Sunday, May 13 - Farewell Prayer

This sermon was preached on Sunday, May 13 for my last Sunday at St. Aidan's Episcopal Church. The readings for this sermon were: Acts 1:15-17, 21-26, 1 John 5:9-13, John 17:6-19 and Psalm 1. 

Their delight is in the law of the Lord, and they meditate on God’s law day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither.

Two Novembers ago, when the results of the national election were becoming clearer and clearer, the first thought I had was, “We need to open the Chapel.” And open the seminary Chapel we did, posting on our seminary Facebook page and then my own, that the light was on and the doors were open. A place to pray and be held in prayer.

To my surprise, dozens of friends from all different parts of my life liked my status. Christian friends, Jewish friends, friends I’m pretty sure have never stepped foot in a church, acquaintances I had not spoken to in years. Somehow, even though they were all miles away from Berkeley, it meant something to them to know that it was there. That the light was on and the doors were open.

“If people are wondering what prayer is,” one of my friends had posted on Twitter earlier in the evening. “It’s the thing your heart wants to do while waiting for Florida votes come in.”

It’s the thing your heart wants to do.

The next day, I posted again on Facebook, the Bible verse that had come to me in the night while we lay on the floor in the dark, my fiancé, my dog and I. “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” I see your light, I wrote, and the darkness will not overcome.

A couple of my friends who had seen that status reached out to me that day and the next. How are you staying hopeful, they wanted to know. I’m thinking about going to church, another one admitted. How do I start?

Prayer is the thing your heart wants to do when the world is crashing down all around you. When, unexpectedly, you see that there, a light is on and doors are open. When ancient, half-remembered, words flit into your mind and heart.

Their delight is in the law of the Lord, and they meditate on God’s law day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither.

The Hebrew word here for Law in this Psalm carries within it a much more profound meaning than legalistic rules. Torah invokes the Will of God, the Word of God, God’s covenants, all that binds us to God. Happy, too, does not capture all that might be meant here. Contented, blessed…and I think, too, hopeful. Hopeful are they that reach down with their roots into the fresh, clear streams of God’s promises.

When I worked as a hospital chaplain this summer, we were taught that many families feared letting go of hope more than anything. Sometimes, for loved ones, acknowledging the end is near feels like the ultimate betrayal, or like giving up the fight. What do you say, in that moment, when you are facing a family looking to you for all sorts of false hopes? What do you say to the spouse clinging in desperation, and in love, to a fierce denial of what is happening, what has already happened? One of the experienced chaplains offered this advice to us newbies. I say that as a Christian I believe there is always hope. It’s just that the hope has changed.

And then we pray, Thy will be done. And then we wrap everyone in prayer.

I learned, too, again and again, in those moments, the true beauty of community. Because sometimes we cannot bring ourselves to hope. Sometimes we are overwhelmed. Sometimes when our roots reach for the stream, we find that for us, it has run dry.

Here’s the thing about roots. Scientists have recently been discovering more and more about how forests are much more like one big organism, a huge system of nutrient transfers, an interconnected community that lends and borrows and strengthens together. What had been taken, through the eyes of modern science, as individual trees competing over scarce resources were, in fact, cooperating and depending on one another in much more complex ways than we had imagined. And we’re learning, or perhaps re-learning, the same thing about humans.

We prop each other up. We carry water through our roots to the other thirsty trees. We hold each other in hope. Even when the hope has changed. Even when it looks like all is lost, we do the thing our hearts want to do. We wrap one another up in prayer.

I often find that the formality and stiffness of the words of this morning’s Gospel can somewhat obscure the tenderness and intimacy of this moment. Jesus, here, is praying from his heart. Here, on the eve of his death, in the moment just before everything is to change, Jesus lifts his loved ones up to God. Jesus’s prayer for his disciples does not ignore the pain and suffering they will endure. And yet, just moments before his arrest in the garden, his coming death on the cross, Jesus prays that his joy in them may be complete. Jesus knows that hope the disciples had placed in him would change, it would have to. But he also knows, wants them to know, that they will not be alone. “The Spirit of truth is coming,” he tells them before the prayer, “and when she does, she will guide you into all the truth.” There are streams in the garden. Streams of goodness, beauty, and joy.

When I realized that Jesus’s farewell prayer fell on my last Sunday here at St. Aidan’s, I had to laugh. And as I struggled to put together how to say goodbye and thank you to this community that, in just one short year, has done so much to form me, I knew what my heart would want to do this morning.

This is my prayer.

I pray that when we speak about sanctuary, we remember that we, as church, have a unique sanctuary to offer. A sanctuary that the world sorely needs. Our tradition carries, collectively, a hope that cannot be overcome because it is rooted in eternity. I pray that we know that this hope not just a gift of our faith, it is also a responsibility of our discipleship. In the words of First Letter of Peter, “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” I pray that we may always be prepared account for our hope, gently, reverently, to a world that has lost so much of its own.

I pray that the doors of this place will be radically open on days of bad news and days of good. That the trees I see before me will stand tall, and when they cannot, that they will lean on one another. That the people here will dare to hope, and when they cannot, they will reach for the light in others.

I pray that we all will drink deeply from the fresh, clear streams of what is beautiful, good, and true in the Word and Will of God. And that we will carry it to those who thirst. 

And as I go from this place, may our roots ever be intertwined through prayer. 

Amen.