At 10am I was foolish enough to sing the Peter Cook/Dudley Moore song; it received applause maybe out of sympathy. Strangely (?) the 10am sermon did not record properly… so be thankful. Alan
The audio is above.
Sermon Preached at Trinity Church, Newport, Sunday May 8th 2016
The Reverend Alan Neale, “Now is the time to say goodbye…”
This past Thursday, conveniently as always secreted into a Thursday, the worldwide church celebrated The Ascension of Jesus. Well, if not celebrated… well, we observed… well, we noticed! As long as we focus on the aerodynamic rather than the theological, the Ascension is a profoundly challenging affair and so maybe it is best left to midweek rather than Sunday.
And yet the Ascension is a paradigm of farewell, leave-taking, letting-go. A paradigm that we experience from the departure from the womb to the departure from this life.
Yesterday I could not exorcise from my mind a song made famous by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in their early 1960’s BBC show “Not only but also…”. A song of 80 seconds, a song found to be “funny and rather affecting”, a song part of the psyche of British folk now in their fifties and sixties. A song really quite appropriate for the Ascension. I promised my wife I would not sing these lyrics.
Now is the time to say Goodbye
Now is the time to yield a sigh (yield it, yield it)
Now is the time to wend our waaaayeeeeee
Until we meet again
Some sunny day.
Goodbye
Goodbye
We’re leaving now,
Tattybye
Goodbye
We wish you all goodbye
Fartatata, fartatata.
The account of the Ascension recounted at the end of Luke’s Gospel and the beginning of the Acts of the Apostle, the account of the Ascension referenced in our prayer for today (“O God… you have exalted your Son with great triumph into heaven…”)… the Ascension is a most perfect paradigm of farewell, of mythic and primal proportions.
Nick Baines, Bishop of Bradford UK, writes this: “But, with the Ascension they lost Jesus again. And it was now up to them to work out what this all meant for them and their community for the future. Clearly, he trusted them to get on with the job for him. And the church that grew from here was a movement shaped by people who knew that the world was now a different place.
No lovely ‘happily ever after’ end to a sanitized story, but a harsh dose of realism for people who now faced the same challenges of living truthfully in a world of death and threat and suffering.”
The Ascension account portrays a most perfect paradigm of farewell but, just as important, it portrays a model for surviving farewell… and surviving in a healthy, functional way.
A model of honesty, empowerment and perspective – “Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before”.
This model, this paradigm of surviving farewell is embedded in the Scripture readings for today.
Stage One – honesty. The pain, the ache of farewell must not be denied. Faced with the prison destroying earthquake the jailer fears for his security – job, reputation, life (Acts 16). Faced with the physical absence of Jesus the church endures injustice and separation (Revelation 22). And faced with separation from their beloved Lord, the Christian confronts the possibility of fragmentation and disunity – far worse than anything experienced in contemporary politics! (John 17).
Stage Two – empowerment. The one who must bid farewell is exhorted, urged also to say welcome. Welcome to divine and corporate strength far beyond the imaginings of human minds. Acts 16 – the jailer finds strength in the company of Paul and Silas. Revelation 22 – the Church is energized by the angel, the divine messenger, sent by Jesus. And John 17 – the Christian is embraced into union with Jesus even as the Son and the Father are one.
And Stage Three – perspective. I know few Latin phrases but this I know “sub specie aeternitatis” – “in the light of eternity”. Gaining perspective is a crucial, healthy stage in surviving farewell. As the prison story in Acts continues so we observe the immediate and long-term aspect of salvation is awarded to the jailer and family (by the way, “all are baptized” doubtless including children). The church in mourning in Acts is awarded with the perspective of “the bright morning star” endowing light and hope. And in John, the Christian is invited to stand alongside Jesus (“to be with me where I am” says Jesus “to see my glory”.
Honesty, Empowerment and Perspective – three stages of a healthy, functional farewell.
Is there life after farewell, yes definitively, absolutely, thoroughly.
Our experience of farewell ranges from the profound to the petty but each experience may shake us to the core. We say farewell to those we love but we also say farewell to long cherished hopes and dreams, abilities and talents.
On this Mother’s Day we rejoice with those who rejoice but we also stand with those whose experience of ‘mother’ is… lacking, and whose dreams and hopes to be ‘mother’ have been wretchedly dashed by circumstances (physical and personal).
In his autobiography “So, anyway…” John Cleese writes this “Dad once described to me, during the First World War, he witnessed a wounded soldier crying out for this mother. ‘Why on earth would he cry for her?’ I wondered. When over the years friends recounted how their mother was their best friend, I simply though ‘How wonderful that must be…’”
It has been said, and I still struggle to find the author, that the whole of life is filled with experiences of farewell so that we may practice for the final, consummate, inevitable farewell.
So, how’s that working for you?
AMEN