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LETTING
GO AND KEEPING ON
Sermon
for January 31, 2010
Scripture:
Psalm 121; Hebrews 11:8-16; Mark 9:14-29
I've
been thinking a lot about Sojourners recently, and about my role
at Sojourners and about my impending non-role at Sojourners, but
in the midst of thinking about us and me, I realized that I should
have been lifting up some other churches these last few Sundays.
Last Sunday Ebenezer Baptist church hosted the Haitian ambassador
in worship, and we have several ties to Ebenezer, personal ties
and organizational ties through African American Teaching Fellows
and I should have lifted up Ebenezer last week. We have personal
ties and musical ties and have shared worship with Trinity Episcopal,
and they have recently called a new pastor. And St. Paul's Episcopal
church here in Charlottesville is celebrating its 100 th anniversary
this weekend and so they are having special worship services today,
with Kathryn Jefferts Schiorri, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal
church in the United States preaching just a few blocks away.
We have strong connections there as well, and St. Paul's and Sojourners
and just a few other churches have been the core of the Interfaith
Gay Straight Alliance, so I want to lift all these congregations
up this morning to get me out of the self-centeredness I have
found myself in.
But
of course my heart is here, as it has been for the last ten years,
and as it will continue to be. Because my heart has been at Sojourners
these last ten years, this is not just a real easy day for me.
Over the last four or five months when people wanted to comment
on my retiring, they have usually said, “Congratulations.” And
since there are some reasons why retirement in my situation is
called for, and since there will be some good things about retirement
and since there is some spiritual work I want to do for myself,
another stage of life I think it's important to get to, I recognize
that congratulations are in order and I accept them gratefully.
It is a happy and important next step for me to be taking.
But
those of you who are part of my Sojourners family, many of you,
know that it's not that simple, that retiring for me is a lot
more complicated than congratulations. It is possible to be sure
that letting go is what you want to do, need to do, that it's
something that's important to do and that the time has come, it's
possible to be sure of all those things and still feel some reluctance
about it all, and certainly a sense of loss. Some years ago when
I was in the process of leaving another church, I came across
a little book called “Praying Our Good-byes”. I found it helpful
at the time and when I arrived at Sojourners some years later,
I remembered that book and thought that the concept probably applied
to arrivals as well as departures and so I titled my first sermon
here “Praying Our Hellos”.
Being
prayerful as you go through changes either in your personal life
or a congregation's life is pretty much of a self-evident good.
I don't think I need to convince you of the value of being prayerful
as we head into an unknown future. We have reminded ourselves
of that often as we have moved through the major developments
at Sojourners over the last ten years. In any case, I'm not going
to argue for it today, just say a few things about what it means
to me.
For
one thing it means taking time to be thankful. That is not a hard
thing to do, just an important thing. One of the ideas I had as
I was thinking about what I would say today was to just take the
whole sermon to be specific about all the things I am thankful
for over the past ten years. I am thankful for…I am thankful for…just
go down the list of things I am thankful for. I could easily have
taken a whole sermon putting just some of my gratitude into words.
I decided against that because there are a few other things I
want to say. So I will just say an all-inclusive, but no less
sincere thank you for the welcome table congregation you have
been for Ava and me. Thank you for the warmth of the welcome you
extended to us from day 1. Thank you for the support at several
crucial points along the way. Thank you for the friendship all
along the way. And thank you at the same time for giving two introverts
the space to be introverts and not to be smothered by church.
And most especially thank you for the glimpses of God you have
given me as we went about our worship together and as we went
about doing the things we thought needed to be done. I will always
consider myself fortunate and blessed to have spent these last
ten years among you.
The
flip side of that, of course, is that leaving involves loss. And
part of praying our good-byes for me is to acknowledge the loss,
not to pretend it is not there. Of course I know that the loss
is not a complete loss, since Ava and I do intend to continue
living here and eventually to find our way back to Sojourners.
But again to say that should not be to pretend that there is no
loss involved. Praying our good-byes may not be quite the right
phrase, since there is not quite the need to say good bye. But
there is the need to acknowledge endings, and I do, and I prayerfully
offer them, the endings and the losses that go with them, I prayerfully
offer to God.
To
pray our good-byes also means to ask forgiveness. There is a portion
in the service of release that we will have in just a few moments
where the pastor and congregation offer their mutual forgiveness,
and I appreciate that being there as part of that ritual. But
I didn't want the only words being said to be words that are printed
and can be said in a kind of formal way. I remember saying in
that first sermon about praying our hellos that I knew I would
disappoint you. The point of my saying that was not to tell you
something you didn't already know if you stopped to think about
it, but again to ask us to stop and think about it and not to
skip over it or glide around it. Then it was theoretical. I just
knew it would be true because it is true of us humans that we
disappoint one another in all sorts of ways. Now looking back
it is not theoretical. I know I have disappointed you. I am aware
of some of those disappointments; there are certainly others I
am not aware of. In my own words, with my own heart, I ask your
forgiveness not only or so much for failures of energy, efficiency,
or competence but for pastoral words that were needed but not
said, gestures of caring hoped for but not received. I ask your
forgiveness, but I also repeat what I said ten years ago, that
both in remembering the past and as we move into the future we
will all need to do so with merciful hearts. That is my prayer
for you and for me. It is another aspect of praying our good-byes.
