Scripture: Psalm 121 and Hebrews 11:8-10.
The first thing I want to say this morning is how grateful I am for the worship service last week, in spite of the fact that some people have suggested that this might well cause me to feel a little extra pressure about the worship service this morning. I am actually able to avoid the extra pressure just by saying to myself that there ain’t no way anything we can do today can compete with last Sunday’s service, nor does it have to. I am getting a bit of a complex because I think when I preached in November it was also the week after a special jazz service, which also seemed to overwhelm everyone.
I had no idea what the worship team was going to come up with when I requested not to preach on my first Sunday here. I wanted to be part of congregation last week, not because I had any idea what kind of a service it was going to be, but because I am very clear that my first call here is not to the pastorate of Sojourners but to the community of Sojourners. It was good to be here just as part of the community last week, and then especially good to be swept along into all the different ways we worshiped God last week. What a great way it was for Ava and me to begin our time here at Sojourners!
I also need to begin by thanking everyone for the ways you have welcomed Ava and me into this community. (Normally would not presume to speak for Ava, but will take the liberty of doing so just for now.) Both in November and now in February we have been touched by the kind words spoken to us and the kindnesses extended to us, gestures that have been both generous and genuine. I can only say thank you.
A number of you have also been generous in letting me know of your eagerness for my arrival. That too is a gift that I have received very gratefully. It is good to feel both welcomed and wanted, and I have felt both. Again, thank you.
Let me also assure you that whatever eagerness there may have been among you for my arrival has been at least matched by my eagerness to be here. I have said this to some of you in conversation, and as I said it some of those times it sounded coming out of my mouth as sort of the polite thing to say. But I don’t mean it that way, and I hope you don’t take it that way.
Seeking a new call can be sort of a long and involved affair, and as with any change people may decide to make, you never know what is going to come of it. I am very grateful that in this case something did come of it, and that that something is Sojourners. I receive this community and this call as a marvelous gift that has come into my life. And like children with presents, or sometimes adults too, I have been anxious to open up that present to see what it may contain.
So here we all are—ready to begin—eager to begin—a new ministry together. There is lots to do, we all know that. There are problems to be solved and issues to be wrestled with, and we’re ready, all of us are, to get on with it. And yet…And yet…
I was thinking about all this back in December when I was already getting anxious to get started at Sojourners. Advent is a season of anticipation, and I was anticipating all right. I was anticipating, of course, the celebration of Christmas with the people of Immanuel Bethel, which we all knew by that time would be my last at that church, and I was looking just beyond Christmas when not too far into the new year I would be beginning a new ministry, here at Sojourners. The people at Immanuel Bethel were very understanding of this. They knew that my heart was in two places, and that I was certainly already anticipating being here.
Anyway, one day I got an e-mail from RM, which basically said that the worship committee would be meeting in early January to think about February worship and he didn’t want to put any pressure on me, but…did I have any thoughts about what I might be preaching about in February. February sermons were not really the first thing on my mind at the time, but as it turned out I actually did have some thoughts, not much more than that, but at least some thoughts.
I had pulled out a little book that I had found helpful when I was leaving a church I had served for 21 years and that I was finding helpful again as I was preparing to leave Immanuel Bethel. The name of the book is “Praying Our Good-byes” and the author is Joyce Rupp, a woman who has worked with individuals and groups on the general subject of leave-taking, dealing with losses and grief and the saying of good-byes. Not just the grief associated with death, but losses of all kinds—jobs, homes, physical abilities—losses that need to be acknowledged, where we need to say good-bye to someone or something and perhaps even more to pray good-bye.
When RM nudged me into thinking about preaching in February, it occurred to me that maybe we need to pray our hellos too. Thus the title of the sermon this morning. Praying Our Hellos. Of course, having proposed that title or that theme, I then had to ask myself why I thought that theme, that phrase was appropriate. I had to unpack it not just for you, but for myself.
Speaking for myself, I do hope that we will be prayerful as we begin this ministry together. I’m not sure I can put all of what that means to me into words, certainly not into words that will fit inside of this sermon, but I can say a few things.
One thing it means to me is that we maybe don’t need to be too eager about this business of moving ahead. Maybe you’re familiar with the saying that reverses the old adage that says, “Don’t just stand there, do something.” So the reverse is “Don’t just do something. Stand there.” My words this morning are intended to have something of that spirit in them.
