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‘B’ // Easter 6 // 5-17-09 // Celebration of Worship, Northside Presbyterian
Scriptures Acts of the Apostles 10:44-48 John 15:9-17
The Grace of Saying Goodbye
Australian actor Paul Hogan – better known to many as the cinematic Crocodile Dundee – served as co-host in 1987 of the Academy Awards. In an opening segment, Hogan – in his characteristic Aussie outback style – admonished that evening’s Oscar recipients, in their acceptance speeches, to practice the three Gs: be Grateful … be Gracious … Get off!
Of course, this is not the Academy Awards. And this is not about winners and losers. This hour is about the worship of God.
And still: Aware as we are of that context, I feel moved, per Mr. Hogan’s sage advice, to offer to you today a few words of gratitude for my 11 years with you -- at the lunch that follows this service. But for now, in the moments to come, let me offer a few words of gracious well-wishes … before getting offstage, for the sacrament of Holy Communion to come that shapes us as Christ's body.
In sharing with you a few gracious well-wishes in the moments to come, I am moved – with a deep sense of humility – to appropriate Jesus’ parting words in John’s gospel today. Words shared in preparation for Holy Communion, as well, with those he now calls his friends.
Words full of grace. Words shared as he gets offstage.
Words full of the grace of simply saying goodbye.
The grace of saying goodbye. After two months of bringing closure to my ministry with you at Northside, it’s time for me now to finally say goodbye.
Or – if you prefer – we can call this moment what our own Letha Chadiha suggested to me after Worship last Sunday, prior to returning to her sabbatical in California’s bay area. “This is more than a goodbye,” Letha said. “This is a farewell.”
Farewell. Fare … well.
Fare ye well, Northside – with gracious well-wishes.
Fare ye well, beginning with the words Jesus shares in his farewell – his well-wishes – to his disciple friends today, “This is my commandment: That you love one another as I have loved you.”
As many of us know, we at Northside seek in our Congregational Purpose to glorify God by being, among other things, Liberal in Love. And so, my wish for you, dear church, is simply this: That, in order to love one another as Jesus has loved us, you not spend an inordinate amount of time in these coming days of transition with the obligatory mission self-study. As important as it is.
In my experience, mission self-studies tack toward the solipsistic – the self-centered. They tempt the best of us into an isolated, and perhaps exclusive, rallying-of-the-wagons. Especially a family-sized congregation such as ours that gathers together weekly in this far corner of this hidden valley. Always in peril – if its leaders are not vigilant – of becoming the world’s smallest package: one wrapped up in herself. For mission self-studies all too easily feed our Presbyterian conceit for wordsmithing the Word into our own juiceless jargon – wringing precious time and energy from the mystical and prophetic power of our witness of faith.
Following this vein of self-studying vanity, I speak to our university culture generally and the NAM Book Group and Men’s Gospel Breakfast specifically with the following admonition: Please remember, we are first and foremost a People of the Book … not a people who only sit around and discuss books. And because we are a People of the Book first, you – all of us – are called by the Christ of John’s gospel today to experience God’s living, loving Word in the world.
What we are not called to do is to dissect God’s world with our words. For God’s living, loving Word in the world shapes our words – and not vice versa.
Let me suggest, then, in the spirit of and Spirit in Peter reaching out to the Gentiles today – not on a mission self-study, but on a mission world-study – that you ask yourselves this: Where in the world – and not just in yourselves – is your mission focus based?
Where to start? Better put, actually: Where to continue?
Our Congregational Purpose, printed on the back of each Sunday’s bulletin, is as good a place as any to continue our mission focus!1 And do not forget, dear Session, based on our Congregational Purpose, your five three-year goals for the church. Bring them to closure in this last of the three years.
Where in the world – and not just in yourselves – is your mission focus based? Don’t look now, but one of Session’s five three-year goals has already been achieved: through the dedicated outreach partnership with SOS Community Services. Know this. Nurture this. Build on this. And many strides have been made on the other goals, as well.2
Friends – sisters and brothers – this is again my heartfelt and, I trust, gracious wish for you: Engage – continue to engage – in your mission world-study. Have the grace of saying goodbye to being church in ways that may be the calls of other churches, in order to be the church that your Congregational Purpose leads you to be.
“You did not choose me,” Jesus shares with his disciple friends today. “I chose you.” In a similar fashion: Let us have the grace of saying goodbye to our own individual, postmodern, self-studying navel-gazing conceits of personal choice, that we may better abide in the Spirit-choices already being made for us, and through us, as one body of the living Christ.
That is my wish – my loving, gracious wish – for you!
Checking in with Crocodile Dundee’s three Gs at this point:
· Be grateful. I am. And I will share with you how I am and will always be, in the coming hour.
· Be gracious. Hopefully, I have been so. Expressed in my wish for you to fare well, by carrying out your Purpose in a mission world-study. With new goals to come, and – per the story in Acts today – new tongues to speak them.
And now comes the time to “get off.” And I shall.
I shall with these words of parting to you. Words of grace, I trust. The painful, awful, and awesome grace … of saying goodbye.
Words from a theological giant of yesteryear named Paul Tillich. Words that ring loud and ring true for me – and, I trust, for you:
Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley … when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual … when year after year the longed for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.
Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!”3
And so, I say to you: “Adios.” “Adieu”. To God. For you are accepted. By God. And so, as well, by me.
To God alone be the glory – forever – and ever.
World without end? Amen! Amen!
1Northside’s Congregational Purpose Statement: “To glorify God by being … Welcoming in Worship; Inclusive by Intention; Joyful in Doing Justice; Liberal in Love.”
2Northside’s Goals, 2006-2009. The following September 2006-December 2009 goals seek to guide the members and leadership of Northside in fulfilling the Congregational Purpose.
I. Encourage an atmosphere centered on joyful worship and fellowship in all church activities.
II. Streamline administrative activities to re-focus energies on the development of a spiritual community within the congregation and to re-energize Northside’s relationship with St. Aidan’s.
III. Implement an intentional and strategic stewardship and church growth campaign that matches all members to ministries according to their gifts; identifies and implements alternatives to current funding sources; and yields a significant and measurable net membership growth.
IV. Expand outreach efforts to create a greater presence for Northside within the broader community with a focus on efforts that connect the congregation to organizations and demographics not typically associated with the church.
V. Maintain and/or develop the church facility to provide a safe, welcoming environment through strategic planning and fundraising as appropriate.
3Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations (NYC: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948), p. 162.
Benediction …
We say to one another today, “Farewell!” Fare ye well, my friends … fare ye well!
We say to one another today, “Goodbye!” Practicing – and it’s always practicing – the grace of saying goodbye. The grace that comes from wishing each other well: Fare ye well!
And now, let us say to one another, “Adios!” “Adieu!” “To God!”
Letting go – by giving ourselves back to God. Letting go – by going out into the world in peace, to love and serve our servant Lord.
For you – are accepted. For you – are so loved. For you – are always being, and will always be, remembered.
God bless you all. Each, and every one. Amen.
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