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June 29,
2003 LECTIONARY
READINGS 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27 and “Farewell” I am acutely aware as I write this final message for Sermonhelp.Com, that saying, "Farewell!" to Sermonhelp is fraught with unexpected feelings. I have said "Farewell," to congregations a number of times during my ministry. I have been a student pastor, interim pastor, solo pastor, and senior pastor in ten different congregations since I was ordained while still in college - forty years ago this coming June. There was a farewell with each of them. Each one of those farewells was accompanied by anticipation, trepidation, tears and laughter. And now as I bid another "adieu," I find myself surprised by the strange sense that I am leaving another congregation. This is indeed a virtual congregation, but a congregation of kindred spirits none the less. It is true that not everyone who has been a subscriber to Sermonhelp has been excited about the material -- indeed, there have been a few folk who did not care for our style at all. Sermonhelp was not everyone's, "cup of tea," and that's just fine. "Different strokes..." as they say. However, there was a defining moment for this ministry that came early on. The writing for Sermonhelp began in the last quarter of 1988 and the service was launched in the Lenten season of 1999. Scores of you are still with us since that first Lenten season. I've talked with many of you by phone and have exchanged email and correspondence with even more. Not so long after the beginning of Sermonhelp in the last quarter of 1999, a pastor who was having some difficult times in his congregation wrote to say, "I don't have very many people I can talk to about a difficulty I am having with ministry and in some strange way I feel as though you are my pastor since I've started using this service." We exchanged several emails and finally a phone call. That was an affirmation of something I had hoped for in the beginning. My heart has always been solidly owned by the local church and ministry to and with colleagues has been one of the high joys of my life. This ministry was called "Sermonhelp." Not "Sermons Online," or "Homiletics Online," or "Here You Go for Sunday" -- it was designed to be help along the way, a friendly and collegial assist for your efforts to faithfully deliver the Word of God. Yes, there were those rare times when people were pressed beyond limits and personal demands were urgent and pastors pretty much used the material "as is," but mostly this has been a collegial enterprise where we shared in bringing what God wanted to say to the people we serve. Sermonhelp.Com was designed to be like a of "jumper cables" - something to give a boost or a brief charge when the battery needed a little help. *** When the first president of the United States of America, George Washington, was leaving office, he wrote an address to the nation in which he shared his experience and his hopes and dreams for the nation. In those remarks, he said something that strikes a chord with the things I feel as I say "Farewell" to yet another beloved group of people who simply wish to serve Christ.
I would simply change Washington's words to say that if there has been benefit to the church from the work of Sermonhelp over the past few years, then I am truly blessed. Often it has been your support, encouragement, and feedback that has provided much of the inspiration it takes to maintain a project like this on a solo basis. *** All of us will have times of saying farewell to a ministry and when those times come, there are a few spiritual-theological themes that run through all these times even though your ministry context is the local church and mine happens to be Sermonhelp. Every ending in ministry needs to be centered in the beginning of all ministry and that takes us to what has been called the Great Commission.
The central issue in the passage is a single verb. "Go!" All of us have heard God's "Go" - likely more than once in our lives. Sometimes it has been to serve a new congregation as a pastor. For many lay persons it can be a call to serve God in some new way. Lay ministry is the sleeping giant of the church. When we preach and teach God's "Go" for the whole church, wonderful things begin to happen. More homes are built in the Habitat for Humanity project, homeless people in Honduras are housed by mission teams, the health of whole communities is changed by medical teams made up of persons who give their vacations to serve as short term medical missionaries. The fact is that God's people never get so stay put in this life. From the very beginning when God called Abraham to "Go to a land I will show you," people of faith have been on the move. (And Abraham, I might add should have been enjoying his golden years, collecting his retirement rewards.) Moses was called to "Go," with the whole people of Israel to a promised land, Jeremiah was called to "Go," with God's people into exile in a foreign land. When Jesus walked this earth and called disciples to follow him, he warned, ""Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." (Matthew 8:20) When Jesus spent his last night with his disciples before his crucifixion, there was great sorrow and anxiety over the greatest "GO!" God has ever given. Jesus even prayed that the cup of bitter sorrow and death might pass from him, but the final surrender of the soul is expressed in the words, "...nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done..." A part of Jesus' farewell to his closest followers was, “Let not your hearts be troubled….” Jesus promised final victory in the struggle of good and evil. The writer to the Hebrews writes, "So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God..." (Hebrews 4:9) But in our earthly lives of following Christ, God's "Go" is a foundational part of our call to follow Christ. After the resurrection of Christ, the disciples gathered for Jesus' final, "Go." It is the call to go and make disciples and to teach those disciples. Having surrendered ourselves to ministry - whether that ministry be full time, clergy, or lay - our lives are bound up in bringing people to a lively relationship of faith in Jesus Christ and a life long journey of maturing in that faith. No matter where you ministry takes you, as a clergy or lay person, faithfulness will always keep your door open to another "Go." That door will close only when God finally says to us, "Come home." *** So, on a very personal note to all of you who have been the people who have walked with me through the lectionary texts for almost five years, Farewell and God's richest blessings on your ministry and on all of God's "Go's" that remain for you. Thank you for the encouragement and companionship that you have offered along the way. Warmly, John Jewell *** One of the places I have just discovered I will be "going," is to take on added responsibilities at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary as Interim Director of External Programs. This will include responsibility for continuing education. I would love to hear from those of you who serve local church with respect to topics or issues you would like to see seminaries address in continuing ed. You may be sure that preaching ministry will be a big part of the program we will be working on very shortly. I expect to announce some new ways of addressing the needs of local church pastors for engaging the texts. We will be offering some new and lively Advent and Lenten preaching workshops with great resource leaders. It would be great to see some of you who live in the Heartland of the US at these. (In fact it would be great to see any of you here. If any of you who reside in England, Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, France, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, etc, etc, etc... We will give you a tour of our wonderful Tri-State area on the Mississippi River!) There will likely be an online version of our preaching workshops and I would welcome your participation via the internet. Please drop by www.udtseminary.net and choose the "Continuing Education" link on the left side navigation bar. (If you are accessing this page prior to the beginning of June, please check back. The continuing education page will be added toward the end of May or beginning of June. As you read through this sermon, you will discover that it is actually my sermon to all of you who have become a virtual community of fellow travelers who have a desire to faithfully bring God's good word to God's people. You may find some degree of help with those sermons you need to prepare when you are leaving one ministry to move on to another, but essentially -- this is a personal message from me to you. ¹ Visit the web site for George Washington's farewell address
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