6 Easter C
Last sermon at Faith
Texts: Acts 16:9-15; John 14:23-29
sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
May 22, 2022

Farewell Address

I was ordained in 1983. I proudly served in my first congregation for 11 years, and when the time came for me to seek another call, I was wracked with guilt about leaving those people. The assistant to the bishop who was working with the congregation was a pastor named Ken Olsen, and one evening after he’d met with the church council Ken stopped at our house to say hello and see how I was doing about the leave-taking. I told him about the guilt: “Ken, is this the right time to be leaving? I’ve worked so hard to bring people on board and now I feel like I’m bailing out on them. There’s new people who’ve just barely caught on, and I won’t be there to help them get connected. There’s real old people, some of them home-bound, and there’s 11 years of relationship and trust with them that’s walking out the door. There’s all kinds of leaders here who have trusted a good, good vision of church life and Godly Kingdom and Christian meaning in their lives; what happens with that vision when I leave?”

Ken listened patiently for a good while to my hyperventilated anxiety attack, but finally he interrupted me. “Klonowski, I’m gonna tell you the hardest thing that I ever have to say to our pastors: this congregation is going to do just fine, without you.”

It was like a knife to my heart … and then he twisted it: “I’ll tell you something else,” he said. “If this congregation doesn’t do just fine without you, then you haven’t done your job very well here, have you?”

The words of the Gospel lesson this morning match this occasion so perfectly that you probably think I picked it. I did not; that is the Gospel lesson appointed for today, the 6th Sunday of Easter. I am going away, Jesus tells the disciples, and then he gives them his George Washington Farewell Address. Keep my word, and the Father and I will come and make our home with you. I love the poetic language there: the Father and Jesus Christ will make a home with us. And speaking of the persons of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit also will dwell among you and you will learn everything you need to know from the Spirit, says Jesus. My peace I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled. He says: It is because I have loved you, and you have loved me, that we can rejoice at what is happening here today.

Now, much as I love reading those words to you on this occasion, we need to be very clear about one thing. While it is a wonderful match we get, the leave-taking words of Jesus in the Gospel and the occasion of my retirement, you never want to draw too closely the analogy of Jesus and Bob Klonowski. Bob Klonowski for sure ain’t Jesus, and lest you ever doubt that I invited my brothers and sisters to join us this morning: they are *real* clear about that!

So while it’s true that the farewell words of Jesus are appropriate enough for this occasion, well, Bob Klonowski ain’t Jesus, and Bob Klonowski needs to deliver his own George Washington Farewell Address.

The title of my address is: This congregation is going to do just fine, and let me tell you why.

This congregation is going to do just fine, as long as you remember that the mission is to touch new lives, and touch lives anew, with the Good News of Jesus Christ. If Faith has a mission statement, that’s it. At Faith we touch new lives, and touch lives anew, with the Good News of Jesus Christ. Last week we said farewell and Godspeed to our church member Maria Arndt, who is moving away. She offered us her faith testimony: When I came here 8 or 10 years ago my relationship with the Church was broken, she said, and I was broken, too. This place gave me a chance to hear the grace of Jesus again, she said, and place to heal. People of Faith, remember that testimony! We touch new lives, and touch our own lives anew, with the Good News of Jesus Christ.

You know that statement of ours has a history that I’ve always loved and that’s worth re-telling here, I think. That statement was just something I said once many years ago, just off the top of my head in a leadership meeting. It caught on; people started saying it to one another; yeah, that’s what we do here. At some point my straight-laced, process-respecting, let’s-get-it-clear self said, Hey, if that’s gonna be our mission statement, shouldn’t we officially vote on that? To which our brother Don Beal replied, What?; I don’t think so. Touching people with the Good News, that’s just a re-statement of the Gospel, isn’t it?, and we don’t get to vote on the Gospel, Bob. You want a church mission statement, read the New Testament; we get our mission from Jesus!

This church is going to do just fine, and let me tell you why. Because we have fought so hard for the values we hold as we live out that mission. Think of the invitation we articulate every Sunday for Holy Communion: This is the table of the Lord. It is made ready for those who love the Lord, and for those who want to love the Lord more. So come: you who have much faith, and you who have little. You who have been here often, and you who have not been here long. You, who have tried to follow, and you who have failed. Come.

Now that language has an interesting history at Faith, too. We plagiarized it. Fourteen years ago our Council was reading together and discussing a book by Diana Butler Bass, Christianity for the Rest of Us. The book described a congregation that used those words as their invitation to Communion. Deb Dennison said, hey, that’s beautiful, could we do that here? Well of course, I said; as you guys know, I like to switch out and change up the language of our liturgy often, to get away from the monotony and the mindless recitation and the orthodoxy. We plugged it in, I think it was for the Easter season, seven weeks of “This is the table of the Lord.”

