Sunday morning, a long line of graduates in red robes waited on a red carpet for their turn to be photographed standing on the Boston University seal embedded in the plaza outside Marsh Chapel. Tradition—superstition—dictates that students not step on the seal until their education is complete, lest their path forward be detoured. Then, the graduates joined the flood of family, friends, and other members of the BU community for the Baccalaureate service inside the Chapel. 

“For a moment this morning, let me upend my own disregard and maybe yours” for that sort of tradition, said Rev. Robert Allan Hill, dean of Marsh Chapel, this year’s baccalaureate speaker. “Because it may well be that they have a point. They’re chary of, wary of, treading upon that circle and that seal, and there may be a reason, a subconscious reason, but a reason nonetheless.

“It is because the words in that seal are potent, they have power, they have electricity, a kind of juice to them,” said Hill, who is also a School of Theology professor of New Testament and Pastoral Theology. 

Hill’s address focused on those three words embedded in the seal: learning, virtue, and piety. 

For learning, Hill invoked John Wesley, whose Methodist movement gave birth to BU in the 1800s and whose likeness is seen inside the entrance to the chapel. Wesley spoke of knowledge and holiness combined, “a kind of early ‘One BU’ moment,” Hill said. He argued that Wesley’s approach—“to live in the world and for the world,” as Hill put it—is important for graduates shaping their futures.

“To take our experience of hard things and turn them into a kind of generosity, because we learn much from generosity,” Hill said. “As [Wesley] said, do all the good you can, at all the times you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can, do all the good you can.”

For virtue, Hill invoked Abraham Lincoln, who is depicted in one of the chapel’s stained glass windows. He read the opening paragraphs of the president’s famous address, given on “a windy day in an open field at Gettysburg.” Hill seemed to have our nation’s recent troubles in mind when he spoke the famous line: Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

“Don’t be misled,” Hill said. “Virtue matters—personal leading to social.”

Finally, Hill turned to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59), whose “transformative piety” is honored with a sculpture located near the seal on the plaza. “There is no greater voice affirming that kind of piety than Martin Luther King, Jr.,” who showed us what its power could be, Hill said.

He quoted King: 

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hatred cannot drive out hatred; only love can do that.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.

Learning, virtue, piety. “Keep these words with you,” Hill said. “They are words not just to make a living, but to make a whole life. We commend you. We salute you, and we are with you and for you!”

President Robert A. Brown and Jean Morrison, University provost and chief academic officer, gave the traditional readings, respectively from Romans 12 (“be transformed by the renewing of your minds”) and Ecclesiastes 3 (“For everything there is a season”).

Music during the service held rapt a congregation of around 300 and included hymns sung by the Marsh Chapel choir under the supervision of Scott Allen Jarrett (CFA’99,’08), Marsh Chapel’s director of music, accompanied by Justin Blackwell (STH’07, CFA’09), associate music director at Marsh Chapel, on organ; Majestic Brass Quintet; and timpanist Robert Schulz. 

Early in his address, Hill noted that he typically spends Baccalaureate shepherding speakers from outside the University, including reminding them that they only have 15 minutes to speak. “Now the shoe is on the other foot,” he said, “and it pinches a little bit.”