Poolesville Presbyterian Church
06.15.14; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lessons: Matthew 28:16-20; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13
I was never particularly good at saying goodbye.
When I was a tiny little pup, no more than four or five, I can still remember how much trouble I’d have whenever the time came for saying goodbye. That was particularly true at parties. The day would come, and I’d be psyched. Oh, I’d be a gracious host. It’d be wonderful to have my friends there, and I’d always be completely on my best behavior. Games would be played. Cookies...or better yet, cake..would be eaten. More games would be played. There would be presents. We’d run around, and it’d be fun, and then, well, then their parents would show up. Which meant it was all coming to an end.
This would be the point where, had I been a tiny little Mr. Manners, I would have pleasantly ushered each of my friends to their waiting parental transport pod like the miniature host of some Victorian-era salon. “Thank you so very much for coming! It was absolutely lovely. I do hope that we might be able to do this again sometime very soon. Give my regards to your family, if you would.”
That was not my reaction. As I realized that the time we’d been spending together was coming to an end, it was like a switch had been thrown in my little head. Click, it would go, and then things would change. I have vague memories of inconsolable weeping and flopping around. It was tears and snot and piteous wailing, which I’m sure made the very best of impressions on the parents who were picking up their children.
“Is...is someone killing a cat next door?” “No, no, that’s the birthday boy,” my parents would say, as I tantrumed incoherently.
As the years passed, I’m not sure I got much better at it. Like, say, when the time came to part from my high school girlfriend, as I left her...and our relationship...after a trip out West to help her move to the other side of the country. I was fine for about the first minute or so sitting on the plane to come back home, and then, well, there were the tears and the snot and the piteous wailing again.
“Is someone killing a cat back there,” the pilot must have said to the stewardess over the intercom. “No, no,” she would have said. “I’ve got no idea what’s wrong with that kid.”
It’s hard getting the closure thing just right, especially if things are challenging, and especially if you’re not entirely sure when you will come back into the presence of the one you’re with. When you’ve shared life with them, they become part of your story, part of that Book of You that’s being written into the fabric of creation. They’re part of you, just as you’re part of them, and there are some stories you just never want to end.
In that leave taking, you want to carry them with you, and for...in the goodbye you share...something to be passed on between you that brings your time together to the best possible close.
There are two such leave-takings in our readings today from the Gospels and the Epistles.
The first we find as Jesus prepared to move on, in the final moments of the Gospel of Matthew. It’s a leave-taking that Matthew uses to sum things up for the shared story of Jesus and those of us who have chosen to follow his Way. Unlike Mark, who ended his story bluntly and abruptly, in fear and confusion, or Luke, who carries on the tale through the story of the early church, this is is as far as things run in Matthew. These are parting words, the end of things, the place where the story ends and we part ways while Vera Lynn sings “We’ll Meet Again” wistfully in the background.
Into that place, Jesus speaks confidently about his connectedness to those he’s brought into community around him. Yes, the story of their time together may seem to be ending. But in their commitment to live and to teach the life that he brought them into connection with, there was a deeper bond...one that would not pass or fade or change.
Go out with confidence, he said. Know that you and I are now part of something that will always be, until everything that we know passes away.
And then there’s the second leave taking, the one we hear at the very end of Paul’s Second letter to the church at Corinth. Paul hadn’t exactly had the easiest of relationships with the messy and conflict ridden community at Corinth, and here we get the last of the correspondences that history retains about that often awkward, often contentious relationship.
All had not been well in Corinth, as Paul struggled to get them to stop fighting and tearing at one another. As he leaves them, he knows that they may choose to live according to the way that he’d taught them. Or not. Corinthians were pretty good at the “or not” part.
As he closes out his letter, Paul leaves the Corinthians with a word of encouragement that is also a word of challenge. When he asks them to put things in order, to finally stop their insistence on factions and infighting, he’s taking that one last moment to remind them of the very thing that’s been his hope for them all along. Live into God’s grace, he says. Find a way to be gracious to one another.
Live in peace, he says, and the God of love and peace will be with you. And sure, there’s an implicit flip-side to those words. Keep things chaotic, don’t listen to me, endlessly fight and war with each other, and y’all are just out of luck.
But he chooses not to say that, as tempting as it must have been. He chooses to depart not with a swift parting kick, but with a good word.
Even in the face of a community that’s been a serious and sustained pain in the backside, Paul’s words of leavetaking are very intentionally chosen to be graceful. He doesn’t lose sight of the reason he has walked with them, hoped for them, and struggled with them.
Which is why, as hard as his words have been with them, his leavetaking takes the form of a benediction--a familiar one, I might add. His hope is that the relationship that they’ve had will still be part of who they are. His hope, having shown both grace and challenge, is that they’ll understand the purpose of everything they’ve shared.
This is, for so many, a season of leave-taking. In our endlessly churning culture, we never know when we might be moved on. But with the coming of summer comes the time for moving on from the places and faces we’ve known. It’s a time of graduation and advancement, and as hoped for as all of those things are, there comes with them the reality of a story’s end.
If you’re moving on from one school to another, or moving on from college, the fabric of your relationships--the day in, day out presence of those around you--is going to change. If you’re not moving on, precious others are. That face and that voice and that presence that has been a part of your life since the moment it came into the world may soon not be part of your every day.
I’m aware that, myself, as a father, every time I wrap my arms around my children who are no longer children. That little boy I used to carry on my shoulders to bed after storytime now is a man who smiles down at me from broad shoulders. The time they set themselves out into the world is a few short years still to come, but it’s just a few now, close enough that I can feel it.
Which is why, frankly, I think it’s better to preach this sermon now when that reality is a few years out, rather than to try to choke out these words when my little tiny ones are just about to leave. I’d rather not subject you to the tears and the mucus and the piteous wailing.
“Is someone killing a cat up there,” a guest will ask one of you. “No, no, that’s just the pastor.”
But in the words I know I’ll struggle to offer them, I’m hoping that I’ll remember the way that both Paul and our shared teacher took their leave from those they loved. They spoke from the certainty that the time that they had shared with the people who they loved was forever woven into God’s story of us together. We remain forever part of one another, wherever love and peace abides.
I am with you always, says our Teacher.
That truth of grace, love, and communion is one we should remember, no matter when those times of leaving come.
Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.
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