THE RAILWAY TRAIN
Inaugural Banquet Address

The Rev. Dr. Philip D. W. Krey

[Note: Immediately prior to this address, Margaret Krych had read an Emily Dickinson poem, "The Railway Train," aloud. References to that poem in the following address are marked in italics.]

Not long ago the Angel of the Lord said to René and me, "Get ready and go South to the home of White and Rosemarie Rhyne (Members of the President's Council) in Washington D.C. for the traditional reception for a new LTSP President.

And another Angel said "You have been invited on the same weekend by Pastor Clair Anderson, a member of the Board, to preach, lecture, and lead a Seminary Sunday in Forrestville CT, near Berlin, Connecticut.

Since René and I were to have been in Allentown at a lovely reception for the new Presidency on Wednesday sponsored by Ralph and Betty Bagger, Board members and longtime friends of the seminary, my trusty administrator Lois LaCroix decreed that the DC to Berlin portion would have to be done by train. The reception and overnight in DC was splendid and we got ready the next morning to go by train.

I hope these reflections on my journey by train as it lapped the miles from Washington D.C. to Berlin with echoes of Emily Dickinson and Acts 8 will delight your well-feted ears.

I grew up with my brothers and sisters along the Boston and Maine Railroad and was often lulled to sleep counting the cars as they clicked by in the night and awakened by their horrid hooting stanzas. My brothers, Andrew and Shem will remember that our way to the Knipe School was by way of the tracks and across a swamp through which we jumped from clump to clump of long grass to keep our feet dry. Since our young lives revolved around tracks and trains I have always loved them and was delighted to be in an Amtrak carriage.

The vision from the window of a train is not the surreal view from a plane or the privatized view from a car but a communitarian view -- good vehicle to talk about a vision for theological education in the Northeast.

Having left the omnipotent city of Washington filled with important officials like the Ethiopian Eunuch (and also life-long friends) and pared the sides of the Chesapeake -- inviting waters for baptism -- the train made a prodigious step past Baltimore and Wilmington to post-industrial Philadelphia. We crawled past the great University of Pennsylvania, with which this seminary has had long-standing relationships from the very beginning and a part of the academy with which theological education needs to be in dialogue if it does not want pass like the old industrial age steam engines that used to complain as they passed our house in Haverhill, Massachusetts.

The train fit its sides and crawled between tunneled walls to 30th Street Station where René disembarked in Philadelphia after we had talked of all manner of needful things, and I went on to Berlin. The carriages emptied and filled again. Now a stranger was beside me as the train emerged alongside the Schuylkill River. The window scanned the amazing resources of a late-modern city -- the Museum of Art perched like a Grecian temple, young scullers on the river, the snaking expressways and the elegant skyline of building and commerce. In the very middle William Penn himself looked down from City Hall. In our seminaries we prepare leaders to make connections with these institutions of culture, government and commerce so that like the evangelist, Philip, they will know when the Spirit calls to draw closer to persons and institutions in authority. We prepare leaders who from the steepled churches and all manner of Christian communities can open the Scriptures and proclaim God's prophetic word and the good news of Jesus. I thought of the Twentieth Anniversary Banquet of our Urban Theological Institute held at First District Plaza downtown this March and was proud -- twenty years old and so appropriate to our urban context and all our distinguished graduates who grace pulpits across the region. As St. Augustine recognized a millennium and a half ago, we do not lose our identity by being inclusive, by connecting, and by addressing other institutions and leaders where theologically appropriate. In the creed we profess a good creation that has fallen, not an evil creation that needs to be feared.

The Vermonter wound around and across the river to North Philadelphia past Temple University. The empty factories and homes along the track stood ceremonious like tombs. As Emily Dickinson once wrote, "After great pain a formal feeling comes, the nerves sit ceremonious like tombs, and the stiff heart questions was it he that bore?" In cities like Baltimore, Chicago, and Philadelphia I served in communities that have suffered the shock of the post-industrial age, the consequence of economic changes, racism, and justice denied them by national, state, local, and ecclesial policies. And those in the Urban Guild and those in the economically devastated rural areas of our land know that there are marginalized people with whom we must do theological education and for whom we prepare leaders who can serve with compassion and skill. The Second Article of the Creed does not promise salvation or life in abundance to the affluent now and salvation to the poor in the future. As William Langland wrote in the fourteenth century, "Christ has come for the Poor to have their Summer."

In all our seminaries we prepare pastors who know how to make alliances to help organize these communities in the Church and larger community. We prepare good theologians with a depth in faith, rooted in the Scriptures and their confessions (for most of our students, the Lutheran Confessions) who see things as they are amidst the changes in specific contexts of this world and to organize, hope, and pray for the things that are not yet. I am thankful that Katie Day has led us these many years in our Urban Program and that we have found new partners in LSTC and The Division for Outreach.

Nevertheless, I know from my experiences in Baltimore and other cities that it is the back side that one sees from the train. Those vacant graffitied buildings, junkyards, and factories are faced with vibrant communities/noisy assemblies singing Easter Hallejujahs to the risen Jesus around the proclaimed scriptures, bread and wine and prayers. Many of these communities are led by our faithful graduates and leaders and the distinguished seminaries represented here today.

