Much of ministry is a benediction

A speaking well of each other and the world

A speaking well of what we value:

honesty, love, forgiveness, trust

A speaking well of our efforts

A speaking well of our dreams

This is how we celebrate life

Through speaking well of it

Living the benediction and becoming

as a word well-spoken.

                                                            -Susan Manker-Seale

I received a phone call from the Search Committee of Cedar Lane Church about four years and three months ago . I had already been selected to be one of the three pre-candidates for the Assistant Minister position and was being called on to supply information about the pre-candidating sermon I intended to preach at the neutral pulpit. I had thought about this a long time. What sermon might best work for this situation? Well, I had read the packet of information and knew the church was looking for a minister who could do pastoral work and spiritual work without being too flaky or touchy-feely. Well, that wasn’t a stretch for me, but I wanted to have a sermon that could demonstrate that well. I wanted a sermon that talked intelligently about spirituality. So when I received this phone call from Susan Clark of the search committee, I told her the sermon title would be "All for the Love of God." I heard a gasp over the phone and "Oh, it has the word right there in the title!" I thought, she can’t be referring to the word "love," she must be talking about the word, "God." Now, in later conversations I have learned that what Susan meant by her response was, "Oh, how bold, how wonderful!" What I had heard was, "Oh, well there’s enough rope to hang yourself with." So after I hung up with her I went to talk with my internship supervisor, Ruppert Lovely. I asked, "Should I preach a different sermon, give them a different title, or should I go with this one even though it seems a little risky?" Ruppert looked at me and said, "Well, Paul gives good advice on this point." By this he meant the Apostle Paul from the Bible. "Paul said, ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans.’" So I called back to the search committee rep and switched my pre-candidating sermon to one entitled "No Easy Road," which dealt with the seeming division between social justice and spirituality.

The Pre-candidating weekend went wonderfully and I was asked to be the candidate, so I feel I made the right choice. But I still really liked that other sermon and wanted to use it. So I did. I dropped the prepositional phrase, "Of God", but otherwise did not change another word in the sermon, and for my candidating week sermon I preached "All for the Love." And it worked out quite well. All that fuss and second guessing on my part to find out all was well.

What I offer today is less a sermon and more a series of reflections and vignettes derived from four years of ministry among you, one of the biggest, healthiest, and most wondrous congregations in our denomination. I see my ministry as successful because you have been so responsive, creative and alive. I have, in many ways been merely, a mirror to you. I can only say what I have seen, and if I have said it well, it is because it has been worth seeing.

And so it began. One thing I have heard over and over again is the memory of my candidating sermon. A memory which I have noticed does not include the title "All for the Love" over which I obviously agonized, or the topic of an intelligent look at spirituality, or if I said the word "God" too often. Instead the memory is that I sang.

Music has always been very important to me. It is a part of how I made it through my teenage years, it is a part of how I made friends in high school, it is a part of how my wife and I developed a relationship, it is a part of how we have raised our children, and it is a part of how I discovered my voice for ministry. "My life flows on in endless song." Music has given me much and has enlarged what I can offer in return.

I have treasured memories of the concert we did last week and of singing with my family. It was a real treat to sing with Maury Merkin. Over these four years I have uncovered various opportunities to sing with people. I sang at an Alliance Tea with Eleanor Roessler. I sang with Kristin Grassel at a service put on by the youth. I sang with my daughter Brin up at an Asbury vespers service. I sang in a quick quartet of myself, Leslie Backus, Kristin Grassel, and Susan Clark during my first year here. And I sang out several times on my own. Each of these memories has grown to be a treasured gift from my time among you. There was one time, early on in my ministry here, when Elizabeth Stark was in Suburban Hospital and I went to see her. She smiled and said, "I hear you sang at the service last Sunday and I missed it. "That’s not fair." She convinced me, standing there in her room located almost exactly in the middle of the Pavilion rehab unit, amidst all the hustle of the mid-day hospital routine to sing:

        Kumbaya, Kumbaya.

(A few nurses stopped working and peeked around the corner.)

        Kumbaya, Kumbaya.

(There was a rustling in the bed on the other side of the curtain.)

        Kumbaya, Kumbaya.

Music has given me much and has enlarged what I can offer in return. Ilse Fleischman also called upon me in this way. "Come over to my house Douglas, come and sing and pray while I die." I have really come to care so very much for so many of you.

I remember the year my son, Keenan, was in Ilse’s Festivals and Celebrations class. It was the same year my wife, Sidra, taught the four-year-olds. Keenan was not really interested in Sunday school the way his older sister has been, but Ilse had a way of drawing his interest, so he made a point of coming that year. But that only worked so long as it was during class time. Often he would part ways with the class as they climbed the stairs to chapel and he would go down the hall to help out for the last fifteen or twenty minutes with Sidra’s class. But Ilse kept trying to cajole him to come up to chapel. She told me with great enjoyment about one day in particular when she said to him, "Keenan, don’t you want to come up to chapel today, you know your father is doing the story. Don’t you what to see your father?" Keenan waved her appeal away saying, "Oh, I see him all the time!"

Chapel was indeed a lot of fun for me. I remember doing some wonderful stories with the kids. I love telling stories. I remember reading two-voice poems with Bobbie Nelson. I remember acting out a little skit with Susan Archer. And I remember doing the story of the Wide Mouthed Frog with Keenan, I played the Wide-Mouthed Frog and he played all the other parts!

