2022-11-12 A Meditation on Graduation

“The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”” (Ac 17:30–31 ESV)

The officer has a certain sense of having graduated. The office is no precious concept, but whether in forward zones or in the peaceful “soon” areas, we care for one another but without any precocious or precious notion of just what that kind of title entails. Whether intelligence or pragmatics, each is vouchsafed unto their cohort, a cohort of peers plain and simple, that consists of a range of servant-minded, one-day thanked, one-day appreciated, men and women of the Cause.

For war wearies man. The sense of having “graduated” is a sense of arriving at the daybreak with something accomplished, some tried and once-upon-a-time impossible cohesion, personal comprehensiveness, achieved. Today, that is a self-derived education as much as formal patient illumination: we are scholars of the service mind, scholars of the service heart, scholars plain and simple of just what does make tick these people called Christian, called Servant, called Vouchsafed, Consecrated, Gladly Fighting. And that with no cynicism.

For people do fight, and that notch in our record called “graduation” does spell for us the end of some brand (unwasted) of personal study and trial, and the beginning of a new leaf turned, a reckoning with new authorization we have to dispense with Gospel ideas, in order that these our friends and objects of study may be thus uplifted and built up.

Graduation means we have that feather in our cap, that does remain immune in part from the drudgery, immune from the wild bucking broncos of the newly proselytized, yet also that we are licensed to put our own selves into the mix and thick of things, risking life and limb for the sake of these to whom we are sent.

Some have approached the cohort with more genius or inspiration than others; we bludgeoned our way through or crash-landed with a testimony, but each is held fast by the Father, who is of all things an eagle-eyed investor in the Individual, in the Graduate, more than that, who believes simply in being caretaker, and that for the common woman or man. What will these my charges come up with today? What if I invest some love? So it is a holy guild and blessed cohort, that does not lose ground but rather is peace and submission with that great body out there called the “would-be educated (Ro 14:2)”, the “fields white for the harvest (Jn 4:35)”, the “congregation in need of a word or an encouragement (Ac 13:15)”.

And then the thanks, meted out not with shame but subtly; not all will appreciate just whom we are thanking. Not all will understand that any big show of things would be to go against the brotherly, sisterly, “If I hadn’t stepped up, someone else most certainly would have; so don’t make a fuss around me!”. Indeed, we are graduates unto a professional guild and ethic, learning in the vast new mission field just what is good and right way of evangelism, just where people are able to face themselves and accept Grace, and just where that acceptance is meted out in a lower rung, indeed in the lowest rung of those gathered, a simple thanksgiving, an acknowledgment of the labors of a peer, a vocalized distinction between what Law and condemnation all of us face, and what the alternative, the reason to fight, is today: Grace.

Some eat only vegetables; their message is soup-to-nuts: they believe in the same thing we do, only they try to recollect and keep center stage that Grace coming-to-awareness via a certain brand of discipline. So them we acknowledge, if their chastity is in service of humility towards the Gospel. That is, if one hates those who indulge, well that makes their own paucity of behavior into a sin: unrighteously motivated.

The fields ready for the harvest are no coincidence, but the Lord who orders all things, knows our own itching at the helm, our eager desire to lay out our faith to newcomers, and this Lord has so designed, that the timing is excellent. Even if to others these are end times, and the pleading voices of the unevangelized are voices consigned to damnation, we believe otherwise: we see apocalyptic in simple fellowship with the unusual friend. We hear a rattling of the bones in simply sitting down together. We hear hearts warmed simply by our willingness to speak without much by way of reward, indeed, to speak into a vortex that rabidly consumes all love and efforts to bless. So we deal with our own laziness and frustration, by loving whom the Lord gives us.

The word of encouragement again reckons with the limits of what graduation can entail; all of us have ups and downs, graduate or non, and the simple, determined presence of a friend can literally change our mood and equip us for whatsoever graduated, missional, servant-minded, service-oriented, enlistment we have signed up for. In this way, the simpler services are directly linked to the greater projects.

The officer is in the business of purposeful outlay and image, notwithstanding the intelligence vibe of being sharp as a serpent. That is, we wear our heart on our sleeve, telling plainly just as the Father plainly has built us up, of what actually matters. The secret things are just plain things waiting to be transformed into Gospel liturgy and Gospel intellect. For the Gospel appeals to the intellect, but is unboastful as it simply coexists in the weary prayer time of the one in the trenches, the simple of mind and simpler of heart, whose purchase and ownership in this Gospel does make humble all servants, all service women and men, who put their own jocular thoughts on hold, in service to this brand of life-amidst-hardship, this resurrection-amidst-loss, this getting into the thick of things, in order that we might (with secret courage) be publicly willing there to go.

For it is no boastful fashion thus to couch and thus to locate our souls. It is bringing all distaste and lazy habits before our God and King; truly He has made exciting our lives, but all this so that we might serve in said trenches without regret. We may serve the hopeless, those who don’t promise fashionable and beautiful—as the world sees things—testimonies; those who won’t likely speak much for themselves; those who don’t advance our own career; those whom we love but can’t hold on to, saying “let us go our separate ways (Lk 8:39)”.