Transitioning Faithfully: A Sermon for Annual Meeting

​The readings for this morning are perfect for Annual Meeting Sunday. But before I get to them, I want to say something about the year ahead here at Saint David’s. As you know, I am retiring after Easter. That means we have already entered into the early stages of a transition that will only end when your next permanent priest gets settled.
 
Transitions are more complicated than they might at first appear. Every transition has three stages.[1]
 
The first stage is obvious: it’s letting go of what has been.
 
Letting go always involves some loss, even in the happiest transitions. Carrie and I eagerly anticipated the birth of our first child, and we were thrilled when he finally arrived. But happy as we were, we did also experience a significant loss of freedom.
 
My retirement is not as happy an occasion as the birth of a beloved child. As I prepare for retirement, and as you prepare to move forward without me, we need to acknowledge grief and loss. That’s our first task.
 
The third stage of every transition is also obvious: it’s the new normal. That will happen when you and your next priest get used to each other and have settled into a comfortable relationship. Life with your next priest will differ in at least some ways from what we have been used to, so getting to the new normal will require flexibility and openness.
 
But I am most focused this morning on the middle stage of transitions, the stage after letting go of the old ways and before the new ways have taken shape. Saint David’s will enter that middle stage in April.
 
The middle stage of transitions can be hard. I don’t like living betwixt and between. I prefer things in my life to be settled. I get frustrated when I feel like I am spinning my wheels without moving forward.
 
But I have learned not to rush the middle stage of transitions. The great task in this middle stage is to be patient.
 
My image for the middle stage is a tree during winter. The tree looks dead. But underground, the seemingly dead tree’s root system is spreading. Finally, come spring, all the new life that has been developing underground bursts forth.
 
It will take some time to find the right next priest for Saint David’s. As you live in that middle stage, it may seem at points like not much is happening.
 
But God will be with you through it all. The Holy Spirit will continue to swirl. And new life will be budding under the surface, even if you can’t see it.
 
I don’t know what that new life here at Saint David’s will look like. None of us do. But our readings point to a couple of possibilities.
 
In our Gospel reading, we get a pair of call stories. Jesus invites Peter and Andrew, then James and John to follow him. Matthew tells us that all four immediately left what they were doing and followed Christ.
 
Jesus’ four new disciples suddenly found themselves in a major transition. They have left the only life they knew. They will eventually emerge as the great saints and leaders of the early Church.
 
But in between, the disciples had to live through three years of that middle stage of transitions, when the old was already behind them and the new normal has not yet emerged.
 
Those three years were challenging. The disciples didn’t always get along with each other, particularly when they got into conversations about which of them was most awesome. They routinely failed to understand Jesus’ teaching. They actively resisted when Jesus warned them about his death, and they must have been pretty unenthusiastic when Jesus told them to be prepared to carry their own crosses.
 
But along the way, out of sight, growth happened.
 
In one of my favorite scenes, the disciples have once again failed to understand Jesus’ teaching, this time about the need to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Some of the less-committed disciples abandoned Jesus. “So, Jesus asked the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’”
 
That’s when we see that something has been happening inside Peter. Peter answers, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God’” (John 6:67-68).
 
That’s an early glimpse of the Peter who is slowly emerging as one of the greatest saints and leaders the Church will ever know.
 
We all depend on God, all the time, for everything. Unfortunately, I know I spend a fair amount of time ignoring my dependence on God. But when, like Peter, I am confused, when I don’t know what to expect, when I am not sure what God has in store for me, I have to pay attention. That is what Peter is doing here. In a time of confusion, he sticks close to the one he knows has the words of eternal life.
 
My hope and my prayer is that you will follow Peter’s example in your times of uncertainty or anxiety in the transition period, that you will remember your calling to follow Christ, that you will trust Christ’s leadership even if you can’t always understand what Christ is doing.
 
So, when you feel uncertain or anxious about the future, turn to God. Pray. If you do, the transition will be a time of rich spiritual growth.
 
Paul also has wisdom for us for times of transition. The Corinthians were still a young Church composed entirely of new believers. While Paul was with them, they experienced incredible spiritual gifts. But after Paul moved on, things began to go awry, and the Corinthians began to fight with each other about how to live together as Christians.
 
So, Paul opens his letter to them with an appeal “that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.” Paul knew they wouldn’t agree on everything. But Paul wanted them to be united as one body in Christ, holding firm to their common commitment to following Jesus.
 
We here at Saint David’s, you, the people of Saint David’s, are good at being Church. I don’t know if you appreciate how good you are.
 
Like the Corinthians, we don’t agree on everything. Sometimes we fight. But we are blessed with each other in many ways.
 
Mostly, we enjoy each other’s company. Mostly, we do our best to live as Christian people in Christian community. Mostly, we cooperate to do whatever needs to be done.
 
Don’t take any of that for granted. I routinely hear laments from colleagues about the difficulty of finding people to do what needs to be done at their Churches. That has never been an issue here, and I am incredibly grateful for it.
 
Lean into those strengths when the transition period gets difficult. Keep doing what you have always done. Step up when your gifts are needed, and stand down if conflicts emerge over non-essential things.
 
If you can do that, then by the time your next priest arrives, you will be a better, stronger Church, more spiritually mature, more committed to answering Christ’s call, more committed to Christ’s mission with each other and in the world.
 
I end with thanks to God for our years of serving together, for the months remaining before my retirement, and for the blessings I know God has in store for this parish. In Christ’s name. Amen.


[1] In what follows, I draw on William Bridges’ book on Transitions.