Maybe there is some point in lingering just a bit, lingering prayerfully to be sure, but lingering a little over the past. I know that sometimes it may seem like the healthy thing to do when beginning something new to say: What’s past is past. Let’s just forget about it and move ahead. And I know that Jesus even said some things about how anyone who puts his or her hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the realm of God. But with all due respects to Jesus and to some of our own common sense thoughts on this matter, maybe it is not so bad to linger a bit on the past, so long as we do so prayerfully.
It is not after all so easy just to leave the past behind. That is not something we can do or ought to do casually. The past is not something we can surgically remove and discard, whether we’re talking about it on a personal level or in the sense of a church’s past. It is part of us and goes with us into the future whether we want it to or will it to or not.
Part of what praying our hellos means to me is that we linger long enough over the past to give thanks for it, all of it. We are who we are and we are where we are because of what has been, and the spirit in which I hope we begin a new ministry is one of giving thanks for the past, even those parts that have been painful. We have been shaped and we have been taught by the good and the bad, and all those things that resist such easy labels, which happens to be most of it. So I wanted to offer at least these sermonic words of thanks this morning as a way of praying our hellos, and express the hope that we may all be prayerful, whatever form that may take for individuals, that we may all in some way be prayerful in this manner as we move ahead.
Another meaning praying our hellos has for me is that we recognize the textured nature of this whole process we are involved in. It’s not really much of an insight, but it is nonetheless true that every hello contains a good-bye, and vice-versa. There is much more to new beginnings than a kind of cheerful optimism and full throttle charge into the future. Moving ahead always means leaving something behind.
Sometimes that is not hard. There are some things we leave behind without too much difficulty. There are some things that trail along behind us, even though we don’t want them to. And there are some things we may find it hard to let go of, even though we have to if we are to move forward. Praying our hellos means to me also the ability to pause in our move forward to acknowledge—to ourselves and to God—that this process of letting go of the past has a lot of dimensions to it, sometimes just within ourselves as individuals, certainly within the life of a community. In addition to just giving thanks for the past, we may need to pray for wisdom in understanding what it is we may need to let go of, what problems we may have in letting go of the past, and how those things may be different for others than they are for us.
Praying our hellos means being considerate of the past, even as we prepare ourselves to move ahead. It also means to me a certain way of approaching that move into the future. For now there are just two things I want to mention.
One is that I begin my ministry here in part with a spirit of a prayer for forgiveness. I know I will disappoint you. I don’t say that because I feel your expectations are amazingly high or in some way unreasonable. Nor do I say that because I want to be excused ahead of time from being held accountable. But I do know that I will disappoint you…for all sorts of reasons…on all sorts of occasions. And so I am confident there will be times when I will need your forgiveness, and God’s. And I am praying for that even now. Indeed, we disappoint one another quite often, we humans do, and sometimes the people who we disappoint the most are the people we love most dearly. And so what I am feeling as we begin this ministry together is that we are going to need merciful hearts, all of us, and that too is my prayer for us.
And the second thing I want to say about approaching the future is also not some great insight, but by praying our hellos I mean partly reminding ourselves that the future is not given, and does not in the end belong to us. Sometimes we may need to let go of the past. Sometimes we also may need to let go of the future as well.
Again, this is not a way of somehow releasing us from responsibility or suggesting that we be less passionate about doing what we feel must be done in the way of shaping the future. It is to recognize that the results of our labors are not guaranteed. And it is also to recognize that along with all those things we may boldly hope for and energetically work for, the future also contains the certainty of the unexpected, and the certainty of experiencing hurt in ways that we cannot anticipate.
We do not have a triumphal faith, a faith that goes out to conquer the world and where success is assured. Some have approached Christianity that way, and some still do, I guess. But the symbols that are before us on the communion table are not symbols of triumph, but of love.
We do not have a triumphal faith, but we do have a hopeful one. And as we begin together a new chapter in the life of the Sojourners community, we do so, I hope, in a spirit of joyful adventure, but also in a spirit of knowing that we will need to count on each other, and on the presence of God, to see us through.
May God be with us as we travel. Amen.
Jim Bundy
February 13, 2000