Commencement

For many in the United States, the end of May is full of graduation parties for aspiring high school seniors — a transition into a new life as adults. While exciting, for student and parent alike, the season can also be filled with fear and doubt.

We are six weeks removed from the narrative journey of Holy Week that led us through the crucifixion, the disorientation of Holy Saturday silence and the unbridled joy of an empty tomb. “The resurrection is God’s Amen to Jesus’ statement, ‘It is finished,'” writes S. Lewis Johnson.

While the tomb that had held Jesus is now empty, our lectionary text introduces us to disciples who are staring at a very different world than the one they were comfortable with. There has been a “graduation” of sorts, and now they feel paralyzed, incapable of moving forward, self-entombed behind walls of fear, doubt and disillusionment. They have not yet experienced the truth of the resurrection; they cower in fear behind locked doors and covered windows.

Here, in the midst of that darkness, Jesus shows up to his group of graduating seniors and delivers a commencement address — life’s great forward-looking ceremony. He slips into the room as the forgiving victim and vividly creates the experience of Easter. His delivery may be more important than the message because the resurrection cannot be explained; rather, it must be experienced. When it comes to life’s deepest mysteries, experience trumps explanation every time! When it comes to the resurrection, the Gospels offer no explanation as to how it happened. Instead, we are given a series of personal encounters with the risen Christ delivering mini commencement addresses that forever change the world.

The first word from the resurrected God, in a locked room of “graduating” disciples drowning in doubt and shaking in fear, is “Peace be with you.” He then lovingly shows them his wounds, and commissions them to be ambassadors of forgiveness for the world — the very forgiveness they are now experiencing. And then, the risen/wounded one performs a stunning act of intimacy. He “breathes” on them.

The breath of God is the kiss of God that remakes the world. In this divine kiss Jesus is modeling the very core of mission, “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” In kissing us into existence Jesus empowers us to do the same — to forgive as God forgives, in a courageous act of union and communion. This is the meaning of the kiss. This is how creation and re-creation unfolds. The disciples have been “commenced.” They are kissed into the world anew, addressed to be a blessing to the waiting world around them.

Sadly, many of us have yet to experience the kiss of the risen Christ. We have perhaps heard the “words” of commencement but have avoided the terrifying, life-giving experience of encounter with the commencer. As a result, we “retain” (bind up) the sins of others and spend precious time and energy justifying our self-destructive behaviors of rivalry, bitterness and resentment. Jesus addresses us all with these forward-minded words and actions of this commencement address.

Mercifully, the risen Christ continues to deliver his commencement address even today by entering the locked rooms where we, like the disciples before us, self-entomb. He gently and gracefully (with a kiss) enters the doubt, fear and disillusionment of our lives. All he asks is that we allow ourselves to be breathed upon, knowing full well that the person kissed by the risen Christ will naturally and eagerly participate in the ongoing act of Creation itself.

This is the glorious truth of what it means to be “commenced.” We have been addressed with the kiss of the resurrected Jesus and are invited to leave the rooms of self-locked doors that have previously held us captive. The world awaits the touch of graduates who have been kissed into life by the resurrected Lord.

“Oh God, hear our prayer!! Easter yourself within, around and between us that we might receive your kiss and thus, as bright-eyed graduates, experience you as the dayspring that dissipates our dimness.”

Joel Van Dyke
Director, Urban Training Collaborative
Guatemala City