I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.

~ Isaiah 43:19

Commencement: A New Thing

One word has given me pause for decades – one that appears on my calendar each May with graduation season – Commencement. I often ask why in the world we use this word at the end, the completion of our studies. Why use the word “commencement” when “commence” means to begin? “Let the games commence!” comes to mind.

Apparently, I’m not alone in this question. In a piece about my alma mater’s ceremonies, Jim Nicar, Director of the University of Texas Heritage Society at The Texas Exes, writes:

Why is graduation called “Commencement?” It is, after all, a ceremony to mark the completion of something. The word reflects the meaning of the Latin inceptio – a “beginning” – and as the name given to the initiation ceremony for new graduates in medieval Europe. The original college degree was something like a teaching certificate; it certified that the bearer was qualified to instruct others in a given academic discipline. As part of the graduation ritual… the newly-minted scholar delivered his first lecture as a legitimate teacher. Commencement, then, means “commencing to teach.” (Find the full article on UT’s Commencement history here - https://jimnicar.com/2024/05/06/why-its-called-commencement/) 

For those graduating from academic programs, including our own High School seniors whom we'll honor during worship this Sunday, this ending is really a beginning. For years I had mistakenly assumed that “commencement” was just about the ending, about what had been completed and done. Instead, I've come to understand that what has been completed with this end — what we mark with the commencement ceremony — is the very thing that makes possible the new beginning.

I wonder what words of faith we may have done this with as well. What have we thought of as an end when it is more about the beginning? When we tell the Easter story, it usually ends with resurrection. After Jesus suffered and died, he rose again, so we celebrate the end to a difficult and miraculous story. Even though resurrection is about new life, we tend to close the chapter on the Easter story too soon – maybe as soon as we packed the bunny decorations away and returned to work after the long weekend. What if we truly considered “resurrection” not as a word that means finishing the story, but as one that begins new life, new hope, new possibility?