“Friends, graduates, this now is part of your calling. I hope you will form communities of compassion in an age of outrage,” said Bishop William McAlilly to the 60 graduates and hundreds of guests at Vanderbilt Divinity School’s Commencement.
McAlilly is a retired Bishop of the Tennessee-Western Kentucky Conference of the United Methodist Church, the Divinity School’s United Methodist Bishop in Residence, and served as this year’s commencement speaker.
“You’re leaving a place where your questions have been welcomed, maybe even expected,” he shared with the graduates. “A place where you’ve learned that theology is not merely about defending inherited answers, but learning how to speak truthfully — and sometimes prophetically — about God.”
As part of the ceremony, over 20 graduates were presented with awards for excellence and achievement, including Isabel Billings Draper who received the Founder’s Medal for First Honors for remarkable scholarly dedication and outstanding achievements.
“The question before you today is not simply, ‘What now shall you do with a degree from Vanderbilt Divinity School?’ The deeper question is, ‘What will order your life?’” McAlilly continued.
In her charge to the graduates, Dean of the Divinity School Yolanda Pierce challenged graduates to “rejoice in mystery.”
“Rejoice in the mystery that every success and also every failure will lead you to where you are supposed to be. Rejoice in the mystery that assumes that nothing, no experience is wasted,” she said.
Earlier in the week, the Divinity School held a student-led celebration of the graduates. The celebration was filled with music, prayer, testimonials, and featured art and memories from the graduates.
Pierce concluded the commencement festivities of the week with a charge not to the graduates, but to the family, alumni, staff, and faculty who surrounded them.
“Continue this journey with this graduating class as they depart from this place, knowing that we are our siblings’ keepers. May we all endeavor to love, to serve, to seek good, to resist evil, to remake the structure of injustice into the vision of equity and love on Earth as it will one day be in Heaven.”
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