The Good Goodbye. Rev. Patrick Willson. Luke 24: June 26, 2011 The National Presbyterian Church

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1 June 26, 2011 The National Presbyterian Church The Good Goodbye Luke 24:44-53 Rev. Patrick Willson M H any people have been concerned about me recently so I feel compelled to make it clear that I will be here at The National Presbyterian Church through November. I don t know what I will be doing but I do know I m going to do what I want to ask you to do: to help your new pastors Drs. David Renwick and Quinn Fox in whatever way I am able. Several people have asked me if I planned to do another interim pastorate. I didn t plan to do this one! Nancy and I are building a home in Santa Fe, but who knows God s plans? In spite of the sermon title I am not saying goodbye just yet, though there inevitably comes a time for goodbyes, and it is important to say goodbye well. In the early 1940 s the world was at war and many goodbyes were being said. It should not surprise us that the most eloquent goodbyes are found in the film and literature of that time. In film there is the dazzling, dizzying goodbye at the airport in Casablanca that Rick speaks to Ilsa. All the movie, indeed, all their lives has come down to just this one moment, this one goodbye. They had left one another before in Paris, but no goodbyes had been said. She simply disappeared, leaving him with a rain-spattered note, and because there had been no goodbyes, both of them were left with wounds never quite healed.

2 I stick my neck out for no one, Bogart spits out in his disenchantment, I'm the only cause I'm interested in. He does stick his neck out, however, because, I suppose there is something after all more powerful than either hurt or cynicism. He secures letters of transit for two people to leave Casablanca and only at the last minute does he reveal to Ingrid Bergman that she will be leaving with her husband and not staying with him. You're getting on that plane, he says. Inside of us we both know you belong to Victor. You're part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you're not with him, you'll regret it: maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. She protests: But I said I would never leave you. And you never will, he says, And you never will. I've got a job to do too. Where I'm going you can't follow. What I've got to do you can't be any part of. Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. She begins to cry. Now, now, he says, and then, Here's looking at you, kid. Underneath that goodbye the theme song plays softly: A kiss is still a kiss, A sigh is just a sigh. The fundamental things apply, As time goes by. i That elegant and eloquent goodbye is so powerful precisely because it is so truthful. It reminds us that there are tasks which call us beyond ourselves and beyond what we want; that loving, really loving, is more than holding and keeping; that loving also means learning to say goodbye. That great goodbye in Casablanca so moves us because so much of our lives is spent in saying goodbye. Our ability to say a good goodbye determines the way we go through life. The poet/essayist E. B. White wrote: This is what age must learn about: The ABC of dying. The going, yet not going, The loving and leaving, 2

3 And the unbearable knowing and knowing. ii It begins with our first breath. From the only place we have ever known, a place warm, dark and secure, we are thrust into the glare and cold of a world that by comparison seems terribly uncertain and unpredictable. Unfamiliar hands seize us and jostle us in shocking ways. We cry aloud, and from that moment until we draw our last breath, we train our voices to speak a good goodbye. Watch parents in the pre-school doorway say their goodbyes. It is a toss-up whether they or their children are the more afraid and tearful. With weekend retreats and summer camps we practice saying our goodbyes. Your parents car finally pulls away as you've been waiting for hours for it to go, and you suddenly discover yourself alone at college, right where you want to be, but... and yet... Your father kisses you as you being to walk down the aisle. It is the beginning of so much, but it is also the end of something which cannot be easily spoken. The moving van has been packed and gone, leaving you in an empty house that seems all the emptier for the memories of friends' laughter filling it. We practice our goodbyes, loving and giving up those we love as we move away or they do, as they grow up and we say goodbye to old relationships for new ones, as those we love die and we say goodbye for keeps. Giovanni Montini, Pope Paul VI, sounded like a man well practiced in the art of goodbyes when near his death he said: I close my eyes on this sad, dramatic and magnificent world, calling God's charity down on it once more. iii As time goes by, time demands we learn to say goodbye. This the Bible understands far better than we once again we see the unflinching realism of the scriptures. Each of the four gospels tries to come to terms not only with the resurrection of Christ and his presence with us, but also his leaving and absence from us. The Gospel according to John does this most elaborately: five of John's twenty-one chapters are a long 3

4 farewell address by Jesus, a goodbye to prepare the disciples for his leaving. Our lesson today from The Gospel according to Luke is not so long, but it is no less elegant. See, I am sending upon you what my Father promised, Jesus says, and he blesses them and parts from them. Before he leaves, however, there is the promise that in this goodbye, through this goodbye, a new power will come upon the disciples: stay here in the city [of Jerusalem] until you have been clothed with power from on high. With the good goodbye there is the promise of power power from beyond ourselves power from on high. Jesus had said goodbye to his disciples before, as Luke tells the story. Jesus had sent them out two by two, seventy of them, preaching, teaching and healing. Whoever listens to you listens to me (Luke 10:16) he promised them. The disciples left; and they astonished themselves by what they were able to accomplish on their own. They returned and reported to Jesus what had happened, and Luke says that Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit (Luke 10:21) Now it is Jesus who is leaving and promising to leave that Holy Spirit with them. Jesus has been with them through it all. He has eaten with them and been hungry with them. He had laughed with them and with them enjoyed all that it is to be alive and human. He has been crucified and endured the worst the world has to give. He has risen from the grave and is now off to a place with a holy and unspeakable name to get on with a work we cannot imagine which is next on his agenda. The disciples have their agenda also, and Jesus says goodbye to his friends so they may get on with their tasks, the tasks he has given them. In these stories it is clear that the disciples cannot really begin their work until Jesus says goodbye and leaves. The Gospel according to St. John says it most directly. Jesus tells his disciples, it is to your advantage that I go away (John 16:7). In these goodbye stories the disciples are in the process of becoming apostles. The word apostle simply means one who is sent. Disciples follow a master but apostles are those who are sent out. 4

