Faith Works 5-3-24

Faith Works 5-3-24
Jeff Gill

Graduates and gratitude and good works abounding
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The month of May means many things to different people; it includes Mothers Day, of course, and is in some Christian traditions devoted as a whole to Mary as the Mother of God. It also includes the anniversary and feast day of Our Lady of Fatima on May 13th; I have a personal reason for celebrating St. Dunstan's Day on the 19th.

Plus it ends with Memorial Day, of which you'll hear more shortly.

Meanwhile, most of our area high schools and colleges are holding commencement programs during May; I believe Ohio State Newark slipped by me at the end of April, and my best to those graduates as well.

This means May gets packed full of graduate open houses and other family celebrations; often churches will include graduate recognition on a Sunday, honoring those who have completed twelfth grade or their bachelors degree, other certificates or graduate programs.

In American Christianity, education has been a main interest of local churches. Many colleges and universities have their roots in a single congregation or group of local churches launching an educational establishment on the frontier. From Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1636 to Denison University in Granville in 1831, churches have started and supported higher education as a way to ensure a literate laity, able to read and study scripture on their own, as much as to educate clergy, which is part of the deeper roots of the university model back into Oxford and Cambridge in the English-speaking world.

The history of Sunday schools and Christian education is a separate but parallel track; what I'd like to lift up is how most of us with church families around us are standing in a tradition which honors learning and study and certainly the successful completion of a course of study.

That's why Graduate Recognition is such a common part of church life in May. It can be tricky for ministers and committee chairs: people want grandkids recognized who've not been to church in years, there are those who get missed with the best of efforts, and parents or other relatives have lots to keep track of approaching a graduation ceremony, so they forget to tell the church but are expecting someone to remember for them. (All of which is to say: be kind, roll with it, y'all!)

When everything comes together, it is an occasion to honor not just the proud and nervous graduates standing before the gathered church, but the support of a community that buoyed them up through the wind and waves of educational progress. We're finally getting to a point where we aren't going to keep saying "you got through COVID" to a high school audience or a college crowd, since a four grade or four year group has gone through their experience entirely after 2020.

We would be missing a theological opportunity to not say something, as well, about the place of grace, and blessing, and privilege both earned and unearned, which allowed our graduates to reach the platforms they will soon cross. None of us, as many baccalaureate and commencement speakers will say in a variety of ways, makes this journey alone. We all, in our education, had teachers and mentors, examples near and far, and those who went before, even generations before, to lay the path down for our feet to follow.

There are good ghosts and joyful spirits and God walking with us; like the old tale, we look back to realize how often we were guided, aided, even carried. None of that takes away from the deserved feelings of accomplishment, for our graduates and for all those who love them. Well done, good and faithful students.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's attended many commencement ceremonies. Tell him about one you've been to, at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.