Sunday, September 15, 2024

Sunday, September 15, 2024 - Goodbye

This Goodbye message was shared for my last Sunday at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in East Longmeadow, MA.

This goodbye has been really hard for me. I’ve shared that from the pulpit in each of my sermons this past month and also in personal conversations with many of you. This was my first church, really, in so many ways. My first two Holy Weeks as a solo priest. 7 burials, 2 weddings, 16 baptisms, 106 sermons. So many of you let me into your lives in profound and meaningful ways. I waited with you in hospital waiting rooms, anointed you while you held your newborns, prayed you through your loved ones’ last breaths, puzzled through church finances over your shoulders, and pronounced your first kisses as married couples. You embraced my children - teaching them songs, celebrating their many noises during worship - you even gave my daughter the bed that will carry her through toddlerhood. You taught me the quirky St. Mark’s traditions, old and new - the Craft Fair, the 5k, Christmas and St. Francis Day pageants, how to shift around sanctuary furniture each season, and what it means to really go all out for the Easter Vigil. To me, St. Mark’s tastes like the first hunk of corned beef I ever liked, perfect biscuits, and homemade communion bread and wine.

Thank you.

I know this goodbye isn’t just hard for me. A bunch of folks have been telling me lately how much they hate goodbyes and I have to agree. Goodbyes suck. This goodbye is hard.

When I say goodbye today, though, I’m saying it with its original meaning. Goodbye is a contraction of the phrase “God be with you.” Saying goodbye is the sacred spiritual practice of entrusting each other to God, reminding each other that God will be with us as we part ways.

And when we let a goodbye be a goodbye, really a goodbye, we are giving room for God to do God’s thing. If we let this goodbye be a goodbye then our next hellos, your hello to your new priest and the next stage of being St. Mark’s, my hello to my new parish, will be full and joyful and true. I have been honored to carry the presence of the Body of Christ to you these past two and a half years. And I trust that God will be with you through priests and others to come, speaking God’s love in a new voice.

Last Sunday we sang a hymn together that’s based on Psalm 98, “God has done marvelous things - sing to the Lord a new song.” What a marvelous thing God has done with us. Today we step back and say: Wow. Wow what a marvelous thing we did here together, you and me and God. Soon you will be singing a new song together. My voice will not be among you the next time you sing, and yet, I will carry your imprint, a St. Mark’s mark, upon my heart wherever I go.

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