Farewell Sermon
Father Sam Steere

 As I started to write my sermon for this Sunday, a sense of sorrow seemed to pervade my thoughts.  Truthfully, I have dreaded this task, not so much because of my well known aversion to writing sermons, but because I dread goodbyes – at least the significant goodbyes that mark major changing points in one’s life.  Such goodbyes are difficult things to deal with.  They involve emotions, separation, termination, and finality.  They occur at significant points in one’s life – parents turning kids loose for college, marriage, and careers; siblings separating from the family bonds and experience that have kept them together through the early part of their lives; friends – true to the bitter end type friends who find that they must go their separate ways for whatever reasons; and of course the goodbyes that accompany the end of the earthly journeys of ourselves and our loved ones.  One is inclined to wonder how the term ”goodbye” ever got the word “good” in it; there seems at times to be so little “good” involved. 

So it was with a certain sense of foreboding that I started to read the Propers for this Sunday, and the Propers that precede and follow it – for rarely will the readings for any given Sunday not benefit from putting them into the context of what comes before and after them.  And my initial fears seemed to be confirmed – sorrow was everywhere.  Following the joy of the resurrection of the Lord, the Gospels for last Sunday and this plunged the Apostles into the despair of losing physical contact with their Lord – once and for all.

But then I started to sense some reason for optimism.  Christ was headed for his Ascension into heaven to sit on the right hand of the Father as our mediator and advocate.  In turn, this would make way for the appearance of the Holy Ghost, the comforter who would finally bring all knowledge and understanding to the Apostles, and equip them for the Great Commission that Jesus had left for them.  Yes, Christ was physically leaving them, but His spirit would always be with them, and the help that was to follow in the form of the Holy Spirit would more than replace his physical presence; indeed, it would support and make possible the next step in God’s great plan for mankind.  Christ had fulfilled his mission, and now it was time for the next step.

This sense of a next step started to generate something else in my mind; a sense of a cycle of unending and unstoppable change – of movement following stability, of good following bad, of joy following sorrow – kind of an eternal pattern of events that all humanity seems to be subject to, but over which it exerts little if any control.  I recalled a passage from Ecclesiastes 3, 1-8 that seemed to capture this cycle well.  It is in my mind one of the most poetic portions of the Old Testament; in it, King Solomon is reflecting on life.  The passage goes like this:

1. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3. A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4. A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5. A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6. A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7. A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8.  A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

My friends, we live in a world of changes, and our lives reflect these endless movements.  We rise and we fall; our fortunes seem to ebb and then to flow; we experience good and we experience evil; we seem to move from one extreme to another – seemingly never able to stay and enjoy something we like, but thankfully never having to unendingly endure something we don’t like.  We are born, and we die; and in between we experience all the events summed up in these eight brief verses. 

And most importantly (and perhaps unknowingly to us), these events are unalterably fixed and determined by a supreme being, God our Father, who ultimately wants nothing but the very best outcome for us.  We are part of a supreme plan, “a time to every purpose under heaven”, and that time is made up of seasons the nature and occurrence of which are not ours to establish or change.  It may appear at times that we have some limited ability to impact these events, but if we follow each such supposed capability far enough, we find that we have no power to change the ultimate outcome.  The thing to keep in mind is that for Christians these seasons, as painful as they may be at times, are unalterably headed to a conclusion more positive and favorable than our minds can possible imagine.

Such is the cycle that Sandy and I think we face as we prepare for our departure from you and this church that we love so dearly and have attempted to serve for so long.  In no way is our departure an expression of failure or dissatisfaction; rather it is an acknowledgment of a sense that our season of service here is coming to a close, and that it is time to move on to something else that God has in mind for us.  As David Edman wrote me a few weeks back, “God has some great plan for you back east.”  Most of you know that once Father Edman has pronounced his take on something, you can take it to the bank.  Sandy and I don’t know precisely what that plan is right now – we sense a need to get closer to as much of our family as possible, coupled with a need to focus more attention on my business as we bring it to a point of transition from being “my business” to someone else’s.  I am certainly not giving up my responsibilities and practice as a Priest in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of God, although I do envision a sabbatical of sorts for awhile to allow me to refresh and refocus my vision.  Beyond this, we don’t know what we face; we await direction from God regarding His will for us in our future endeavors.

What we do know is that we will miss you all terribly and that we will never forget the love and experiences that we have shared with all of you in this holy place.  God has been good to us as he has put us through the many seasons of our 23 years in Dallas.  It has been an unpredictable and at times wild ride, I can assure you!  We came here seeking only a quiet place to worship, and found ourselves heavily immersed in all aspects of the functioning of CHC.  We never in our wildest dreams considered that I would be called to the trials and tribulations of being a member of the clergy, but then I can truly tell you that I have never experienced such peace and joy as when conducting a Eucharist Service in the early morning on a quiet Texas Spring Sunday in a small prairie church.  God has been very good to Sandy and I.  God has been very good to all of us, as I hope we can all actively testify to as we worship together this morning in this beautiful new church. 

We all need to remember this goodness as we face the seasons in our respective lives, some of which will probably will not be as fair as we might like.  As John Heyl Vincent once said, “there can be no rainbow without a cloud and a storm.”  Clouds and storms do come, but they also move on.  I remember a story about a woman, mourning the death of her father, who had stopped to visit a neighbor. The woman's black attire grabbed the attention of the neighbor’s small daughter, who wanted to know the reason for the outfit. "She lost her father," her Mother replied.  To which the little girl responded, "Does she have to wear black until she finds him again?"  The black was quickly replaced with something more bright and optimistic.

I am sure there will be tears today; there have been tears in our household for the last 30 days.  But tears need perspective.  A visitor at a zoo noticed an attendant crying quietly over in a corner. The visitor asked another attendant what the man was crying about, and he was told that one of the elephants had died. Touched by this, the visitor then asked, "I assume he must have been particularly fond of that elephant?" The reply came back, "No, it's not that. What he's crying for is that he's the one who has to dig the grave.”   Father Jeff; are you listening???

My friends, tears and sorrow may flow today, but Sandy and I would ask that they give way to anticipation and joy.   Even as we part company, we all remain in God’s loving care, and we move on as active participants in God’s master plan.  May God continue to watch over each and every one of you in the future; may He bless your endeavors, forgive your mistakes, and guide your efforts to do His will.  And in the end, may he bring us all back together, and to life everlasting.  Amen.