Christmas is a chance for a profound change: rebirth. One moment our broken being makes perfection impossible and the next everything good is possible.
Jesus chose to become a man so all of the rest of us could become like God. When the angels announced Jesus coming down, we gained the ability to hope for the Heavens.
This is very good news and makes Christmas graduations particularly special! For years I worked for my college degree and for a time it did not seem I would ever get it and then one day, I was a graduate. I wrote a paper and it turned out to be the last paper, took an exam, the last test, and then one day was done.
The day before graduation I checked the box “some college” when applying for work. The next day I could check “college degree.” I passed from one possibility to another and the new was better than the old.
The analogy (like all analogies) is imperfect. Graduates work for their degrees and earn them, but the change in status that comes at Christmas is a free gift. One moment you are broken and unable to fix yourself and the next, if you merely believe, you are a new person who can work out your salvation.
Yet perhaps the analogy is less imperfect than we think. My degree was the result of years of education from Mom and Dad, the school they created (New Covenant!), and the teachers at Elim Bible Institute and Roberts Wesleyan College. When I would have failed, they kept at me. They gave me grace, unmerited favor, and received nothing for this good work except the chance to rejoice in “my” accomplishment!
As I celebrate winter graduations, I know the blessed happiness of giving without getting. Former students are getting graduate degrees, some Wheatstone chums are earning undergraduate degrees, and I do not know a single one about whom I cannot shout the old blessing of the ancient church, “Axios!” (worthy).
Jesus came and we got everything on Christmas. Graduation comes and the graduate is blessed, but so are the rest of us. The mothers of graduation remind me of Mary: so much pain, so little reward, and yet a mother’s unselfish joy in her child. The crowds that come on graduation day get a party without any work just as the shepherds got the glory without the birth pangs. Rejoice!
And for the graduate, you have passed from one state to another. That change is meaningful in this age and I rejoice with you. Have a party! Yet I recall the next day after the graduation party when I thought: “Is that it?” Eighteen years of longing could not be answered in a single day.
Instead, the real graduation, like the real miracle of Christmas, begins in a pronouncement of change (“Graduate!”), but starts a lifetime of learning. If one combines the eternal change of Christmas with education, then one has the promise of eternity of learning, wonder, and joy.
Glory to God in the Highest! Axios, Christian, graduate.
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Reflections on graduation motivated by the marvelous news that chum Christian Cummins is graduating from Davis today! He is a particularly worthy gradate with a most excellent mother. Well done, Christian!
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