Unleashed as Power and Light: A Message for Our Graduates

Graduation season is here. Texas A&M’s commencement ceremonies were less than two weeks ago, high school graduations are this week, and some churches are celebrating their graduates in worship services. Last Sunday, we honored our church family’s high school class of 2025 with gifts, applause, and prayers. For these graduates, it is a commissioning of sorts; a sending forth from the congregation that has shepherded them.

So, in what manner should a community of faith send forth its beloved graduates? The Book of Genesis has some clues.

When Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge and then hide from God because they realize they are naked, God responds restoratively, not punitively, providing them clothing. Next, they leave Eden, and a cherubim and sword are placed on guard at its entrance. Danielle Shroyer, a former pastor and a founding member of the emerging church movement says, “God does this not as punishment, but for their own protection.” They are cared for and protected, and are sent forth likewise.

In her book Original Blessing: Putting Sin In Its Rightful Place, Shroyer points out that the original Hebrew verb that describes Adam and Eve’s leaving, weysalehehu, has been translated as “sent forth” and “banished.” “Banished” was the word she found in the Bible she used most frequently growing up. “But most modern scholars agree this is not the appropriate translation,” she writes, “and now many say ‘sent forth’ instead.” Why? Shroyer explains that from Abner’s interactions with King David in 2 Samuel, to the king of Israel’s treatment of the king of Aram in 1 Kings, to the prophet Jeremiah’s release from prison in Ramah, the word ‘weysalehehu’ is consistently not just a sending, but a sending in peace.

This is the manner in which we are called to send forth the young people in our care: in peace. As we have nurtured and protected them, it is faithful for us to send them off with affirmations of their unmistakable belovedness as children of God, and with prayers of encouragement and support for the next stage of their journey. To banish them misses the mark, which is the literal definition of sin.

This makes me think about Joshua. Joshua had been banished from home when he started undergrad at Texas A&M. After he came out to his mom and dad, they kicked him out and effectively disowned him. So, on Aggie Ring Day, a cherished tradition where parents often present their child with the coveted class ring they will wear with pride for the rest of their life, Joshua asked me to do the honors. While it broke my heart for him that his parents weren’t presenting him with his Aggie ring, I was blessed to serve in that manner. It was an empowering moment where Joshua was given a refreshed sending forth.

In the post-graduation chapter of his life, Joshua continues doing well. He works in DC, has a life partner, maintains a healthy social life, and, all the while, loves God and his neighbor as best he can. He keeps healing, taking the pain of his banishment and transforming it into peace that he can give to others. Despite the manner in which he was sent away, Joshua knows that he is loved, that he is necessary, and that he belongs. His church family instilled that assurance in him when he was sent forth in peace; and it’s from that assurance that he keeps letting his light shine.

Danielle Shroyer writes, “To accept the capacity of God to love us no matter what is also to accept our capacity for far greater things than we may have imagined. To be tethered and centered in the power of the unshakeable love of God is to be unleashed in the world as power and light.” This is what we do when we send forth our graduates in peace: we release them as God’s power and light into a fearful world that keeps banishing itself into shame-based shadows.

For every graduation from one stage of life to the next, as each other’s keepers, it is faithful for us to send one another forth in peace so that the sent forth would give more peace to a world threatened by its own manmade hostility. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus teaches us, “for they will be called children of God.” We need more peace in our lives and in the world we share, especially now; and we all need reminders that we are God’s children whom the creator of every good thing calls beloved.

So, to every graduate: go in peace. Let not your heart be troubled nor afraid, for you are fiercely loved, urgently necessary, and unconditionally essential to the human family of God’s equitably cherished people. Now, with that assurance, be power and light in every place that needs uplifting, and to every person that has been banished from the truth of their beloved worth. Be unleashed with that everlasting assurance so that you would never sell yourself short, and that you might risk something big for something good. Go in peace.