5 Like the infant who cannot negotiate those first steps until the parent s hand has slipped away, like the child who cannot learn what must be learned as long as mother stands at the door of the classroom, like the student who cannot begin college until the parents' car has pulled away, like the young man/young woman who will never grow to adulthood without making those painful mistakes that only he or she can choose to make, so also the disciples will not grow into their own lives, they cannot mature to fill the robes of Apostles until Jesus has said goodbye to them. Jesus does say goodbye, and as he says goodbye, he promises power to them and blesses them he calls down God's favor and goodness and presence and peace upon them. Jesus leaves them so that he might be more fully present to them. He will be absent, but his Spirit will be present. He leaves so that he might come to them more powerfully. The words by which we explain things begin to crack here with literal absurdity, but though the words sound strange, they point to our real experience of the Risen Christ. Jesus is absent and Jesus is present. The Gospel according to St. John whispers the secret: I am going away, and I am coming to you (John 14:28). I am going away. I am coming to you which is it Lord? Yes! I go away to be with you, Jesus says. The secret is the secret of the good goodbye. Those whom we love truly and well, become a part of us, remain a part of us, even as the day comes which calls us to surrender them and bless them and say goodbye to them. If Casablanca has the finest goodbye in film, certainly one of the finest goodbyes in literature occurs in a novel from the same time. In Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, the hero Robert Jordan has been fighting Spanish Fascists and is fatally wounded. Underneath the pine trees he stays behind to cover the retreat of the partisan band, and he tells Maria, the woman he loves, that she must leave him and live while he waits to die. In their moments of tenderness, he has nicknamed her "Rabbit," and what he tells her is this: Listen to this well, Rabbit, he said. He knew there was a very great hurry and he was sweating very much, but this had to be said 5

6 and understood. Thou wilt go now, Rabbit. But I go with thee. As long as there is one of us there is both of us. Do you understand? Nay, I stay with thee. Nay, Rabbit. What I do now I do alone. I could not do it well with thee. If thou goest then I go with thee. Do you not see how it is? Now thou wilt go.... Now you are going well and fast and far and we both go in thee.... Not me but us both. The me in thee. Now you go for us both. Truly. We both go in thee now. This I have promised thee. iv That in some sense is what all the goodbye stories in the gospels are trying to promise us. Matthew: Remember, I am with you always (Mt 28:20). Mark: He is going ahead of you... just as he told you ( Mk 16:7) John: I am going away, and I am coming to you (Jn 14:28). And finally, Luke's story of blessing and parting and goodbye. The me in thee. The promise of power. And if you haven t seen Casablanca or read Hemingway, that is what Steven Spielberg was saying in his classic film E. T., when E. T. points a long, glowing finger at Eliot and says, I'll be right here. The me in thee. The good goodbye. Goodbye is such a simple word, really; yet I cannot think of another word in the English language more important to pronounce truly and well and with love. Goodbye it's just a little word. As a matter of fact it is a contraction, a contraction of God be with you, which says quite a lot. Indeed, it says all that can be said sometimes. Your son bounds out of the house, and whether he's off to his first little league football game or his first solo in the family car or assignment flying to Iraq you say goodbye, and you pray, God be with you. You kiss your daughter's cheek at her new school, and whether that happens at the door of a pre-school or in front of a college dormitory or even in front of a law school you turn loose of her hand and your heart whispers, God be with you. 6

7 Graduations and studies and jobs and assignments separate friends, life and death cleave our most treasured relationships. When you ve carried the last box down the stairs, as the moving van pulls away, as you lay a wilting carnation on a casket, as you wave your farewells, there is no word more eloquent than goodbye, there is no hope more soaring than God be with you. We will leave each other at the church door after worship today, each of us going our separate ways to live out our calling as Christians, to witness somehow to the life and love we have sensed in Jesus Christ, to go places for his sake we wouldn't go for any other reason, and the word of Christ to us this day is goodbye : God be with you. Jesus led them out as far as Bethany, Luke tells us, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. No final word of encouragement, no parting exhortation could be more powerful than that: the me in thee. God be with you. Sunday Worship at 9:15 & 11 a.m. THE NATIONAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 4101 Nebraska Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC i Words and Music by Herman Hupfeld. ii E. B. White, "Youth and Age," in Poems & Sketches of E. B. White (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), p. 99. iii Newsweek, August 21, 1978, p. 55. iv Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940), p