We All Graduate Every Day

Sermon-2 Pentecost-Proper 5-June 6, 2010
The Cloud of Unknowing, "O God, our great companion, lead us ever more deeply into the mystery of your life and ours, that we may be faithful interpreters of Life to each other, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I was reading a commentary about today’s readings and it said, “the people watching the raising of the woman of Nain’s son, must have been thinking, ‘what a nice story’”. Jesus brings the only son of a widow back to life. What a nice story.
But the commentator went on to say, that for the widow-in the first story with Elijah, and in the gospel account with Jesus-these weren’t nice stories. This wasn’t a a fairy tale, this was real. This was life and death.
Today is graduation Sunday, the day we honor all those who have completed a course of study in the last year. It is a special time for these people. They have worked hard, given much, and come far. For us, honoring these people today is a nice story-but for them, graduation is very powerful, very important. It may not be life and death, but it is a lot more than a nice story. For them, it is real.
As I reflected on what they have accomplished, I thought of my father. It’s D-Day, and after World War II the government had a program called-The GI Bill-enabling all these millions of young men returning from the war to continue their education. Do you realize that less than half of the men who fought in World War II had actually finished high school? And here they came home and had a chance to go to college-an impossible dream. My dad came home, started college long before I was born-and flunked out. My guess is that happened a lot. But several years later, when I was 6, he tried it again-and this time he finished. I know what that cost him. I know how much he and my mom sacrificed for that dream to come true. When he graduated at age 30 his hair was completely white. It had not been an easy road. It was very hard, and 50 years later I still remember it so clearly. Graduation for him, for us, was a day of incredible pride -and it said to me, “this is what you can do, this is what you can achieve.” It was a day of great power and self-respect. Years later my dad would look back at that time and shake his head in wonder and what he had done. Graduation Day wasn’t just a nice story.
Last night was Jan Oliver’s 54th dance recital. 54 years of teaching young people grace, discipline, and movement. I am in awe of that. Last night was Jan’s graduation day. For 54 years she dedicated her life to showing young people what they could do, what they could achieve. 54 years of devotion and commitment. It was a very powerful moment. It was an overwhelming graduation night.
The day we graduate doesn’t make us smarter than everyone around us, graduation day is not so much about our superior intelligence-it’s about learning something about ourselves. On graduation day, we realize what we accomplish, what we can achieve, who we truly are. It is not about information-it’s about self-learning. Remember what the wizard said in the (Wizard of Oz: “Why, anybody can have a brain. That's a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma.”
Graduation Day is the day we get our diploma-we learn who we are-and who we can be-that we can accomplish something we never thought we could. It’s the day we realize that we are better or stronger or tougher than we ever knew. Graduation day is the day we learn something about ourselves.
The Tigers had one of these this week. Armando Galarraga pitched what looked like a perfect game. 27 men came to the plate, 27 men were out. It had only been done 20 times in hundreds of thousands of games over 120 years in Major League Baseball. When you do this you become immortal in baseball history. But the umpire made a mistake on the last play of the game and called someone who was out, safe. It was a mistake and there are no changed calls in baseball. Everyone, even the umpire, knew it was a mistake. But Armando Galarraga laughed it off with, “people are human, people make mistakes.” For Armando Galarraga it was graduation day. We learned something about him-and something about baseball-and something about ourselves. Even when we don’t get what we want-we can achieve something even greater than baseball immortality. We learned something more than just about great pitching-we learned about great character in the face of an enormous defeat. It was about disappointment and class. It was graduation day for Armando Galarraga.
A few years ago I told you the story about John Blais. John Blais was a world class athlete who loved competing in triathlons. In 2005 he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease, a slow paralysis of your body. But he still competed in the 2005 Ironman Championships in Kona, Hawaii. He had this quote: "Even if I have to be rolled across the finish line, I'm finishing." A year later in 2006 he watched the triathlon from a wheelchair. Another athlete completing the race stopped just short of the final tape , got down on the ground, and in honor of John Blais, rolled across the finish line. That had a profound effect on me. So when I went on sabbatical in 2008 I finished 2 months of walking at Santiago de Compostela in Spain. It was the end of my dream. In front of the Cathedral in Santiago where pilgrims have been walking for 1200 years there is a marker that says you are at kilometer 0-the end of the pilgrimage. So I got down on the ground and rolled across that marker. For me, it was graduation day-the day you learn what you can do, what you can achieve, who you can be.
And this is another thing I learned. Everyday can be a graduation day. Every day is an opportunity to learn something new, something powerful, something ennobling about ourselves. It isn’t about school, it’s about the education we realize about life. It’s about seeing that we are more than we thought we were, better, stronger, more dedicated, more tenacious, perhaps kinder, more filled with grace than we realized.
(The 12 people that we honor today all had long journey’s to get here. Some had to climb enormous mountains, overcome incredible challenges to arrive at this moment.) But we’re not just applauding their achievement today, we’re saying that this can be our story, too. We also can achieve more than we thought, we, too, can be better. We too can graduate. In fact, we can look at our lives as one long graduation-one long chance to learn about ourselves, realize who we are, discover who we can be. Everyday is a graduation day. Everyday is an opportunity. It is not a nice story. It’s a story of heroism and grace and sacrifice and victory. Once a year we take a brief moment to acknowledge the graduates in our midst-and to celebrate with them. This is not their last graduation. This is the day we learn what we all can do, who we can be. This is the day we discover what is possible about us. It is not a nice story. It’s real and powerful and valiant. It is the day we realize all of us can graduate, everyday can be a graduation day. Every day we can learn who we are and who we can be. Graduation days never end. It is not a fairy tale.