This University is a community, but not unto itself. It is part of a larger community, an American community, a global community, a community of humankind made in God’s image.

In April of 1959, Martin Luther King, Jr. Spoke of community. This is what he said. The highest love is Agape. Agape is love in action. Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community. It is insistence on community even when one seeks to break it. Agape is a willingness to forgive, not 7 times, but 70 times 7 to restore community.

The Cross is the eternal expression of the length to which God will go in order to restore broken community. The resurrection is a symbol of God’s triumph over all the forces that seek to block community. The Holy Spirit is the continuing community creating reality that moves through history. He who works against community is working against the whole of creation. I can only close the gap in broken community by meeting hate with love.

Dr. King was talking about loving thy neighbor as thyself. All of you who have come here today and those of you who will sleep here tonight, are expressing your willingness to live out those words, to identify with the hungry and homeless, not just here in Orange County, but everywhere that poverty afflicts the human spirit.

The fight goes on. The war on poverty rages on. Let us meet apathy with activism, let us meet ignorance with knowledge, let us meet fear with courage, let us meet self-interest with sacrifice and in God’s presence, let us meet the poor with mercy and compassion. Engraved on the statue of liberty, it reads, Give me your tired, your poor, you huddled masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed, to me.

They are here. They are among us. They are part of our community. Let us never turn away from them, or we will be turning away ourselves.

In the book of Matthew, Jesus told his disciples, you fed me when I was hungry, you clothed me when I was naked, I was sick and you comforted me, and his disciples asked him when did we do these things to you? And he answered, when you did it to the least of these, you were doing it to me.

This is the great power of love, of Agape, of community and you who are here, who offer yourselves to others in need, you give meaning, give life to the wisdom that upholds community, love your neighbor as yourself.