6/01/2008                         Genesis 12:1-9 , Jeremiah 29:11-14 , Hebrews 12:1-2
 

“Created For New Beginnings”

Rev. Jonthan Rumberg

Introduction

            Today is a special day, and because it is a special day, it requires multiple scripture passages.

            Perhaps it also requires a little bit of poetry.  “No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher dirty looks!”

            Today is a special day because twenty one high school seniors from this church, and a few hundred of their classmates, will have their names called out as a diploma is handed to them.  At their commencement ceremony’s they will be lauded for their accolades, congratulated for their accomplishments, thanked for their leadership, encouraged for the days ahead, and given that piece of paper that marks the end of their primary education.

            But today is less an end than a beginning.  This is a time of new beginnings, a time of transition.  Graduation marks for students the transition from childhood and youth to adulthood.  It is an exciting time, filled with the sense of a grand goal accomplished, and an even grander adventure ahead.  And it ought to feel that way.  I pray that it does.  But I feel I have to say to our graduates— while it may feel like a grand adventure right now, this grand adventure that countless valedictorians will call “Life” will be— as the rest of us adults know— at times, exceedingly complicated, confusing, misleading, disappointing, and extremely difficult. 

            You know, it’s funny, I don’t recall anyone saying that to me when I graduated from high school.  But then again, it could have been that I was too fixated on celebrating my graduation that I just wasn’t listening.  Naaa.  Nobody told me!

            But with that bit of a downer statement on your graduation day, let me say this as well— This new beginning, this time of transition, and this grand adventure called “Life”, while filled with its stressors, will also be filled with wonderment, excitement, joy, love, and amazement. 

            Today is less an end than a beginning.  It is a day that marks a new beginning.  Today is Graduation day.

Move 1: Graduation

            I looked up the meaning of the word “Graduate” on one of my favorite websites, Dictionary.com, and along with all the expected definitions, I found one that is understood, but I think often over looked, or perhaps overshadowed.  To “Graduate” means to “advance to a new level of ability, achievement, or activity.”

            As human beings we have been graduating all our lives. 

            We graduated from crawling to walking.  From milk to solid food.  From Preschool to kindergarten.  From Little League to Hot Stove baseball.  From lunch recess to no recess.  We graduated from being new drivers to experienced drivers.  And as Christians we graduate to new levels, deeper levels of faith.  We all graduate daily, for each new day presents us opportunities to advance and achieve. 

            Graduation, in any form—be it from High School, college, new abilities, achievements, or faith—is always less an end than a beginning.  And with new beginnings comes new opportunities.  And with new opportunities, comes endless possibilities.

Move 2: Abraham

             In our Genesis text Abram, whose name will later be changed to Abraham, is seventy five years old when God appears to him and says, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”

            I like Abraham’s story for today because in it there is something very important for this year’s graduating seniors to take.

            Here is Abraham; undoubtedly settled in his later years, thinking his best days are behind him, when suddenly; God graduates him and opens before him the greatest new beginning of his life, the most challenging new beginning of his life.

            And so, on Abraham’s graduation day, with new opportunities, and endless possibilities before him, I can only imagine the questions running through his mind: 

            Where is this land that will be shown? 

            How will God make a great nation out of just me? 

            How can I be a blessing to others?

            Perhaps these questions are similar to the ones running through the heads of our graduating seniors.  Certainly they/you have asked and wondered,

            Where will I go when I leave Wadsworth?

            How will I impact the nation, the world?

            How can I be a blessing to others?

            These may not be the exact questions our seniors are asking, but certainly they/you, as the rest of us have, think about what the future holds.

            Our text from Genesis speaks to starting out on a new beginning which is a fundamental and spiritual theme in the scriptures.  A new beginning is not something that happens to us just once or twice in our lives, but rather constantly.  There are simple new beginnings, like the beginning of each new day.  And there are certainly much grander new beginnings, like graduating from high school, or getting engaged.

            It’s in how we choose to approach and seize those new beginnings that make us who we are, and determines how our future is impacted.

            Abraham chose to approach and seize his graduation day, his new beginning, with faith and trust in God.  Abraham listened to God, obeyed God’s direction, and, as it says in verse four, “went, as the Lord had told him.”

            Abraham, on his graduation day, went down the path of new opportunities and endless possibilities as God told him.

            Abraham would become the forefather of the nation of Israel.  And Israel had for itself many graduation days.  But, like our seniors, like you seniors, they too faced a future that was complicated, confusing, misleading, disappointing, and at times, extremely difficult.

Move 3: Jeremiah

            Our text from Jeremiah is part of a letter from the prophet to the Israelites who are right smack in the middle of a complicated, confusing, misleading, disappointing and difficult time.  They are in exile in Babylon.

            Now it’s plausible that the Israelites, knowing their history of God on their side, were expecting God to send down plagues, or perhaps rains of fire, or any number of retributions upon their captors. 

Instead, through the prophet Jeremiah, God tells them to relax, calm down, and be patient because they were going to be in this exile—this complicated, confusing, misleading, disappointing, and difficult time— for a while.

