We’ve all been to graduation ceremonies. They’re happy occasions, for graduates and their families. At no time is that happiness more clearly expressed than in that dramatic moment, at the end of the ceremony, when so many graduates fling their caps into the air!

            In some high schools and colleges, the cap-throwing ritual is even institutionalized. After all those speeches and solemnity, the senior-class president or valedictorian strides up to the podium, removes her cap, and with a great war whoop, sends it flying. Suddenly, arcing through the air, there appears a cloud of other caps, filling the sky like so many huge squares of confetti.

            Freedom! It’s what the seniors are celebrating. Freedom is a theme that runs right down the middle of graduations — freedom from school and its rules, freedom to step out and make your own way in the world, freedom to do whatever you have planned next.

            In today’s New Testament lesson, Paul speaks of a certain, particular sort of freedom. He says that, before faith came, we were imprisoned — imprisoned by the law. The law was our “disciplinarian.”

            That’s the word the NRSV uses. Other translations have used the word “tutor” or “teacher.” Yet, the Greek word on which all these translations are based has a very particular meaning. The word is paidagogos.

The pedagogue

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