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"Farewell in Love"
The Rev. Dr. D. Scott Stoner
Scott Stoner's last sermon as Rector of St. Christopher's
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In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Before I officially start my last sermon here I want to give two special thanks. It is always hard to mention people by name, but there are two people that came to work here at St. Christopher’s who risked a lot in my time that I have worked here and I want to thank them personally. The first is Loraine Garner, who left her job at Northwestern Mutual Life in 2002 a couple of months after I started here to come here and work at St. Christopher’s. I kept trying to explain to her, you know this is a little different size company than Northwestern Mutual Life! I hope this change is going to work for you. She had never been a parish administrator before, she knew I had never been a rector before and she took a huge risk in coming here. Wow, what a job she has done, we are so blessed to have had Loraine. Loraine is at her church this morning, St. James, so isn’t here to celebrate, she and I have had some wonderful time this week to say good-bye to each other but she will continue and we are forever grateful or you are forever grateful for that. So let’s give a hand to Loraine. (applause)
The other person who took a huge risk in coming to work here is Jan. Jan was raised up out of this community, ordained out of this community, deacon and priest. She was here when we were getting our children’s programs relaunched, she left to go to St. John’s and did a wonderful job there as chaplain for several years. But then she took a huge risk coming back here as associate rector coming back here last September because she knew very well that this day was coming sooner rather than later. That I would be leaving. That’s a hard thing for a person to come in and step in to that time of transition and I think you realized more than ever now how fortunate you are to have Jan in your midst. So thank you Jan. (applause)
When I came here in November of ’01 people said to me you have big shoes to fill following Jeff Lee and my first sermon I said, “I do have big shoes to fill but they are not Jeff Lee’s shoes, they’re my shoes.” Those are the hardest shoes for each of us to fill is our own shoes. So Jan and whoever will be serving in this place will have only their own shoes to fill and that is the most important and perhaps the hardest thing of all.
Change is hard, transitions are hard. St. Christopher’s is now going through a transition with my leaving, I’m going through a huge transition and I was reminded in a rather humorous way of how hard change can be for us. I got a new car a week and a half ago. St. Christopher’s leases cars for it’s clergy because we drive so much for our jobs and so it just so happened that my lease was coming up and so I turned that car in and I got a new car. And I wanted to get a hybrid, so I did, I got a hybrid which I am delighted to have but it meant one thing that was a huge change for me. I have never driven a car that is a stick shift. I know this will surprise you but I have a tendency to drive very fast. I know that shocks you. I’ve not gotten a speeding ticket in the whole time I have been your rector so I want you to know that. O.k. truth be told I have been stopped five times but when they look up the car license plates they see the owner of the car is St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church. It is a little perk that comes with the job. You get a warning instead of a ticket. So I had to make this transition now, I have an automatic car and also with a hybrid you tend to drive slower too because you are watching the gas mileage. But the hardest thing for me (this has happened three times already in the last week and a half) when I’m driving down the road, once it happened here on River Road it happened once on Santa Monica, and it happened in Shorewood, where I’m driving and I want to punch it, I want to accelerate, I want to shift, for forty years I have been driving a stick shift so I grab the knob and I’m ready to punch it and I push the clutch in really hard and there is no clutch there, but there is a brake peddle. And I’ve about gone through the windshield about three times. I mean come to a screeching halt in the middle, luckily there has been no one behind me, although one time on Santa Monica I felt terrible, there was a young woman out in her driveway, and I screeched right in front of her house. She came running out, I’m sure she thought I had run over her dog and I tried to explain but there was no explaining so I drove on. Hopefully I will get used to that, it’s a brake pedal and not a clutch pedal so I’m trying to get that through my mind.
