out and our coming in. After all, communicating is fundamentally outreach, and conferencing is, above all, a form of hospitality. When done faithfully, politics and every worthwhile human endeavor can be a good offering to the One who was our neighbor all the way to the cross.

In Christopher Fry's play "A Sleep of Prisoners," the Cain figure says, "God, how could I know that what I was, you didn't want?" As Calvin bricks once again rise toward heaven, we should remind ourselves over and over again that responsibility flows from knowing what God wants, which is to say it flows from knowing God.

So together we step east, out of the Garden, toward the land of Nod. We head into the real world, the broken world, with our neighborliness and our hospitality.

By stepping ahead faithfully, we become agents of renewal. In fact, to step faithfully toward the east is also to move toward the Garden, for the word "east" used in Genesis 4 also means "the center" — where the cross of Jesus Christ stands at the hub of history and the axis of our own salvation. When we direct our vision east, we face not only the joy of sunrises, but also the promises of God.

So as we step east today, let's once again choose the path of Abel. Our faithful steps will lead us to the glorious promise of our Lord Jesus Christ in Luke 13: "People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God." Now that's neighborliness. That's hospitality. Praise God for every step we together take toward such a miraculous feast.