2026 Baccalaureate Service - Evan Tinkenberg

This was recorded live at our annual Baccalaureate Service on May 8, 2026. 

In his role as Campus Pastor, Evan Tinkenberg reaches out to students, faculty, and staff to encourage the integration of learning and faith. He grew up 30 miles south of Chicago in northwest Indiana, where he was raised in a generously loving family and a rich community of Reformed churches. He enjoys drinking good coffee and reading eclectically; ask him for a book recommendation. Evan graduated with a B.A. in Theology from Trinity Christian College and an M.Div. from Covenant Theological Seminary, where he was awarded the Exegesis Prize. Kim, Evan’s wife, is a nurse who loves baking and cooking new foods. Together they enjoy going for coffee or bookshop dates, hiking, kayaking, and bike rides. They do much of this with their two young kids in tow.

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Transcript

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I want to begin with a poem. Don't worry, it's not O the places you'll go. Here it is. As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame, as tumbled over wren and roundy wells stones ring, like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's bow swung, finds tongue to fling out broad its name. Each mortal thing does one thing and the same, deals out, that being indoors each one dwells, selves, goes itself, myself it speaks and spells, crying what I do is me, for that I came. I say more. The just man justices, keeps grace, that keeps all his goings graces, acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is, Christ, for Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his, to the Father through the features of men's faces. That's Gerard Manley Hopkins, if you're not familiar, is a nineteenth century English poet. And in this poem he's delighting in something that should matter a great deal to you who are graduating. Many of you will change careers at some point, maybe multiple times, maybe sooner than you think. And others of you don't know where you will be this time next year. The something that Gerard Manley Hopkins delights in is an anchor for those moments. It won't keep you from feeling afraid or facing difficulty or encountering suffering. But it can transform how you deal with those experiences. It can give you hope and a well of gratitude that won't run dry. So what is that something? It's rooted in words from Paul's letter to the Ephesians, chapter two, verse ten, which reads for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Paul says that you are God's workmanship. This is speaking of the work of careful creation, a crafting full of purpose. Picture the potter at the wheel, the painter with her palate, the researcher in the lab or the builder laying brick. Each person has a purpose in mind for their work, and it requires a careful, you might even say loving attention to the object at hand. It's this loving attention to the specific that Hopkins' poem so exuberantly delights in. Everything from a bird to a bell to a human being, each and every created thing is the object of God's affection and joy, because he is their maker. That means, forgive me, I'm not at all being sentimental when I say this to you. You already are infinitely valuable to God. There is nothing you can do to add to that love or to earn additional approval. God loves you. Why? Because he loves you. Why? Because he loves you. What Paul says next makes that even clearer. The you that you are has been created in Christ Jesus. There's a lifetime of depth in that phrase, but for time's sake, let me boil it down. God gave you life when he made you in the first place. And when you refused that life in sin, he gave life to you again in Jesus Christ. When you first believed in Jesus, whether that was from your earliest days or not that long ago, you didn't just add something new to your old life. Paul says elsewhere that you were crucified with Christ, and now Christ is your life. In other words, you are a new creation. The old is gone, and behold, the new has come. This is Gospel 101. The God who made you has never given up on you. He's demonstrated his immeasurable love in became in becoming flesh and bearing your curse, rising to indestructible life and bringing you with him. You are who you are because of what God has done. Despite the pressure from just about everyone else around you, telling you that you need to run a tight ship, or else your life will be a failure, who you are and who you're becoming cannot be chalked up to your own effort or accomplishment. You are who you are, and you will be who you will be, because of God. There's more. The gospel tells you who you are, but it also tells you why you are. Here's what I mean. Paul says you were created for good works, which God prepared beforehand that you should walk in them. Paul uses the most basic, wide-ranging word to describe God's purpose for your life. You were made for good work. What might that look like? It varies, but broadly, it means pursuing the good of those around you, so that they experience the love of God. This is what how you're meant to walk. And in the Bible, your walk isn't just the highlight reel of your life. It's the everyday, non-Instagrammable parts. All of your life is meant to be full of grateful good work for the sake of others. Grace made flesh. What makes this especially astonishing is that all this good you're meant to carry with you has been prepared beforehand by God. The maker of the universe has set your trajectory, and he wants to fill the world with lives that mirror his infinite goodness. He has you in mind for just this purpose. You are his masterpiece, a person to whom he can't wait to say the words, Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master. So to sum up, you are more dearly loved than you ever dared imagine. And you have a purpose that is more significant than the greatest of your aspirations. So let me give you a few ways this word of God's loving purpose can