On Finding And Living Our Joyful Vocations: (An Alternative Commencement Address for the Women of the Class of 2024)

To the Class of 2024, especially the women who are graduating, I would like to say this:

You may have been told some diabolical lies that your degrees, and any future titles and promotions, and your vocational hopes, dreams, and ambitions are worthless--and that your true place as a 'Christian woman' is in the home.

You may have been told these things by the same kind of people who promote White Nationalism disguised as Christianity. The kind of people who promote hate against LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities, and immigrants, and people of other religions.

These people who say these things are not the Good Shepherd, but rather thieves, who come to steal and kill and destroy. The Good Shepherd, instead, has come "so that you may have life, and have it abundantly." (John 10:10).

If anyone is going to speak to women today about their calling and vocation as Christian women who have graduated from an institution of higher education, let it be this:

God has created you and given you a good mind and many gifts and talents for service in this world. Yes, if you find your joyful calling and vocation in raising a family and becoming a homemaker and have the significant financial means it takes to do so--then do so.

However, it is also Biblical and faithful to find your joyful calling in many vocations, whether or not you raise a family as defined in the traditional sense of biological children and marriage. Even the Benedictine Sisters, at whose college such a nonsense commencement speech was recently and unfortunately given, have themselves, by definition, found their joyful vocation in not being married and not raising biological children in a 'traditional' home. Instead, they have lived out their joyful vocation in another long-held tradition of Christian history, that of women's monasticism. Women's monasticism, of course, freed women up until this last generation to pursue vocations in multiple fields, including higher education and medicine, that were otherwise closed off to them if they had opted for marriage and raising children.

However, as most of us now know, a woman can also faithfully pursue her joyful vocation both in raising a family and also becoming highly educated and successful in her career. As most of us have heard by now, the unfortunate commencement speaker's own mother is a respected medical physicist at Emory University with multiple scientific articles published in her field.

The Bible and Church history is full of wonderful examples of women who pursued their joyful vocations with or without marrying or raising a family, and working inside or outside the home. Even Paul references Lydia as a successful businesswoman who finances his work; and his colleagues Phoebe, Priscilla, Apphia, Chloe, and Nympha, who were ministers and leaders of early congregations.

We should never mistake flawed human patriarchal fantasy for authentic scholarship in Biblical Studies or Early Church History--and this is precisely one of the reasons we need more women in higher education and religious leadership especially. God has called us and created us to have life, and live it abundantly, not fearfully.

So, to you who are graduating and seeking the next steps on your journey, I say: find your joyful calling and vocation and pursue it. My joyful calling and vocation is as a pastor and a parent; as a community organizer and a writer; as a composer and an artist; as a peacemaker and a poet. Draw on the stories of women in Scripture and in Church History, who have always had to break down barriers and contend with the patriarchy in order to live out their joyful calling and vocation in service to God and others in the community. Pay no attention to any small man who would tell you God has not made you as fully human, fully beloved, fully equal, fully gifted, and fully called to serve as anyone else--except to remind other people who are being harmed by such speech that this is not what God has called us to be.

Congratulations, Class of 2024! May you go on to find and pursue your joyful callings and vocation!