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 100th 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