change your life. And these are also ways that we, who are not students, can pray for you as you prepare to graduate. So first thing the gospel gives you a new way to remember. Maybe you've heard the parable. Three bricklayers. And when they're asked what they're doing, each responds like this. The first says, I'm a bricklayer. I'm laying bricks so I can feed my family. The second says, I'm a builder, and I'm building a wall. The third, with a gleam in his eye, says, I'm building a great cathedral to the Almighty. These are radically different ways of seeing. According to the gospel, you are God's workmanship, the result of his costly work on the cross, and the focus of his loving attention. When you grasp this and you look back on your time here as a student, you can remember it as being deeply full of intention and purpose, the artful work of God forming you. What might he have been doing when he put you with that roommate? How might he have worked through that disappointment? What good works has he put in front of you that he's uniquely prepared you for? You can look for the ways God has been laying bricks in your life towards something great. And that brings me to the second thing. The gospel gives you a new way to remember, but it also gives you a new view of greatness. Judging by my experience of some of you, you feel immense pressure to do something that matters. I've heard it said that you want to make sure you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. But God wants you to be doing. Maybe what I'm saying so far sounds like it's just confirming all of that anxiety. Let me explain why I don't think that's so. In the gospel, the greatness of your calling doesn't come from any status you're able to achieve. It comes from the fact that God is the one who calls you to it. He calls you into a life of good works, the ordinary pursuit of goodness that will often be overlooked by the world around you because it's not big enough. But works of love never go unnoticed by God. Read the four gospels, pay attention to how often Jesus praises small acts of faithfulness, a cup of cold water, a copper coin, a child's welcome. You don't have to be highly influential to be important. As I've said already, you matter to God. And this isn't something that change, failure, or even success can take a so the gospel gives you a new way to remember, a new view of greatness. It also gives you a new security. In the bricklayer parable, two out of three identify with their work. I'm a bricklayer. I'm a builder. From now on, when you meet new people, often the first thing you'll ask or you'll be asked is, what do you do? There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but it does mean that when your work changes, something about your identity changes. The first person in the parable can't say, I'm a bricklayer, if he's in between jobs. Failure or change can be catastrophic or just destabilizing if you identify with your work. The gospel invites a different way of identifying. If you are God's workmanship, delighted in from all eternity and created for great purpose, then you don't have to either reduce your identity to your work or feel pressure to matter more because of what you've done. You can remember that you work out of God's love, not for it. You might say when it comes to success or failure, the stakes are actually gloriously low. You can't lose the most important things. A few years ago, uh, you may remember this, the Scotty Scheffler won the Masters Tournament, and in his post-championship press conference, here's what he said. I love winning. I hate losing. I really do. My buddies told me this morning that my victory was secure on the cross. That's a pretty special feeling to know that I'm secure forever. And it doesn't matter whether or not I win this tournament or I lose this tournament. My identity is secure forever. This is true of you too. Because of Jesus, your identity is secure forever. Knowing this security gives you the freedom to give everything you have to good work, works of love that reflect who God is. And that brings me to the last thing. The gospel gives you a new way to remember, a new view of greatness, a new security, and finally a new powerful love. God loved you before you did anything to deserve his love. And he loved you with the same holy, self-giving love that brought the universe into being and brings an end to all darkness. If God's love is like this, then the work of love that you practice is not marginal or merely sentimental. It shares in the transforming power of God. In one of his books, C.S. Lewis writes a fictional account of a trip to heaven, where he describes one figure at a certain point in the book who is so radiantly holy that he can hardly look at her. Her beauty is nearly unbearable. He's expecting that this must be someone incredibly important, maybe Mary herself. Instead, the narrator's travel companion says it's someone he's never heard of. Her name is Sarah Smith. Yet she is one of the greatest in the kingdom. Why is that? Because in a way that never drew attention to itself, she loved others with the love she received from God. Here's how Lewis describes the power of that ordinary love. Every person that came near her had their place in her love. In her they became themselves, and now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them. Who knows where it will end? But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life. That's what's ahead of you. A life of powerful love and joy in imitation of your heavenly Father. So let me end with this whether your future looms over you like a shadow or opens before you like a wide, adventurous expanse, you can be confident of this. God is at work in you, and your life has meaning. What should you do with that? As Hopkins says, Act in God's eye, what in God's eye you are a Christian, a person in Christ who loves because God first loved you. This is the greatest, most wonderful, most joyful way to live, and it's what you're called to. Thanks be to God. Amen.