Finally, farewell.

On saying goodbye and God's presence through life and death

This sermon is offered with thanks to seven wonderful years of ministry as a priest at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Mt. Lebanon, PA and was preached on Trinity Sunday. The texts for Trinity Sunday can be found here.

The church has used a schedule of scriptures for Sunday worship for hundreds of years and the current form is on a three year cycle that dates back to at least the 1980s. I do not mean to bore you with a random church fact but I want you to hear that this week’s texts were assigned for this Sunday a long time ago. Like, well before I knew it would be my final service as a priest at St. Paul’s. I am convinced this is an act of God because I really appreciate that our scriptures provide some instruction on how to say goodbye as I prepare to leave this church. What today’s scriptures offer us is the reminder that following God will often lead us to endings, but God never abandons us there; God remains with us and leads us through them.

In this week’s Second Corinthians passage we read the final words that the apostle Paul writes to a community that he knew and loved in Corinth. Paul spent his ministry traveling around to spread the love of Jesus Christ and when he arrived in Corinth, he spent a year and a half there founding a church. Paul had an amazing ministry in Corinth but he knew he could not stay there forever and so after a season there he continued on to other places like Ephesus and Philippi. This week’s passage from Second Corinthians is the very conclusion of this letter and in it he says, be well, I love you, God be with you. Our relationship might be ending but God’s presence remains with all of you.

We see something similar happen in our Gospel passage today as well. Even though Jesus warns his beloved friends of his death and then appears to them after his resurrection to explain what happened, they still have their questions. The scripture says “When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted.” Jesus could have spent a lifetime lecturing them but he knew at some point, they just had to get out there and do it. So he rips the bandaid off and says “Go make disciples! And when you are confused, know that I do not send you alone. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Jesus might not be with them in the same way they have known but he assures them that God’s presence will remain with them in whatever happens next.

This presence is important because it is what is to sustain us through life’s hardships. This includes minor inconveniences but also one of the biggest challenges we will face: death. Ultimately these stories of departure are stories about death. Death of relationship, death of expectation, death of comfort and death of control.

This can be hard because we live in a death denying culture. We go to great lengths to avoid and delay death. This behavior can be satisfying for a season but, no one can escape death forever. Jesus shows us this, Paul shows us this, and perhaps if you have spent time trying to follow their examples then you are also able to point to places in your life where there has been death as well.

Jesus does not avoid the pain of death. Instead, he gives us the strength and courage to face it head on. He does this by offering us his presence through it, which transforms into the power to overcome it.

Many, many years after Jesus walked this earth psychologist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross would go on to label the stages of grief. She organizes them in five categories. She labels these stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. Many people who have worked in grief or grieved themselves take issue with these five stages, arguing that grief isn’t always so tidy and neat and actually, some people never “advance” through the stages at all. There are plenty of valid critiques of her work. But one comment that seems in line with the ministry of Jesus is found when she describes death as “the final stage of growth.”

The thing we often hate the most is exactly where God’s work begins. Because the story does not end there. Jesus overcomes death and something wonderful and new happens. Death ushers in a new reality, one that all of us are invited to live into every single day.

God sends us to places where things must end. But he does not send us out alone. The same Christ who sends us is the Christ who goes with us, and wherever he leads, resurrection is never far behind.

Like Paul, and like Jesus, I find myself on this Sunday offering a goodbye to people I have come to love. You all hired me seven years ago to serve as a priest in this church but I actually was not a priest yet— I was ordained to the priesthood several months into my ministry here and I had so much to learn. I am grateful for the ways I was allowed to grow in this parish, both vocationally and personally. This is the church where I was ordained a priest. This is the church where my husband was ordained a priest. I had a wonderful sabbatical while here. I have had two daughters here. I have been able to grow my position and gain all sorts of experience that I know will carry me to the North Hills.

Being a priest is a wild ride because it gives me the best seat in the house to so many of life’s biggest milestones. I have held people at the beginning and the end of their lives as you handed me your newborns and I poured your ashes into the ground. I have been present to so many other major moments in between birth and death: weddings, baptisms and adoptions to name a few. But some of my favorite memories are not the big moments at all, but the simpler ones, like sharing our highs and lows every Tuesday night in small group or telling a Godly Play story to a class full of kindergartners. It has been an honor to be part of so many of your stories, thank you.

And of course ministry is not only joy. There have been difficult seasons here as well, times of disappointment, uncertainty, and loss that felt like their own kind of death. Yet standing here now, I can see what I could not always see in the moment, that God was present in every season. God has constantly brought life into places where I saw death and grace in places I would not have chosen for myself.

Like the disciples, I find myself wondering about what the future holds. But I trust that the same God who has been faithful to us together will be faithful to each of us in what comes next. Amen.

Thank you St. Paul’s.