It just reminded me how change can be so hard. Sometimes it does come in that form of a complete stop, our whole world changes because we come to a crashing stop, something happens or sometimes our lives speed up in some ways and we feel out of control. That is the nature of change. But when we are going through change as hard as it is it helps us to clarify what is most important in life. Because those things that are most important in life are those things that are eternal. We realize those things that are temporary and those things that are eternal when we go through change. So one of the things that we celebrate here today is that which is eternal and that which is love. That is why I chose the reading 1 Corinthians 13 the most beautiful words probably ever written about love. Often read at weddings, appropriately so, when it celebrates romantic love but I wanted to read here today because to me it celebrates the essence of this community. And what we have shared together, this has been a love story that we have been able to live out in the last 6 ½ years. The Holy Spirit has been dancing in our midst and has created so much loving energy in this place. And this is not the sappy kind of love; this is the hard kind of love. The love that is patient and kind and bears all things, endures all things, hopes all things, believes all things and as it says in that passage; love never ends. It says prophecies come and go – it is a good reminder for us. Rectors come and go, parishioners come and go, but love remains, love endures. And so I want to sing a love song to you and with you this morning as the celebration of God’s love that we share here together in our time and I’m pretty sure you have never heard this song before. It was written in 1982 by an obscure folk singer named Bob Frankey but to me it is the most beautiful song written about love. The chorus is really beautiful and I am going to teach you the chorus and I’ll sing the verses and we’ll go through the chorus a few times.
This is just a little side note that you don’t know about, I totally intended to get the words in the bulletin but I forgot so I don’t have them for you. I’m sorry. You are going to have to pay attention. I will sing the first verse and then I’ll sing the chorus and then I’ll teach you the chorus. OK?
Words & Music by Bob Franke
It's so easy to cherish the days that we have shared
It's a hard thing to think of the times to come
But the grace to accept ev'ry moment as a gift
Is a gift that is given to some
Chorus:
What can you do with your days but work & hope
Let your dreams bind your work to your play
What can you do with each moment of your life
But love til you've loved it away
Love til you've loved it away
There are sorrows enough for the whole world's end
There are no guarantees but the grave
And the life that I live & the time I have spent
Are a treasure too precious to save
As it was so it is, as it is shall it be
And it shall be while lips that kiss have breath
Many waters indeed only nurture Love's seed
And its flower overshadows the power of death
©1982 Telephone Pole Music Publishing Co. (BMI)
All right, thank you for singing that with me. And thank you even more for the 6 ½ years of singing that song together because you see we have the words from 1 Corinthians about love, we have the story of the Good Samaritan we read today which is about love in action. You see every church has the same words it is the music that makes all the difference. It’s the music of this place that drew me to want to be your rector 6 ½ years ago an it’s the music of love in this place that I will carry with me. Our Buddhist friends have a saying that says, when the student is ready the teacher will arrive. 6 ½ - 7 years ago I was ready. I was ready to learn something about love in a different way. I had been ordained in 1981 but for 20 years my full time work was as a therapist and so I knew a lot about love interims of marriage and family and partners and couples. But I didn’t know a whole lot about love in the community sense, in the larger sense. And so I needed somewhere to go to learn about that. And that’s where you came in. You thought I came here to teach you, it’s not true. I came here to be taught, to be a student, to learn about what love looks like when it is lived out in community. You have inspired me in so many ways; we have done so many good things together with God in our mist. The love we have shown by going to Mexico, by going down to work at Sojourner Truth House, the Gathering. Each and every person here, and that’s the wonderful thing about church, we are inspired by what it means to be loving people. How inspired is it today to walk in here today and see Meredith Petrie (who I am going to embarrass right now, would you stand up for a second Meredith). Now the reason Meredith’s head is shaved is that she got a buzz cut for cancer this week and she raised $1700 for cancer research. (applause) How can you not learn about love when you see that? A freshman in high school who had her beautiful hair shaved off. I look around and I’ve learned so much about love from so many of you people.
There’s a story that’s told from WWII about a platoon of soldiers serving together in France. A person who just recently joined their platoon, they really really liked this man, they didn’t know him all that well they had only been with him a few days was unfortunately killed in battle. And so they took his body to a near by church where their was a cemetery. And they asked the Minister if they could please bury their friend and the minister said well perhaps as long as this man is a Christian because this is a Christian cemetery. The friends said that they had talked about many things but they had never talked about religion so I have no idea if this man is a Christian or not. The minister said, “Well in that case I’m sorry but he can’t be buried in our church cemetery. But, I’ll tell you what; you can bury him just outside the fence, maybe 10 yards outside of the cemetery.” They weren’t happy with them but there was no other choice at that time. So they buried their friend. About six months later they were coming back through and they wanted to visit their friend’s grave and they went to look for it outside the fence but they couldn’t find it. So they found the same minister and they said, "We can’t find our friend’s grave, what’s going on?" The minister said to them, “After you left I realized how wrong I was, how constricted my understanding of God’s love and so after you left I went out and I moved the fence.”