Gazing intently out of the window, I had not noticed how the car occupants in the car had changed in Philadelphia. A young Caucasian couple sat behind me so close side by side that there was room to spare in their two seats. A couple from India sat before me and an immigrating couple from the Caribbean to my right. A few seats farther ahead a handsomely suited African American businesswoman was typing on her laptop. A cluster of Puerto Rican young men occupied a number of seats all around and a family who spoke only in Greek sat at the head of the car. I smiled as their young daughter chattered like a sparrow on the rooftop the whole way. As seminaries we need to prepare leaders who will feel comfortable with and can work with diversity and across cultures and languages.

We are in a new day of Pentecostal creation. Blessed be the Spirit! As the train crossed the Delaware into New Jersey I reflected on the one million Hispanics there and the huge Hispanic populations in the small cities of Northeastern Pennsylvania (And I am so thankful for the support of our bishops, the leadership of Nelson Rivera and the Division of Ministry in this endeavor). At LTSP we are planning for the growing Asian population in New Jersey and elsewhere in the Northeast with the leadership of our brilliant Dean. Our global covenants with Bangalore, Umpumulu, and other seminaries across the world provide us with the confidence to prepare students for mission. We are grateful that others like The Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Chicago are partners with us and leaders for us along the way. I was thankful that in that railroad car and in the Church we are together and do mission amidst differences. I thought of our remarkable social service agencies like Diacon with their great potential and our now Full-communion with the Moravians. I was also thankful that our Division of Ministry and the Church as a whole work with us in a strategy to respond to these new/old challenges. God is always ahead of us before we do mission.

The conductor called out the stations, Trenton and Princeton Junction: Trenton, a city that once made what the world takes, as its "Trenton Makes" bridge still proclaims; and Princeton, a town with a great university and Seminary with its institutes that keep God and the World's future in dialog. At our seminaries we prepare scholars to participate in the academy so that like the Franciscans and Dominicans in Paris, theology will always be represented in our universities. Eye has not seen nor ear heard what God has in store for us as we bask in the glow of the Lutheran/Reformed agreements.

As the train neighed like Boanerages approaching New York, I reflected that on this route I had and would be passing through ten of the twenty wealthiest counties in America. Enormous wealth spreading from the Philadelphia suburbs to Manhattan -- which boasts the highest per capita income in the country-and beyond to Boston. Our seminary pastors and other leaders are called to the suburbs with their economic and political muscle and affluent urban communities, as well, and their magnet churches that are growing as rapidly as center city churches did two generations ago. Would that the new Seminary and Ecumenical cooperation could inspire a new kind of regional social and churchly responsibility to one another.

As the train tunneled its way toward Penn Station I reflected on this world city -- this Imperial city -- this excellent city -- distracted by business, the arts, and entertainment-filled with vision and hope with the United Nations and all the commissions of justice and peace, the National Council of Churches -- a city filled with the nations of the world and faithful bishops, cathedrals, congregations and seminaries with whom we are in regular conversation. Is it possible that the sun never sets on the worship there? I thought of our long standing solidarity with General Seminary and Episcopalians across the land and the hope for a common mission that God has in store for us. I thought of our Center for ecumenical and interreligious dialog and its possibilities in New York City. As the train took one last glance at Manhattan's humbling skyline my thoughts turned to Brooklyn, the place of my birth, teeming with ethnic communities where my family as immigrants made a second start like so many others before and after from shore to shore.

We headed for New Haven and I thought of the Eastern Cluster's developing relationship with Yale Divinity School. What promise Clustering with President Reisz's gracious leadership provides in cooperation with my dear Alma Mater, Gettysburg, in helping us to form new partnerships out of a secure future.

I took a break to visit the dining car and asked when the Acela train would be running, the attendant smiled and gave a noncommittal shrug, "Technology," he remarked with a wry smile -- "Do you know that all the computers are down today in Penn Station?" Ironically, in New Haven we were told that the train would wait for twenty minutes while the engines were switched from electric to diesel. We were entering more rural New England with its small towns and small cities. The engines were switched with only the slightest bump like that of a well-schooled pastor beginning in a new congregation with professionalism and precision.

Two tall-combed roosters stood on the embankment and a white horse was galloping along a path-bordered stream.

Beyond to the West and around a pile of mountains was the great expanse of our Upstate New York Synod with its farm crisis like that of Northeast Penn and other areas represented here. LTSP and all our seminaries prepare leaders for the rural farmlands and more distant cities. What is the promise of Fisher's Net developed by Luther Seminary and PLTS and sponsored by Lutheran Brotherhood and Augsburg Fortress? How will it help to provide life-long learning for pastors and laypersons and provide an educated part-time clergy for those who may not be able to travel to one of our seminaries?

The Spirit had taken my mind's eye to a geographical and technological distance when the woman reading next to me who had occasionally been observing me write with Acts, Chapter 8 open turned to me and asked, "What do you do?' There was hardly time to explain as Philip was able for the Ethiopian for soon the train arrived in Berlin -- punctual as a star.

I was warmly greeted by Claire and …..And the Vermonter sped onto Boston, my dear family's home, and its own stable door.