            The Israelites time in exile was seventy years.  Seventy years is a long time, and undoubtedly it was hard news that Jeremiah delivered.  He essentially tells them that this difficult time is going to go on and on.  But the prophet also tells them that God still has plans for them— plans to give them a future with hope.

            I imagine the Israelites, upon hearing that their exile would be long and difficult, and then hearing that God is planning to give them a future with hope, throwing up their hands and crying out, “How can God have good plans for our future when we’re living in exile?” 

            I imagine their frustrating and discouraging cries sounded a lot like our frustrating and discouraging cries today. 

            “How can God be working for good in my life when my loved one has cancer? 

            How can God be giving me hope in the midst of my divorce? 

            How can God promise plans for good and not harm when my child is on drugs?”

            How can God be planning for my future when there seems to be few ways to pay for college?”

            These are life’s hard questions.  And the way God is working all things together for good is not always so obvious in the midst of the exile that causes us to ask them.  But, like the Israelites who were brought out of exile, God does have good plans for all of our futures.

*******

            To this year’s graduates I say, I hope that there is never a time in your life when you are exiled in a place you’d rather not be—but the fact is, there may be times in your life when you feel like you are in exile.  Because when you move away from home, chances are good that you will feel exiled. 

            You may feel as if you are living in a strange land when you discover that laundry does not clean and fold itself, and you have to cook for yourself if you want to eat.  You may feel abandoned when you are left to figure out how to pay for gas, books, and the latest trends in must have fashions. 

            True, you will always be able to come home.  Your folks aren’t going to drop you off at the gates of your college, our send you out on your first day of work and say “Nice knowing you.  Good Luck.  Have a good life.”

            But you will have to begin finding your own way.  Your parents cannot take care of you forever.  And sometimes that means finding your way out of the exile you find yourself in, finding your own way out of the complicated, confusing, misleading, disappointing, and difficult times life will surely present. 

            But thankfully, you can remind yourself, and lean on the fact, that God is with you, that God hears your prayers, and that God is at work giving you a future with hope.

Move 4: Cloud of Witnesses

            It’s good to know that we have God with us all the time.  It is good to know that God hears our prayers.  And it is good to know that God is working to give us a future with hope.  But it is also good to know, and exceedingly reassuring to know that there have been those who have gone before us, who have experienced and lived out of what we are living in to.  And that they made it, that they achieved, that they graduated.

*******

            The other day Janet Fulton showed many of us around the office pictures of our congregation that dated back as far as the 1920’s, photos taken around the times when Rev. Lentz and Rev. Turley ministered here.  It was fun to see the people dressed in the fashions of that day—the men in formal suits, the woman in long flowing dress and parasols, children in knickers and dresses.  It was fascinating to see the familiar shape and frame of our church front and be reminded that those members worshipped here.

            Seeing those pictures reminded me of our Hebrews text for today.  Those pictures reminded me of the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us right now.  Those pictures reminded me of their work, their knowledge, their experience, their ministry, and all they have done for us that allow us to lay aside every weight that holds us down—weights such as having to establishing roots because they already did that.  Or the weight of having to build a foundation for futures members to build upon, and creating an effective house of worship that would stand the tests of time, financial hardships, and even lack of spiritual interest in a world that seems to have less and less need for God, because they already did that for us.

            These pictures reminded me that because of the work of those who have gone before us, all of us here today, are able to run with perseverance the race that is set before us.  The race that God is calling us to run.  The race to a future with hope.  The race to be graduates of the ministry of First Christian Church.

            It is our duty to honor them, to carry on their ministry, even to build new foundations upon their foundation so that decades from now, when the future members of First Christian Church look at our photos, they will know that we worked, ministered, and ran the race not just for ourselves, but for those who have gone before us, and for those who came after us.

            All of us here in this sacred place have been and continue to be surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.  Those witnesses go before us, just as God goes before us, and our future is one filled with hope, because of them.

Conclusion

            Twentieth century Jewish philosopher, Hannah Arendt, fled from Nazi Germany at the beginning of the Holocaust.  Years later, as she watched reports of the atrocities unfold, she remembered a powerful encouragement she read for her dissertation, written by the great philosopher Augustine.  He wrote, “That we make a new beginning.  For that we were created.”

            Arendt was wise to recall such wisdom for truly making and seizing new beginnings, with their opportunities and endless possibilities, is exactly why God created us.

*******

            Today’s seniors are graduating.  They are advancing to a new level of ability and achievement.  But not only is today graduation day for our seniors, its graduation day for all of us.  In fact, each day is a graduation day for us, because graduation is less an end than a beginning—beginnings with new opportunities and endless possibilities.

            So to the graduating seniors, from your church family, we say congratulations and good luck.  We know you will make us proud.

            And to the rest of us, let all of us continue to graduate today and in the days to come, by following the same faithful path Abraham traveled, while believing the great prophet Jeremiah that God is preparing a future with hope, and by honoring the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us now, as well as those who will come after us.

            Today is a special day.  Today is graduation day.  More so, yes, for our seniors, but also for the rest of us.  We have been created for new beginnings. 

            Amen.