A Tender Farewell

December 10, 2023

Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbia

Dear ones, it is good that we are together today. There’s no place I’d rather be. My heart is overflowing with tender gratitude, with wide-eyed astonishment, at what we have done here, together, in this intern ministry. I marvel at how I’ve grown from that scared guy 16 months ago who couldn’t pronounce anyone’s names correctly to a more whole-hearted, confident minister who still can’t pronounce anyone’s names correctly. You have borne witness to my formation, which remains, of course, a work in progress. You have held me through my mistakes and meanderings. And most of all, throughout all of it, you have consistently shown me a deep and tender grace.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved an intern like me. Grace. What is this thing? Is it forgiveness, is it redemption, is it love? Perhaps more important, is it Christian?! (God forbid.)

Grace isn’t the easiest thing to define. But we know what it feels like. It sometimes feels more like a place — that tender place where we feel like we’re at the center of the universe, connected to the whole of everything, feeling like we belong. It’s a fulfillment of our innate desire for relationship. But not any relationship.

Relationships, after all, can be codependent or transactional: It’s a desire for a relationship in which we can reveal our true selves to each other. Where we can feel safe, and brave, and vulnerable. Where we can drink deeply of each other’s stories, and worries, and outrages. Where we can lightly touch each other’s wounds and say, me too. As theologian Paul Tillich once said, grace is an exhortation to “accept that we are accepted.”

But learning to accept grace is not an easy thing. There are always doubts and fears that sneak in to steal our confidence, that whisper to us of our own inadequacy. I know that feeling all too well as I’ve struggled with my own imposter syndrome, and I’m sure I’m not alone. Nursing doubts reminds me of the story of a patient my cohort group encountered during my chaplaincy training. When discussing our counselees, we always choose a fictitious name to protect privacy. We named her Grace. Grace was confined to a hospital bed, nearing the end of life. She asked to see a chaplain, desperate to relieve this ache in her heart. It was the ache of worry and doubt. You see, Grace had been raised as Eastern Orthodox, the long-time tradition of her family for generations. But later in life, like so many of us, she chose a new religious family, a new faith tradition among evangelical Christians. And as she prepared to meet her maker, there was one burning question that tormented her: Am I saved? Will I go to heaven? Will I be rejected, because I didn’t do it right?

The chaplain, with her strong Universalist faith, bent down, scooped Grace up spiritually, held her tight and said that God was good and loved all God’s children, that she was always saved, always loved, always held in God’s care. Grace’s reply: “Is it really that simple?”

This is ultimate Grace: One that redeems us, accepts us, without conditions. This is why I love our faith tradition so deeply. While we may not use the word a lot, it holds grace at its center. After all, Amazing Grace is right in the middle of our hymnal! In so many traditions, grace has been abused, made into scarce goods as a tool of control and conformity. Are you saved? Have you followed the commandments? Monarchs were called Your Grace because they could bestow or withhold it. Preachers declared that grace was a transaction that could pay the debt of our sins.

But true grace isn’t a title and it can’t be bought or sold or earned. It can only be accepted. Like the very oxygen we breathe, it’s free. The only cost is the effort to put away your doubts, to doubt your doubts, as Brother Dawson preaches. To put away the lie that you somehow don’t deserve grace, or the worry that you might lose it if you “do it wrong.”

It is here in this sacred space that I, too, have felt this unearned grace that looked me in the eye and told me I belong. Through all the clutter of commuting and relying a little too much on Zoom, you told me that it was good enough, that I was good enough, that mistakes are for learning and not for judging. You taught me that we’re all just feeling our way together through messy imperfection.

Messy imperfection: I once thought that messy imperfection was the enemy of good ministry. Now I’ve come to embrace that messy imperfection is ministry itself. It’s the core of what it means to be a flawed human being. Grace gives us space to fully be our true, imperfect selves. More than that, grace celebrates us.

Recalling the words from our reading by Rev. Soto:

Sometimes people make
mistakes, but even that cannot change that
you are meant to be festooned with celebration
of your humanity.

This celebration of each of our individual, vulnerable imperfections, my beloveds, is the blessed tie that binds our hearts together. As we are exploring this entire worship year, we hold each other in these precarious times — not because any of us has the answer that will fix our lives and our world, but because holding each other IS the work. Holding each other is the joy. Holding each other is the point.

We hold each other as we move together toward dismantling systems of oppression. We hold each other as we learn how to be more accessible and welcoming, despite getting it wrong sometimes. We hold each other as we work out the best way to do social justice. We hold each other as we excavate the skeletons of the racist history of Columbia and Boone County. We hold each other as we explore how we can root out toxic masculinity, and toxic theology. We hold each other through the chaotic Sunday School lessons about Universalism that somehow turn into heart scavenger hunts instead. We hold each other as we figure out who’s going to make the coffee.

And, you know what else? Wrestling with our imperfections is long and slow work. For me, preparation for ministry has been a life-long endeavor. Each of us is a work in progress, a slow and tender unfolding. Returning to the words of Rev. Soto:

What is slow is also valuable. Some of the oldest
seeds ever sprouted are narrow-leaf campion
that grew, even though the seeds were thirty-two thousand years old, more or less.

That means I still have 31,999 more years to get it right.

I’ll leave you with a gem that I picked up from a beloved seminary colleague. One day we were talking about what grace meant to us. She said she was still developing her own theology, and she couldn’t quite say what grace was. But, borrowing from the world of Zen Buddhism, she said she had an idea what grace felt like. She said maybe grace was simply experiencing your true self. Maybe grace feels like discovering the face you had before you were born.

Thanks to you, dear ones, I feel like I can now embrace the person I’ve always been. Severing the lovely ties that bind us together will be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. UUA guidelines require that I end my pastoral relationship with all of you after December 31st. But I will choose the path of gratitude. And know that wherever my ministry takes me, I will carry your hearts in my heart. Your love and your grace will light my path.

I love you.

Amen and blessed be.