GOODBYES

A Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock

[Acts 16:9-15; Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5; John 14:23-29]

Birch is our six-year-old grandson; and as I continue to have the chance to grow-up with him, I think he is (as his Uncle Noah was) one of those “old souls” that chronology can’t define.  Birch’s nature is buoyant, inquisitive, lithe.  He has an awareness of what is around him that belies his years.  With wonder and curiosity, wrapped in an untamed willingness to plunge into participating, Birch absorbs and deeply appreciates what is around him.  But this, of course, is quite different from understanding it all.

Taking all of life in as he is wont to do, six-year-old Birch understandably lacks the mature experience to step back from the intensity of his encounters to apply some helpful perspective – or at the very least, to allow himself to catch his breath.  As such, it is easy for Birch to overload his emotional circuits.  There is simply too much amperage flowing in his young, developing system, and the resulting overload is often very painful for him.

I saw this in him a few weeks ago, when Birch, his younger brother, Hugh, and their Mom and Dad were about to head home from a short visit with Bev and me.  While the adults were scurrying in a last-minute frenzy to gather items that needed to be homeward bound and then to find some space for them in an already stuffed car, I realized that Birch had slipped away from all the hubbub.  In fact, he was already in his kid's car seat.  Having strapped himself in, his head was hanging down, his face sad and sullen, his eyes glazed and fixed on the air between him and the car’s floorboard.  Every part of his being was saying that the time for “goodbye” was just too much to bear.

Seeing him in his self-protective-retreat mode, I came to his side of the car.  The door was still open.  I called quietly to him, but Birch didn’t stir, not even offering a side-ways glance toward me.  He was sad and feeling the awful weight of saying “goodbye”.  The overwhelming approach of separation, the parting of ways in the face of belonging together, this palpably overwhelming experience drove him to hide from the pain.  I felt it, too.

The experience of “goodbyes” is, in fact, an experience of death, which (I contend) is the reason that most of us minimize departures, if not avoid them at all costs.  Like my unabashed grandson, we have learned to hide ourselves from the vulnerability of impending separation, to the point of choosing to do anything but be a part of saying “goodbye”.  Yet, unlike Birch, who will (I am quite sure) learn how to say “goodbye” and thereby participate in its ritual truth that is meant to demonstrate strong abiding love, nonetheless, too many of us (much older than six years of age) put this expression off.  The result of which is to blunt the chance of experiencing life and love that are not defined by fear and death.

As we continue to join Christ-followers around the world in marking Easter’s reality, our gospel lessons from John steadily move us beyond the vital details of Easter morning to living in resurrection’s challenges and consequences.  As with last Sunday’s gospel lesson, today’s version continues encountering the long passage that is known as Jesus’ “Farewell Address”.  It is the account of Jesus saying “goodbye” to his disciples, but the key insight into this expression of departure and separation rests in the fact that Jesus is not sad.  More to the point, Jesus goes to great lengths to convey to his followers that this “farewell” is not so much an ending as it is the genesis of a new experience of living in the God-life and being connected to the Maker of heaven and earth.

Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with them.1

“Goodbye” is a word that comes to us by way of the Old English phrase, “God be with you”, as in, “God be with you since I cannot be.”  In what can often be experienced as the dreadful pain of saying “goodbye”, Jesus reminds us that in the emotional and physical space that is created by departure, God’s love moves into that vacuum to transform the emptiness into a “home” in which the divine resides with us.

The paradox of departure’s sadness is that the hurt involved in saying “goodbye” is a sign of the reality of love’s presence.  Another way of putting this is: If you don’t want to have the pain of “goodbye”, don’t love in the first place.  Somehow, in the space that our “goodbye’s” create, Jesus tells us that God’s love comes into that absence to dwell with and in us, not making everything better, but in the midst of these little deaths to mark love’s sustaining, resurrecting  presence.  The vacuum that “goodbye” often creates also makes space in us for the love and life that the Father and the Son share eternally.

I have said these things to you while I am still with you.  But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.2

Saying “goodbye” and having the courage to acknowledge the reality of loss, which is the reality of leaving one another’s presence, is an experience of death; and I believe that no one is immune to the fear of such separations.  These departures wrench the heart and disturb the soul.  Yet, Jesus seeks to remind us that such fear need not define our understanding nor our behavior because of the gift of God’s peace that he gives to us.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.  [So,] [d]o not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.3

The closing benediction that so frequently completes our worship, the one I so regularly use, puts this issue of “peace” this way: The peace of God, which passes all our understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the love and knowledge of God and of his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.  And the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be with you now and remain with you always.

Unlike the peace that the world knows and seeks, God’s peace is not circumscribed by whether there is conflict or not.  Rather, what passes our understanding is that God’s peace entails the tranquility that comes from knowing that we are loved – no matter what; that in the experiences of death that our “goodbyes” hold, there are also present specific experiences of resurrection, which (as I said) don’t keep away what we don’t like, but rather transform the painful with new life, God’s life in our midst.

In this, I am reminded of a very emotional pastoral occasion in the house of a dying parishioner.  John and Jane were my parents’ age.  John was at home in Hospice’s care.  I came to bring him and Jane Communion and to say my “goodbyes”.  John was lying on a hospital bed in the living room of their condominium.  The consecrated bread and wine we used came from the parish’s Sunday celebration of the Eucharist, which in and of itself was a sign that in the face of saying “goodbye” at death’s door, we are not separated from being fed by God’s hand at the holy Table.

When the time came for their reception of the Sacrament, I offered the elements to Jane, and then I went over to John’s hospital bed, where he weakly consumed the bread and then the wine.  At that point, a deep silence fell upon us.  I quietly “did the dishes”, putting the small chalice and paten back into their carrying case.  When I finished my sacred scullery work, John, in his weakness and with a hoarse voice, whispered for me to come to his side, which I did.

It was clear that John wanted to say something to me but was too weak to do more than draw my ear to his mouth, where he asked me a question.  “What are the words to the blessing that you give at the end of the liturgy?  I can’t recall them now.  Say them for me, please.”  At this request, my throat double-clutched.  Regrouping, I then proceeded to whisper in his ear the benediction: The peace of God, which passes all our understanding…

At the doxological speaking of “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”, I gently made the sign of the cross on John’s forehead with my thumb.  His eyes were closed as I spoke those words and administered that tactile blessing.  When I finished, that peaceful silence arose once again, and John (eyes still closed) gave a gentle sigh of relief and smiled.

The Peace of God, the one that Christ promises to gift us, does (in fact) make its home amidst our “goodbyes”.  And so it was that the Peace of God that the world cannot give quietly and simply established an occasion of resurrection in that living room.  It didn’t make everything all better.  John was soon to die.  Jane was heart-broken.  But what the world doesn’t get is that the Good News of that occasion was that fear and death did not prevail.  God’s life did – and it still does.

… the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.

Thanks be to God.  Alleluia.  Amen.

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1.  John 14:15

2.  John 14:25-26

3.  John 14:27