What do I think really matters in my life and in my ministry? What do I hope I have managed to share a taste of in my ministry with you at St. Mary’s’? 

You can probably answer these questions as well as I can by now. I don’t think I’ve ever had more than about three or four main insights, and you’ve got them from me over and over again during these last fifteen years.

Today’s propers could have been chosen just for me to ring the changes one more time. 

My friends, please repent and be baptized . . .in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven. Receive the gift and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:38). 

You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God. (1 Peter 1:18-21)

May your hearts burn within you as Jesus opens up the scriptures for you. May you know him in the breaking of the bread. 

Here are a few things I would say one more time.

Above all, God is really real. Ludwig Feuerbach, a German philosopher, and many others since him, regard religion as a sort of backdrop or screen on to which we project our image of the divine. In other words, that man makes God in his own image. 

Although we would reject this in theory, in practice this is very often what we do in the Church: we imagine the God we want to have and then serve that imaginary God. We can see that people did this way back when but we are often blind to ourselves and how we tailor God, Jesus, the gospel, the Church, to suit ourselves.

But the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ won’t stay tailored. When we expect gentle Jesus meek and mild we get the consuming fire. When we want God to rend the heavens and come down we get the still small voice. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ makes us, not the other way around. And it is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that we need.

The second thing I would repeat is, we aren’t volunteers. Jesus, with the full authority of the one who creates us and loves us and saves us, has looked at us and said, “Come, follow me.” We may want to say, “Later, after I have taken care of this and that.” We may want to say, “On Sundays and Thursdays.” And Jesus just says, “Come, follow me.” And we simply will not be whole, effective, true to ourselves and to God, until we do. Our response has to be freely given, of course. But Jesus does not ask for volunteers. He recruits and drafts those whom he chooses.

Related to that, Baptism is real and permanent. It isn’t something that we can do and then undo; receive and give back. At the font we die to our old lives and are reborn into Christ’s life. We are grafted onto his vine, made part of his body. Our identity changes. And we get a whole new bunch of blood relatives – brothers and sisters, all of whom are as flawed, wrong-headed and stubborn as we are. And all of them as wonderful, treasured and loved by God as we are. 

Again, we are actors, not audience; we are workers with Christ, not clients. Of course we always in every moment depend on Christ for our life and our new life. We never stand or act independently of him. Nonetheless, he forgives, heals and restores us so that, sharing his new life, we may be his partners, his co-workers, in the Kingdom of his Father.

In fact, God’s purposes for us include our own individual wholeness and well-being almost incidentally. God’s plan is far grander than just us. As St. Paul puts it, “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” Salvation, properly speaking, is for the whole creation, not just for some individuals within it. We are saved, healed, made whole, by Christ, as signs of what it will mean for God to be “all in all” and also, in Christ, we are saved, healed, made whole to be part of the means by which that salvation comes to this whole world that God loves.

Lastly, I believe that the parish church is the laboratory that tests the Christian hypothesis. It is the school of practical Christianity. It is the refiner’s fire, the cauldron of purification.

Is it in fact true that God saves sinners and bring them to new life? Look around you.

Is it in fact true that we who have been converted and baptized have passed from darkness to light? Listen to one another’s stories.

Is it in fact true that when people trust in Christ together and worship and pray and work together that they grow in love and joy and peace?

 Remember back to how your life was and praise God for what it is like now.

You know the line – I love humanity; its people I can’t stand. Well, in the Church we get people; all sorts of personalities, backgrounds, attitudes and philosophies.

You know Jesus’ saying that when someone hits you on one cheek, then turn the other also? In the parish church you get to practice.

You remember how Jesus says that if a fellow Christian wrongs you, you go directly to that person and sort it out? In the parish church you get to practice.

Remember St. John says, “He who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” (I John 4:20 var.)

The Parish Church gives us our brothers and sisters, right up close in all their glory and all their flaws. Jesus says, “Here are your neighbors; love them as you love yourself.” Jesus says, “Here are your fellow Christians; love one another as I have loved you.”

I am deeply grateful to you, St. Mary’s Church, for calling me and my family to this community and parish; for the opportunity to learn to love God and his people more deeply, to serve God and his people as a priest more thoroughly and effectively. 

I am deeply grateful for the good I have been able to do, the ways that by God’s mercy I have been a means of grace for others; and as I said last week, I ask your forgiveness for the ways that I have made it harder for you to be fully Christian. As of today I will no longer be in any functional way rector of this Parish but you individually and as a church will always have a treasured place in my heart.  

There is a place in the service for the Celebration of a New Ministry where the priest kneels and prays as he begins his rectorate. A prayer is given in the Prayer Book but others can be used. Almost 15 years ago we sang a hymn as my prayer and yours and I can think of no better way to draw our time of partnership to a close than to pray it together again.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.