But
speaking of moving into the future, still another part of praying
our good-byes is to put ourselves in the spiritual place of being
able to let go. You have heard already, probably several times
over in different settings, that starting tomorrow I will need
to take a break from Sojourners, not only with regard to pastoral
functions which now pass to someone else, but also with regard
to worship attendance and participation in any of the established
parts of church life. This has been found, through long and sometimes
painful, experience to be good and necessary practice when a minister
leaves a church, especially when he or she is retiring and staying
in the community. What I feel a need to say this morning is that
I do not look on this as some rigid regulation that I am grudgingly
agreeing to abide by. It is a process I embrace, rule or no rule.
I
chose the reading from Hebrews for this morning because it is
a favorite, a good description of what faith is about. “By faith
Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that
he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing
where he was going.” It's not just a general description of faith,
but a description of how I am feeling about retirement: setting
out not knowing where exactly I am going. And for this community,
it's certainly not the case that you don't know at all where you
are going, but there are some unknowns. We travel in faith. And
besides at the end of the passage it refers to our being strangers
and foreigners on the earth—some translations say sojourners on
the earth. It's a favorite and, I thought, appropriate passage.
There's one word in it that's not particularly a favorite though.
By faith Abraham obeyed . The whole concept of obedience
is probably not a great fit for Sojourners and certainly is not
for me. And with regard to this process of letting go, of leaving
the familiar behind, which is what Abraham was doing, and in our
way what you and I are doing, it is not for me a matter of being
obedient. Abraham was not merely being obedient. He was responding
to a call, and as I translate that into my own terms it means
obedience to the rules about how pastors should act after they
leave a church is not where it's at. It's much more than that.
It's a matter of my being spiritually free enough to move on to
wherever God calls me next. I don't know what shape that will
take for me; I only know it will be different from where I have
been, and the whole process of letting go is something that is
necessary for me from the inside out, not as something imposed
from the outside in.
And
that leads to the next and last thing I want to say this morning,
and that is that retirement does not mean quitting. By which I
mean that acknowledging endings and letting go does not mean leaving
off what we have been doing together here at Sojourners. And how
do you say what that is? Beverly and I were meeting to go over
some choir music to see if I had any requests for what the choir
might sing today, and I asked her if she remembered what the choir
had sung when they traveled to Delaware one year for the Central
Atlantic Conference annual meeting. I asked about it because I
just had this funny feeling that that piece, which I couldn't
remember, but I still had the feeling that whatever it was said
what I was going to want to say somewhere in this sermon. She
said, “Sure. It was We've Got…You've Got…Somebody's Got to Keep
Hope Alive in This World Today.” I said, “Yes! That's the one.”
And sure enough it is one way to say, one good way to say, what
we have been about and what, as we go our somewhat separate ways,
we need to continue to be about. I may not be here doing it with
you every Sunday, I may not be struggling with how best to say
it in a sermon every Sunday, but somehow in retirement, I will
need to find some new ways for me to keep hope alive. I can't
retire from that. And I know that although Sojourners will be
setting out on a new leg of its journey, that part of the journey
will be the same. Because we've just got to keep hope
alive in this world today—and in our own spirits too.
I
chose the reading from Mark this morning again because it's a
favorite. It has described me for the forty years of my being
a minister. The father says, “I believe. Help my unbelief,” and
I see myself. There I am, right there in the scripture. I believe.
Help my unbelief. It's not just that both things are there inside
me, as they are for most of us. It offers a challenge It says
to me that we acknowledge our unbelief, but we do so not because
we want to dwell in the land of unbelief but so that our belief
will be honest. I believe. Help my unbelief. We do acknowledge
our discouragement, even our despair, over the way the world sometimes
seems, but not so that we can lead lives of discouragement, but
so that hope can be real, not just wishful thinking. We acknowledge
our sorrow over the woundedness we find in God's world and God's
people not because we are content with sorrow as a way of life
but so that our joy may be made of compassion. We acknowledge
our fears not because they serve us so well but so that we can
move past them to a love that casts out fear. We acknowledge our
humanness so that we can see in one another and in ourselves the
face of God. May we keep at tasks such as these. As Ysaye Barnwell
says to you and to me: People of God: Work on. Walk on. Sing on.
Pray on. In all things, pray on. Amen.
Jim
Bundy
January
31, 2010
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