The Farewell Sermon
Over six and a half years ago, I began my tenure here as your pastor by telling a story related by the late Christian author Phyllis Tickle, who recounted how she encountered a conference center employee at an event where she had just delivered a lecture, and the employee approached her with a question about the virgin birth. But the question he posed to her was not one of incredulity, or of “how can you possibly believe such fairy tales?” No, the question she said he posed to her was, “It’s so beautiful, it just has to be true, right? Whether it happened this way or not.”
Goodness, that is a word. I was twenty-five years old when I shared that story with you, and truth is still revealing itself to me—and I hope it continues to reveal itself, in all its beauty and splendor, even after this day is done and we have parted ways.
The nature of truth is something we all eventually have to reckon with. We can put it off, procrastinate, or hide our eyes, but truth still stands before us, demanding to be seen and heard.
And whatever denial or bargaining or other stages of grieving you and I have been experiencing over the past three months, the moment of truth has finally arrived where we do in fact have to say goodbye to each other, after six-plus years that have been so beautiful that I know them to be true.
But not without one last message, one final lesson, drawn from the same passage I preached my first sermon on as your pastor: the commissioning of Joseph as Zaphenath-Paneah by Pharaoh in preparation for the seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine as Joseph had interpreted from Pharaoh’s dreams.
This passage follows up on that interpretation by Joseph, and commissioning of him by Pharaoh, when Joseph was only thirty years old. He was about my age--I still have a hard time believing that! Today's passage describe Joseph’s life afterwards. Joseph takes charge of the agriculture during the seven years of plenty, but he also makes a home for himself with his wife, Asenath, and their children, Manasseh and Ephraim.
The names of Joseph’s children mean “God has helped me to forget all of my troubles and everyone in my father’s house,” and “God has given me children in the land where I have been treated harshly,” respectively, harkening back to Joseph’s earlier days of being kidnapped by his brothers and sold into slavery in Egypt. And Joseph’s own name from Pharaoh, Zaphenath-Panaeah, is from which we get the sermon title: the God speaks, and He lives.
The implication from Pharaoh is that God speaks through Joseph’s divinations and lives in the dreams of Pharaoh. But for Joseph, God is involved in so much more. God lives in Joseph with his children, and the hope they represent for him. They are a future, not a past that Joseph would just as soon leave behind, if not for the fact that his brothers re-enter the story soon after. Joseph embraces his present and his future, even knowing that the seven years of famine lies ahead.
We have striven these past six and a half years together to embrace our present ministry, but also to lean into a future for this congregation. We have lifted up new members of the Body of Christ through baptisms, baby dedications, laying on of hands of new members, we have rebuilt a children’s ministry literally from scratch, we have begun new missions in our community, and more.
There is so much for us to be proud of together in all of that. There is so much for us remember as we move forward into new identities. I will no longer be your pastor, and will no longer be available for preaching, teaching, counseling, and leading, but I will take with me all those peaks and heights of teaching, counseling, and ministering with you.
This future may well be a source of apprehension or anxiety for you—I know it is at least a little bit for me as well. This will be the first time in almost nine years that I am not actively involved in a ministry site, if only for a short while before I begin covering for the Disciples church in Olympia while their pastor goes on sabbatical this summer.
So it is not just you who feels the tug of uncertainty. It is me as well. And that means that even as we separate from these roles, we still remain tied together through our common emotional and spiritual experiences. We become separated in proximity and geography, but not in spirit.
Through that same spirit, I pray that we will continue to remember each other, and to reach for those memories not simply as sources of sentimentality, but as sources for inspiration and motivation to continue building the kingdom.
There is something life-giving in memory, even after—especially after—a great change in our lives. One era ends, another begins, but taking what is good from one to the other is a part of how we can proceed along the path to God. We can take who we were and grow from them into new identities and ways of being in courage and honor.
Serving as your pastor has been my life’s honor. From the moment I was born, brought up in the ways of Jesus Christ, and ransomed from sin, my life has hurtled toward these past six and a half years that I have spent with you. Sunday School and worship as a child myself, then youth group, college, and seminary—one by one they marked down the years until the time that we would spend together.
This time together comes to a close today, but only in the temporal sense. I pray that our time together lives on in your memories, as I surely know it will in mine. And I hope that what you remember is both the little things, like our sports team rivalries and the differences between barbeques and cookouts, but also the big things, the soul-sized things of which the Word speaks.
Memory is one of God’s greatest gifts for us—the capacity to cast back in the recesses of our minds and reach for what has been good, and what is great, in our lives.
I spoke about the importance of memory as God’s gift for us last week in my Easter message, about the memory of Emmett Till, the memory of injustices, and the memory of the empty tomb narrative. We are refined into who we are as Christians through memories, both personal and communal.
And in this community, this historic community whose existence has spanned nine decades, I am but one of eight senior pastors to have filled your pulpit. My narratives and my memories only make up one small section of this tapestry of stories. Young as I am, I have never forgotten the dimensions of this office, of this parish, and of this calling.
That calling is not entirely my own. It belongs to you who called me here, and most of all to the God who called me here. Those, too, are memories that I will forever carry with me from First Christian Church, and I will remember that calling because it is so beautiful, it just has to be true.
I will reach for my memories of this place with that same sense of overwhelming gratitude for what is good and what is great in my life, and I hope you may do the same of me. Because I could not, and will not, ever forget the sheer joy I felt to know that I was, at long last, living out the calling that God placed upon my heart, even as I lean into a new calling God leads me towards today.
I will carry that memory with me, always, of donning the stole that marks me as a slave to Christ and a servant to His church. I will wear upon my soul the marks of having lived life with you, of having walked upon the heights and within the valleys alongside you, of living and dying with your successes and failures, and of not knowing what tomorrow would bring but the promise of God’s presence made new.
That tomorrow is now here, when my ministry with you and to you becomes a memory. But it is one that I will forever give thanks to God that I now have to reach for, whenever I need to, as often I need to, for however long I continue to be alive. That is how God has blessed me. That is how you have blessed me. I will always cherish the memory of these years when your pastor was me.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
April 8, 2018