Sermons

April 29, 2007

Rev. Scott Swanson

Fourth Sunday of Easter - Farewell to Galen - Philippians 4:1-9, 23

Impending deadlines have a way of helping us clarify what is most important. When endings are a long way off, there seems to be less urgency about what matters. When they are imminent, we often become much more clear in our thinking ... and in our feeling.

I have known many people in the later years of their lives who have voiced this sense of urgency, people who are no longer prepared to devote what they view as increasingly precious time to things they don't consider to be important. That is a luxury for the young, if for anyone.

We've all seen the scene in film or on TV where a person is being dragged by force from a room, and as they go kicking and screaming, they are shouting back to the people still in the room whom they don't want to leave behind. ... have you ever noticed that the dialgue is those moments never involves small talk? As the man is being dragged away from his wife whom he may never see again and he calls out to her, he never says, "isn't it great that the rain finally stopped?" or "I think I forgot to change the laundry over" It's more likely something like, "I love you," or "tell the children I love them." Endings force us to clarify what is most important for us.

This is what came to me as I contemplated Paul's farewell to the people of Phillipi. It strikes me that in these last sentences Paul constrains himself to say that which is most important for him to say to these people. "If you remember nothing else that I have said, remember this ..."

There is something mysterious and awesome about beginnings and endings (which is really two ways of talking about the same thing: moments of change.) Many people - even those with little or no religious memory - have a sense that they are connected to something bigger than themselves in those moments - a drama bigger than the drama of their own individual existence. As I think about some of the beginnings and endings in my own life, I experience a sense of my own smallness, my own small part in a much larer unfolding story in which I play an important role but which really is not about me at all.

For people like us, who identify as followers of Jesus and who seek to live with an awareness of a God-filled universe, these beginning/ending moments become sacramental - seemingly ordinary events on one level that point to the divine that lies both within and beyond. The God whom we profess to be with us at all times becomes acutely experienced in the people, the memories, the hopes: in that which must be put down in order to move on, and in the known and unknown which waits just over the horizon, in our remembering that we are part of something much bigger, which we will never fully understand.

We have come to another end, and another beginning. It is the end of Galen's internship, the end of this significant time in your life and formation for ministry, and the beginning of the next phase of learning and formation. It is the ending of a commitment for the whole congregation to be in relationship with Galen, and particularly for the members of the LST (Eric, Isabelle , Jamie, Jan, and Rosa) and myself. It is an ending for the other staff, particularly Kathleen and Greg who have worked pretty closely with Galen over the last 8 months. For all of us there will be new beginnings as we turn our time and energy in other directions and carry on with our ministries. With this experience of ending and beginning, may we remember and name as central those values by which we would live all of our life.

One of the practices of people of faith is to undergo vision therapy. Because the fundamental difference between these moments of deeper awareness and remembering and other moments is not the moments themselves, but our awareness of them. Every moment is fraught with the sacred, but so often our awareness is dulled and we miss the clues. And so we need to be trained to see in all the ordinary moments what is more easily seen in the beginning and ending moments: the majesty and wonder of creation, and the small yet vital role we play in it.

We instinctively know this, don't we, even if our conscious selves momentarily forget it? Our language gives us away. When endings come, our words -- or at least our emotions and our awareness - tap into that deep river of being that matters most, out of which our best selves would drink at all times:

"Euodia and Syntyche, be of the same mind in the Lord, and the rest of you in the community help them get there. Be gentle ... with yourselves, each other, the world. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. Focus on whatever is true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise."

"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit." Amen.

For more information or to comment on this sermon, please email Rev. Scott Swanson.