I received an Email once that featured these provocative questions:
• If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2?
• Before they invented drawing boards, what did they go back to?
• If the black box flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash,
why isn't the whole airplane made out of the stuff?
• Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them?
• Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?
• If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?
• Why do they call it a "building"? It looks like they're finished. Why
isn't it a "built"?
Well, I thought of another one. Tell me this: If a graduation ceremony marks
the completion of your education, then why is it called a commencement? Hmm?
When you commence to do something, you begin it. As in, “let us now commence
the experiment,” or “we now commence the meeting.” A graduation should be a
culminationment. Or the completionment. Something like that.
Perhaps graduation marks the moment that you commence to...worry. High school
graduates commencing to worry about the strange environment of college, or
having to go to work, or how long they might be able to continue to live off of
mom or dad. College graduates commence to worrying about paying off student
loans, and whether or not their degree is useful out in the real world.
Is that what commencement is about? How else can you explain why
else we would use a word which means “beginning” to mark the end of an
educational achievement?
The truth is, commencement is really just the beginning. To commence, or to
embark upon the next part of your journey. My hope for our graduates this
season is that their entire life be filled with commencements. Advents of new
journeys, new projects, new plans. Some of these commencements come, as one
closes certain chapters of life, but many of us have learned that other
commencements come unexpectedly, without warning, with little or no planning.
They come and one must change direction. They come and one must turn around.
They come, and one must throw away the itinerary and the roadmap and follow a
dream. That’s what happened to Paul and his companions. They made a turn,
commenced a new direction, and followed a dream.
Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke have made plans. Good plans to take the gospel of
Jesus Christ east, overland from Galatia into Asia. But something mysteriously
stops them. So they move west to Mysia. Again they make meticulous plans, this
time to go overland north and east, into Bithynia. But just as before, the Holy
Spirit prevents them from going. Two missions, one after the other, thwarted
and high-centered. So they come to camp in Troas.
And that is where Paul has his dream. A man from Macedonia, (where?)
Macedonia--over the water, through the Mediterranean in what we now call
southern Europe--a man from Macedonia stands before Paul in his dream and begs
him to come. “We need you to help us!” the man pleads.
How did Paul know it was a Macedonian man? I don’t know. But this I know.
Paul is sure. So sure, that the very next morning, they make arrangements to
set sail for the country. They sail for a region called Samothrace, and to a
city called Neopolis. They then go to a city called Philippi.
And as they usually do, they look first for a Synagogue, and finding none, they
go outside the city limits to the river where they suppose the Jews will gather
to pray on the Sabbath.
Two things happen that are very interesting. No Jewish men come to the river,
only a handful of women. Secondly, Paul and his companions begin talking with
them. And upon doing so, they meet Lydia, who was not Jewish, but a gentile
God-fearer, that is a believer in the Hebrew God but not a convert.
Lydia and all of her household were baptized by Paul, and then implored Paul to
stay in her home.
Paul’s mission to Macedonia, led by the Spirit is a great success! Right?
Well ...the rest of the story isn’t so good. Beginning in the very next verse,
there’s this business of Paul and Silas casting out demons from a fortune-teller
slave girl. The girl’s owners then have Paul and Silas arrested because you see
they lost a lot of money when their slave girl could no longer tell the future.
You see, that’s where following your dreams can land you sometimes. In jail.
Or between a rock and a hard place. Or in a world of hurt. Well... you get
the idea.
See, there’s no guarantee that following your dreams will always be the easiest
way. For Paul and Silas, it got them into a heap of trouble. But remember,
the dream they were following was God’s plan...and God had much planned for Paul
and Silas.
I probably ought to tell you the rest of the story. Later the prison they were
in was shaken open by an earthquake. When this happens, the jailer is so
worried that he’s about to kill himself, thinking his prisoners had escaped and
he would be executed for letting them get away. But Paul and Silas call out,
and convinced the jailer that they are not about to run away. The jailer so
amazed, that he takes them out of the prison, and tends to their wounds, and
then the jailer and his household are all baptized and brought into Lydia’s
little Philippian church. All because Paul commenced to go into a different
direction in order to follow a dream, to follow God’s plan.
Now then, is it any wonder…is it any wonder that some of the warmest words Paul
ever writes to any of his churches comes in his letter to the Philippians. In
his letter to the church that began with a handful of women on the shore, Lydia
and her household, and a jailer and his family. Listen to what he says to them,
we find it in the book we call Philippians:
“Every time I think of you, I thank God! And whenever I mention you in my
prayers, it makes me happy. This is because you have taken part with me in
spreading the good news!
“You have a special place in my heart, so it is only natural for me to feel the
way I do. All of you have helped me in the work God has given me.”
Paul never would have known their love, their eagerness to help, their
friendship, if he had not been watching for “turning signals.” That is, a sign
that the plans are to be laid down, and a new direction taken. Paul was making
intricate plans for his mission to overland to Asia, but willing to lay aside
those plans when God’s Spirit led him in a new direction, across the water to
Europe.
So as our graduates “commence” upon whatever comes next, they will each begin to
make and execute their plans. Plans for the future. This job or that job?
People have questions of living all the time: do I marry or not? Do I marry this
one? What about children? How do I deal with this or that? What's the most
faithful course? All require careful planning.
But I pray that each one will also plan for God’s interruptions to come now and
then--“turning signals,”
when God may be calling for a change in direction. It may be a dream. A
dream's a pretty powerful sign, but that doesn't happen all the time. It may be
more of a sense of discomfort in one’s middle. It may be the voice of a trusted
mentor or friend. God’s calling comes in unusual ways, and often, when least
expected.
I cannot promise that God’s calling will always be easy, or enjoyable. Paul
found himself in prison, remember. But I do believe this: Going with God
brings deep satisfaction. The satisfaction that filled an old apostle with
gratitude in his prison cell. A satisfaction that “commences” upon the soul,
and does not let go.
Thanks be to God.