Then for the season of Pentecost I pulled it out and plugged in something else. And I had revolution on my hands. What happened to that invitation we were using?? That was my favorite part of worship! What, not the sermon?, I said. No, that invitation we did! And I started to notice that new people among us would mention that invitation to me more than half the time when I talked to them: Yeah, I came in wondering, they would say, but then I heard that invitation and I thought maybe there is a place for me here.

I was never able to pry it out of our worship service again. We had not avoided the orthodoxy in our worship language; we had just established a new orthodoxy. And as the years have gone by I have accommodated myself to the idea that what we have done with that important language is nothing less than write a new creedal statement. We recite the Apostles’, we recited the Nicene, and we recite that invitation to the Lord’s Table, too, all in order to identify ourselves and what we stand for and the values that we hold, and that we are willing to fight for.

And oh, how we have fought together for those
values. We have fought to understand how we are a predominantly white community in a surrounding community that is not. We have fought to figure out how to change that, and we have fought to learn about race and change ourselves, and we have fought each other over race, all because we held that Holy Communion invitation before us – all are welcome! – and we were willing to fight to make it a reality.

Oh, how we have fought for those values together! We have fought to make this a place where gay people and straight people can commit themselves to Christ, together. We have fought for that, and sometimes we have fought each other, over that! But always pointing back to the values we hold in that invitation of ours, the values and mission that Don points out are not ours – they are the Gospel! This congregation is going to be just fine, and let me tell you why: because this community will continue to hold those values in our hearts and at our core, willing to fight and sacrifice to make those values real.

Did you see that our sisters and brothers in the Roman Catholic communion were having their own values clarification discussion over the invitation to Communion this week? The Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco formally excommunicated the devout Catholic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, saying her stand on abortion disqualifies her from Holy Communion.

But did you see also how Pope Francis has responded to the US Catholic bishops who do such things? No, no, says the Pope. And these are his exact words: Holy Communion is not the reward of the saints, but the bread of sinners. Holy crow!; he might as well have intoned “Come! You who have great faith, and you who have little. You who have tried to follow, and you who have failed.”

So I have an idea. Where is Emily Kramer? For those of you who are not from Faith, Emily is the chair of the Call Committee that is interviewing candidates and working so hard for the next person who will be called to be lead pastor at Faith. Emily, I know that as the departing pastor I am not to be involved in any way in the new call process, and I’m doing this in front of Pastor Wyvetta Bullock from our bishop’s office so when I mess around in the call process like this I know I’m going to pay for this later, but nevertheless I think you guys should interview to be the next lead pastor at Faith, Pope Francis.

Why not? I read you what he said, and the guy obviously gets it. With stuff like that he’d fit right in with the culture here. With stuff like that, he’s halfway to being a Lutheran already, God bless him!

And I remind you, people of Faith, that 50 years ago next month, back in 1972, Faith was the very first Lutheran congregation in the United States to vote to call a female pastor to a regular parish call. That historic vote took place in this room. So, Pope Francis? Huh! Yeah, calling Pope Francis would probably make the news, but for us at Faith it would be just another day in the life. Just another historic day in the life of a Christian community in which new lives are touched, and old lives touched anew, by the Good News of Jesus Christ, every day around here. We’re pretty used to it!

This congregation is going to be just fine, and let me tell you why: because that mission of the Gospel was obviously rooted into the DNA of this community long before I got here. In the time I’ve been here it’s only been strengthened and grown all the more. In the future, with that mission and those values at your core and heart, this community can only bloom and bear great fruit. To quote that great line from a sermon by Carla Benard years ago: I just can’t wait to see what God does with this Faith community next. This congregation is going to be just fine, and I, of all people, I’m the guy who can tell you why.

I want to end here with a short personal word. This leave-taking marks not only the end of my tenure at Faith, but the close of my 39-year career as an ordained pastor. Oh, I’ll keep my fingers in the pie; I’ve got plans to keep doing some pastoral things! It’s just that after this week I won’t get paid to do it anymore!

I want you to hear from me that it’s been a great run. I went into this line of work because I want to spend my life with matters of supreme ultimacy and first significance. I want to spend my life wondering about God, and handling holy things. You have invited me into this community and into your lives to handle such holy things: How do we build the beloved community? The astonishing growth of children among us, the miracle of birth, the way the Gospel can change your life, how God can come to be known again in brand-new ways through struggle and suffering, the promises of God in mourning and grief, the joys of life transitions and blessed moments. People of Faith, what a privilege this has been! Thank you!

Now I ask you to bless me on my way. Because you know what? I just can’t wait to see what God does with me, next.