Dear Professor Borg,
It is more than reasonable to assume that your class has been canceled under the circumstances, but not so fast. You know perfectly well that when students go on discussing big ideas, and acting on them, the absence of the teacher’s body becomes superfluous. What is Easter, after all, but deathless devotion to deathless truth?
As one of your students, (I audited your classes by reading your books), I can testify to this miraculous fact by sharing a true story. In the late 1980’s a young man sat in a classroom at the University of Oregon, enrolled in an Introduction to Bible class – half asleep with low expectations in a university where carrying a Bible around was not cool.
When the professor showed up, he did not look like his faculty photo. Instead, in walked this rather slight, bookish-looking chap with a scraggly beard and tweed jacket and introduced himself as Marcus Borg. “Your regular professor is ill with cancer,” he said, ”And I am going to teach the class in his regrettable absence. I teach at Oregon State, but I have some expertise in this area, so here we go.”
My friend thought to himself, Great, a substitute teacher for a Bible Class. What’s the good news? As the semester progressed, however, it turned out that there was lots of good news – most of it in the form of teaching and learning that was thoughtful, lucid, perceptive, disturbingly organized, and spiritually contagious. Apparently, you could ask Dr. Borg any question and he would never make you feel like an idiot. What’s more, you didn’t have to memorize things, but you did have to confront and consider things.
In that class, taught by a substitute teacher we all know and love, seeds were planted that blossomed years later for this particular student. He returned to Oklahoma City, got married, had two sons, and joined my church. One day after the service he met me in the aisle of the sanctuary and proclaimed that he was going to seminary. “Only if you can’t help yourself,’” I warned him. Apparently he couldn’t.
In those days I was giving away copies of Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time to all new members, and that’s when the author’s former student told me about meeting Marcus for the first time. He is now an ordained UCC pastor, and one of the most thoughtful, lucid, perceptive, disturbingly organized, and spiritually contagious pastors in the Progressive Christian movement.
You see how it works Marcus? You may not be able to teach the class any more, but your class is not dismissed. The Marcus J. Borg Foundation plans to gather a small army of substitutes who will teach the class in your regrettable absence. We will begin with an admission that we are not you, but that thanks to you we have some expertise in these matters – so here we go.
Perhaps you thought that death would cancel such an unimportant class, but if so, you were mistaken. We all listened, took notes, and learned: deathless devotion to deathless truth was the finale exam. Thanks to you, we all passed.
