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THE
REVEREND SUSAN
ANDERSON-SMITH ____ EASTER VII SUNDAY AFTER
ASCENSION ____ JOHN 17: 20-26:
FAREWELL
P.O. VOICE: 520-299-6421 FAX: 520-299-0712 E-MAIL: WEB SITE: WWW.STPHILIPSTUCSON.ORG |
Take
my lips and speak through them; take our minds and think with them; take our
hearts and set them on fire. AMEN How do you say goodbye? It depends, I suppose, on the relationship
– where and how it began, what it has grown into, and what it will
become. For Jesus, preparing to leave
the intimate community of his disciples it seems to have been a long
process. Almost from the beginning he
gently, or sometimes in exasperation, explained that the course his life was
following would lead to profound changes in their lives. So he began
saying goodbye early. Where I come from, when families
and friends get together to say farewell to someone graduating from high
school or moving away to a new job, or to celebrate the last few days of
someone’s single life before marriage, we often rummage around and haul out
old scrapbooks and photograph albums.
My father was particularly partial to the slide projector
approach. These pictures stimulate an
extended round of reminiscence – where holidays were spent, the worst road
trip, fashion and hairstyle faux pas, Aunt So-and So’s
funeral. Before an impending change,
people tend to reflect on how they got to where they are. They are preparing to say “Goodbye.” Jesus’ farewell conversations with
the disciples occupy four whole chapters in John’s gospel, in which he
teaches and explicitly prepares them for his departure and their lives in his
absence. They are like family
gatherings, and at least one member is reminiscing about where family members
are now and how they got there. Look
how these memories fit in with what I have been saying to you, Jesus tells
them. Remember that I was always with
you, but that soon I will be with you in a different way. Say goodbye to the old way. Today, we hear the final portion
of the final prayer Jesus prays in the presence of his closest circle. Although it occurs in John’s gospel prior
to his crucifixion, it is given to us on this Sunday after the Ascension –
that brief, but breathless transition time between farewell and future,
between what has been and what is yet to be.
The prayer draws the disciples, the church and the world into the
language of promise. Jesus intercedes
on behalf of his friends, entrusting the hope of the future of his followers
to God in prayer. His focus, his
words, his posture are all directed toward God. It is not the conventional prayer of a
dying man; it is about the
full constellation of his life boldly and completely, even unto death. We
glimpse the promise of our share of the |
intimacy and love of the Abba-Son relationship that is
ours while we are in the world. Jesus
dares to hold God accountable for securing the faith community’s protection and
ensuring its unity and identity in his absence.
Jesus hands those whom he loves back to God and holds God to God’s
promises for this community.
I imagine the author of John, crafting this
gospel some sixty years post-crucifixion, thought that it was important to
remind those who had never met Jesus in the flesh that Jesus was still present,
but in a new way. Not in the way that he
had been, but in a real way, in an immediate way, in the constantly forming
community of faith, reflecting the oneness of Jesus with God in their own
relationships with each other and with God.
They were invited to accept the love of God in community, just as Jesus
accepted the free flow of love with his Abba.
I also imagine that for the
disciples, it seemed like the end of a dream too good to be true – all of it
slipping out of their reach until Jesus was no longer there for them, no longer
present but past, a memory that would haunt them to the end of their days. There is loss and grief in absence, but there
is also hope, because what happened once can happen again and only an empty cup
can be filled. It is only when we pull
that cup out of hiding, when we own up to the emptiness, the absence, the
longing inside – it is only then that things can begin to change.
It is our sense of Jesus’ absence,
after all, that brings us to church in search of his presence. Like a band of forlorn disciples, we return
to this hillside again and again. It is
the place we lost track of him; it is the last place we saw him, so of course
it is the first place anybody thinks to look for him to come again. We have been coming here a long time now, but
even in his absence it is a good place to remember him – to recall best moments
and argue about the details, to swap all the old stories until they begin to
revive again, the life flowing back into them like feeling into a numb
limb. It hurts at first, but then it is
fine, and the joy of remembering makes the pain seem a small price to pay.
Even after the Ascension, angels
were sent to remind God’s friends that if they wanted to see Jesus again, it
was no use looking up. Better they should look around instead, at each other, at
the world, at the ordinary people in their ordinary lives, because that was
where they were most likely to find him - not the way they used to know him,
but the new way, not in his own body but in their bodies, the risen, the
ascended One who was no longer anywhere on earth so that he could be everywhere
instead.
