Milestones and God’s Grace
“And now, students, you may move your tassels from the right to the left.”
Over the last few weeks, I have heard these words several times as family members have celebrated years of hard work to officially become graduates.
This universal symbol, whether in the context of high school or college, indicates a milestone achieved and the entrance into a new stage in life. With this, a tassel on a cap shifted from one side to the other shows that the grades were sufficient and the deadlines were reached, and the student now has the proud title of graduate.
I was struck by the ritual of it all. At the graduations I attended this spring, the ceremony began with the familiar music, faculty and staff processed into the arena before the students, we heard the national anthem, student body presidents and school leaders spoke. In vastly different contexts—university and high school, and many miles apart—Vermont and South Carolina—the ritual was the same. Instead of taking away from the meaning, the familiarity of the process added a sense of gravity to a moment that hundreds of thousands of people will experience in their lives. But for those individuals on that day it is a once in a lifetime experience.
Life is full of rituals like this. During a birthday, we light candles on a cake and sing a special song. Baby’s first solid food is documented. Children put teeth under a pillow and see what happens in the morning. At the age of sixteen, many kids demonstrate their proficiency in driving and get a drivers license. These customs, like graduations, mark our experience as humans. It seems there is something deeply human about the need for, and creation of, rituals. Not only do they celebrate the individual and the community, they tie us to each other and add meaning to our lives. Maybe it’s in our DNA to create rites of passage.
In the church our rituals, have deeper significance. In them, we acknowledge the ways that God has invited us into relationship and through Jesus Christ has united us with God.
In the two sacraments initiated by Christ, though, we receive specific grace marking us as Christ’s own forever. Forever living into our promises made at baptism. The Holy Eucharist is the sacrament “commanded by Christ for the continual remembrance of his life, death, and resurrection until he comes again.”
These do not mark what we have done – like a graduation, but what has been given to us and done for us so that we may know and be known by God. We are brought ever closer to the living God through the sacraments and we celebrate these gifts with joy and thanksgiving for the newness of life for which they provide.
In this season of endings and beginnings, may you be brought ever closer to the one who is the beginning and the end – the alpha and omega.