Do you remember your graduations? Your threshold moments? Your times of transition? Closing one chapter and beginning a new one? That weird liminal space in between? This Sunday in worship we will celebrate the Graduates at First Baptist on Fifth, honoring one of many special thresholds to come in these graduates’ lives. Mixed in with all the celebrations and merry-making, these moments of change often provide rich time for reflection to make meaning of the season that is closing and to narrow in on the path ahead. As I have been wrapping up my own grad school journey and preparing for graduation- I have been doing just that.
I have heard some describe Divinity School as a whirlwind, a boulder rolling down a mountain picking up speed, a time of scratching a lot of surfaces and casting wide nets. For others, it is a time of deep listening, of slowly narrowing, of funneling down to what holds most true. Still others describe it as a time of unlearning, examining, and reconstructing how they relate to their faith, their self, their calling, and their place in the world. In my experience- all of this feels true. This three year journey has been a dance of inquiry, revelation, and settling into a way of being that is less concerned with clarity and more in love with mystery. Through papers, exams, discussion boards, class dialogues, internships, hospital rooms, coffee shops, books, articles, prayers, and poems, we’ve traveled through ancient mesopotamia, from the Garden of Eden to the modern day, walked alongside Jesus and the Disciples, Origen and Ephrem, Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, Elizabeth Johnson, Gustavo Gutierrez, Jon Sobrino, Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Howard Thurman, M. Shawn Copeland, Jurgen Moltmann, Frank Tupper, Cole Arthur Riley, and our professors, and our neighbors, and our churches, and our friends, and- and- and- the list could span miles I’m sure…all now added to our great cloud of witnesses, inspiring, teaching, and transforming us into more faithful, more loving, more just, more nuanced witnesses ourselves.
In my final semester- I took a class on Sacraments and Ordinances, where we explored different tradition’s perspectives on the topic. It was in that class that I ran into this quote from Fredrick Buechner’s Wishful Thinking,
“A sacrament is when something holy happens. It is transparent time, time which you can see through to something deep inside time. Generally speaking, Protestants have two official sacraments (the Lord’s Supper, Baptism) and Roman Catholics have these two plus five others (Confirmation, Penance, Extreme Unction, Ordination, and Matrimony). In other words, at such milestone moments as seeing a baby baptized or being baptized yourself, confessing your sins, getting married, dying, you are apt to catch a glimpse of the almost unbearable preciousness and mystery of life. Needless to say, church isn’t the only place where the holy happens. Sacramental moments can occur at any moment, any place, and to anybody. Watching something get born. Making love. A high-school graduation. Somebody coming to see you when you’re sick. A meal with people you love. Looking into a stranger’s eyes and finding out he’s not a stranger. If we weren’t blind as bats, we might see that life itself is sacramental.”
This excerpt reminds me of the benediction we often hear each week, “As we end this form of worship to begin again the worship that is our very lives…” We know that the holy, special or sacramental certainly shows up in the church house on Sunday mornings, but it is not bound to that small window of time and place. As many of us head into this season of change, new normals, chapters ending, and pages turning, we continue our daily living rooted in the sacred, as the very place where we might experience that transparent time when something holy happens.
As I approach our hooding ceremony (2 days, 8 hours, and 8 minutes from the time of writing this!) I find myself overwhelmed with gratitude for the sacramental time I have encountered and experienced in my journey at Wake Divinity, and in living my life supported by this beloved community at First Baptist on Fifth. It is with deep gratitude and excitement that I move forward in my work here, continuing my work as Ministry Assistant & Communications Manager and stepping into the role of Pastoral Resident. I am sure that I will be wholly immersed in sacramental realities as we live and work together over the next year. It is my prayer for all of us, as we look to holy horizons, cross thresholds, stay steadily in our communities, and live life together, that we might cultivate both the courage and the wonder to see the divine in all that is, that we might have enough pause to look around at all that has been, that we might soak in what is worth carrying with us for the journey ahead, offload what needs to stay behind, and that we might listen for that quiet invitation that beckons each one of us forward on the Way.
With courage and hope for the road ahead,
Lena