I love that story because I don’t know if it really happened or not but I know that it’s true. And what else I know is true is that we at St. Christopher’s have allowed God to move our fences. We have literally expanded our building in this time together but, more importantly we have opened this place up to all of God’s children so that everyone is welcome here in this community. And how do you move fences? You move fences with love. You create fences out of fear and out of anxiety. Scripture also tells us that love casts out fear. But unfortunately the same is also true that fear casts out love. It is in love that we have reached out. We have welcomed so many people, I remember a young couple, I was meeting with them and they were getting their first child baptized (they have since moved away now). And the father was sitting there and the first thing he said was, “I’m really more of a Buddhist than I am a Christian.” I said, “that’s awesome, welcome.” He unfolded his arms and became very active here. That’s what we do we move fences here and let people in. And I am so grateful for the way you have moved fences in my heart. And I hope this community has done the same for you and will continue to do the same.
We did have the Gospel of the Good Samaritan today. It is the Samaritan that is the unlikely hero, he’s the only one of the three men who passed by this man that was beaten and robbed on the side of a street. The priest and the Levite walk by because they don’t want to touch a person who might be dead because that would make them ritually unclean. It is the Samaritan who stops by and who helps, which again shows love is much more than a feeling it’s an action. It also strikes me that Samaritan – that’s a great name for a counseling and wellness center. For those of you who don’t know that’s the name of the new organization that I will be working for tomorrow. Stick a little plug in there for it. But no, that story, I’ll never forget, this is the hard part of love too, that we have to embrace in this community. That was the Gospel when I was an interim at Trinity in Wauwatosa years ago. It was the summer and we didn’t have any kids programs, but that particular Sunday there were a lot of kids there, like 10 of them. So impromptu I bring the kids up for the sermon and I do a little role-play. The story of the Good Samaritan is easy to act out. I was assigning the parts and I asked “Who wants to be the Good Samaritan?’ There was this one boy who was the leader of the group and he said, “I’ll be the Samaritan!” So that was good and then we had the priest and the Levite and the person by the side of the road and then to those that were left (there was about 4 or 5 kids) I said you can all be the robbers because we needed people at the beginning. We were just about to begin and this one kid raises his hand and says, “Father Scott?” The guy that volunteered to be the Good Samaritan. “I’d rather be a robber.” So he switched and somebody else was the Samaritan.
I love that story because love that is real acknowledges the shadow. We all have a shadow. All of us like to think we are only Good Samaritans but we all have the capacity to be robbers. One of the things again I have cherished in this community is the authentic embracing of one’s shadow, of one’s hurt and one’s shortcomings. So many of you have come and talked to me about your issues and your struggles, acknowledging that love is hard. That at a moment’s notice we can go from being the Good Samaritan to being a robber. So we learn about love in community. We learn it; it is the music we sing together that goes with our words. And as hard as it is for me to be leaving this community where I have learned so much, one thing that I am grateful for is that there is six people that I get to take with me. And that’s my family. This is my council of advice. They more than anyone else have known the struggles that I have had in this job, the ups and the downs. It is hard to love as many people that are in this community. And ever since my accident it has been very hard but I love and trust my family so much. My dad is here and my daughters and my son and my daughter-in-love Claire. Claire and Matt were married here last summer. We buried my mother here four years ago. She’s buried out here in the memorial garden. I am so thankful, my family has supported me a lot and they’ve given a lot to have me in this job so I get to take them with me so that’s the best part of all. I had to say that to them so thank you.
What about Holly? I thought she was part of the family. You can’t see her but she’s sitting here crying very hard and I knew if I looked at her and said something personal that I would probably start crying too. Holly has, I mean it will be 31 years this summer that I have really learned about love. So I’m not leaving town and I’m sure our paths will cross again, but for now we are saying good-bye to each other in these official roles but so grateful for what we have learned about love together. For what God has incarnated in this place together. I will never, ever forget our time here.
But I do advise you as I drive away today for the final time as your rector don’t follow me too closely in my new car.
I’m going to sing that final chorus again from that song about love if you remember it by now please sing it with me.
What can you do with your days but work & hope
Let your dreams bind your work to your play
What can you do with each moment of your life
But love til you've loved it away
Love til you've loved it away