No one standing
around watching them that day could have guessed what an astounding thing
happened when they all stopped looking into the sky and looked at each other
instead. On the surface, it was not a
great moment: eleven abandoned disciples with nothing to show for all their
following. But in the days and years to
come it would become very apparent what had happened to them. With nothing but a promise and a prayer,
those eleven people consented to become the church and nothing was ever the
same again, beginning with them. The
followers became leaders, the listeners became preachers, the converts became
missionaries, the healed became healers. The disciples became apostles, witnesses of
the risen Savior by the power of the Holy Spirit, and nothing was ever the same
again. That probably was not the way
they would have planned it. But he went
away and they stood looking up toward heaven.
Then they stopped looking up toward heaven, looked at each other
instead, and got on with the business of being the church.
And once they did
that, amazing things began to happen.
They began to say things that sounded like him, and they began to do
things they had never seen anyone but him do before. They became brave and capable and wise. Whenever two or three of them got together it
was always as if there were someone else in the room
with them whom they could not see - the strong, abiding presence of the absent
one, as available to them as bread and wine, as familiar to them as each
other’s faces. It was almost as if he
had not ascended but exploded, so that all the holiness that was once
concentrated in him alone flew everywhere, flew far and wide, so that the seeds
of heaven were sown in all the fields of the earth.
Today, we have settled down for one
last huge liturgical celebration of “now” before we all move into the future,
with the advantages of knowing ourselves better and knowing who is going with
us all. Now, I do not wish to put too
fine a point on the analogy of Jesus’ departure with mine. I can assure you, I have every intention of
remaining firmly grounded – that is, both feet planted, not dangling from the
sky. It is, however, a time of
reminiscing, of prayer and blessing, of saying “Goodbye.”
Over the past few months, I have
rummaged around in my heart and mind, and hauled out scrapbooks and photograph
albums, and reminisced about our life and ministry together during the last
seven years. I discovered, in the
process, a cornucopia of rich treasures, the fruits of a full-orbed romance of
a lifetime with you.
I arrived on your doorstep only ten days old as
a priest – as green as could be. There
is no green color in the palette as green as I was. Everything I did in those early months was
“the first.” If you caught on, you were
far too gracious to mention it. I
preached my first sermon from this daunting pulpit seven years ago today, and
you have generously supported my attempts to proclaim God’s word. You have allowed me to preside at God’s
table, to sing, and sometimes dance my way through liturgies, holding your
collective breath in anticipation of just what I might do next. You entrusted your children and grandchildren
to me on countless retreats, two pilgrimages, and a mission trip. I have presided at your weddings and those of
your children and grandchildren, and then baptized the children born of those
unions. I have been invited to your
bedsides, and together we have prayed into God’s nearer presence those we have
loved deeply. I am profoundly grateful
for and blessed by these ways that you have humbled and honored me – calling me
to be with you in the most intimate and holy moments – life’s rites of passage.
I have served here with the most
extraordinary parish staff assembled anywhere.
They are creative, compassionate, and generous beyond the telling. In the best and fullest sense of collegiality,
we have argued with, loved, nurtured, and supported each other. In ways I have never experienced before and
have yet to comprehend fully, my colleagues have provided a community of
honest, life-giving, mutual relationship that has allowed me to experiment,
discern, dream, and become more authentically who I am. This is a rare gift for which I am deeply
grateful.
All of you have loved me into being the priest I
am today. You have called out and supported
the best of me. We have challenged,
loved, irritated and forgiven each other.
You have loved me with a life-giving, flowing-over kind of love. It is the transforming power of love that we
call God – the kind of love that transforms each of us, and all whom we touch –
the kind of love with which Jesus commanded his disciples to love, and commands
us now.
As I leave this place to respond to a new
vocation, know that what we have shared here will inform and sustain me. Even in our parting and our absence one from
another, I will carry you in my heart.
We will be with each other in a new way, through God’s Holy Spirit, all
doing our part to turn the world upside down, to bear God’s love and justice in
the world. Continue the good work begun
in you. Live out boldly the vision of
St. Philip’s. Love one another fiercely.
Thank God for you. Thank God for our life and ministry together. May God bless you richly, give you the will to be disciples, and grant you grace and power to serve the world. AMEN