I have particularly appreciated the way this congregation has welcomed and warmed up to my family. When I go home in the evenings, my family restores my heart and soul each day. They are a blessing to me, and I do not think I could do this work half so well without them. Your enjoyment of them makes it easier for me to have them around here with me. For that I thank you. I recall one time I even brought young Piran up with me for the service. I hadn’t intended to. My sister had come up for the weekend, she was en route to Boston to visit our mother. She parked her car on our street, spent the day and night, and then Sidra drove her and her family up to the train station at BWI. Now, as chance would have it, my sister’s train ticket was for Sunday morning, and it was a Sunday morning I was scheduled to preach, no less. Well, I broke with tradition and had most of my sermon written before that Saturday so I could spend time with my sister and her husband and two girls. The train departure time was early enough that it looked like Sidra would be able to drop them off and make it back to church before the service started. It was important because there was not room in the car for my wife, my sister, all her family, and Piran’s car seat. So Piran and the two older kids were with me at church that morning.

But all was well. Brin and Keenan entertained Piran as I took care of last minute things before the service. As the hour for service approached, the older two headed down for classes, and I took Piran and kept a look out for Sidra. Time came to start worship and she had not arrived, so I scooped up the baby and headed up to the front of the sanctuary with Susan Archer. Piran was amiable about being up front for a while. He particularly enjoyed the opening hymn. He started getting a little fussy while Susan was doing the reading. I picked him up, held him to my shoulder, and stepped back stage. Thankfully it was a long-ish reading and Piran had gotten up early. He fell asleep by the time Susan was finished and the Offertory music had started. I stepped out from back stage and I heard a noise, as if several dozen people all at the same time said, "Oh!" At least one person said quietly, "he’s asleep." I sat back down, resolved that I might have to get through the whole service with him, but happy that at least for the moment he was asleep. Sidra, in the meantime, had arrived, quite flustered at being late. She scanned the front of the sanctuary and saw Susan doing the reading, but I was no where to be seen. She quickly went back to my office, hoping to relieve me, but I was not there either. She spotted Lyn Peters, the office manager and Lyn said, "No, he’s not back here. I think he went up to the pulpit." Sidra, said, "Oh, he’s not up there." Now they were both flustered, trying to figure out where I had disappeared to. Well, it all resolved itself well enough when we saw each other near the end of the Offertory, and I was able to hand off the sleeping baby and finish the service unencumbered. All the same, I greatly appreciated the patience of the congregation that morning. I also greatly appreciated Piran’s relatively easy-going nature!

There was another Sunday morning when I was almost too unencumbered. By that I mean, there was one Sunday morning recently when I climbed up to the pulpit without my sermon. I usually write my sermons on Saturday night. You’d think I could have developed a better habit, seeing as my preaching schedule was far lighter than other ministers’ schedules. I didn’t have the excuse of needing to wait until Saturday night, but it is how I did it all the same. Well, one recent early Sunday morning when I finished the sermon, I discovered I was out of printer paper and could not print up the sermon from my home computer. I also lacked a disk to transport the sermon to my computer at work. Fear not, I am a clever soul! I e-mailed the sermon to myself at work. Relieved that modern technology made life easier, I showered and dressed and headed to church.

When I arrived, imagine my panic when I discovered the sermon had not arrived in my "Inbox". There was not time to make the forty minute ride back home to fetch the sermon. There might be time if I called right then for Sidra to make the twenty minute ride in with the sermon, but she would need to get Piran up, dressed, and into the car. Besides, there was still no paper back home on which to print the sermon. Maybe I could remember enough of it to get though the service without the manuscript? Hmmm, Mary Darne came in to talk about the music cues, "Will you announce the hymn? Do you want two minutes of silence? Can I have a copy of the last page of the sermon?" Mary always asks for the last page of the sermon so she and Dick can know when to get ready for the last hymn and postlude. I had no last page, I had not any pages to give her. Well, I managed to make her, and Roger, and Lyn, all anxious that morning as the clock drifted closer and closer to 9:00 am. Finally we discovered a solution. I called Sidra at home, she e-mailed the sermon over to Roger’s computer, which was on a separate network connection from the other computers in the office. Roger would receive the e-mail, download the sermon, print a copy and bring it up to me as soon as it was ready. Okay, Sidra had never sent an e-mail attachment before. Okay, Roger’s e-mail was probably just as slow as my own. Okay, there was a strong possibility that this last solution would not work.

Meanwhile, it was 9:00 and I went up, lit the chalice and started the Welcome. Did I tell any of you during the welcome that I did not have my sermon with me? No I did not. We sang our opening hymn and I launched into the reading. I had the reading, which had been on my desk, here at church, all along. That was no problem. The Offertory music began. I started jotting down an outline as best I could remember it. After all, the sermon was still fresh in my mind, I had finished it only a few hours before. At about this time (I later found out), Roger had successfully retrieved and printed my sermon. He had taken the time to increase the font size and spacing to make it easier to read. Heading toward the Auditorium, he stopped, with the sermon in his hands, looked at Lyn with a smile on his face, and asked, "How long should we make him sweat?"

I do not now recall if Roger brought the sermon up to me during the Offertory or during Sprit of Life, I guess I blocked that out of my memory. But by the time I had to preach I had the sermon, and no one except those directly involved in my little drama knew about it. Until now of course.

The staff and colleagues I have known here at Cedar Lane have been the finest people to work with. I have learned so much from Roger and Susan, and from Bobbie. It has been working with them and with all the staff here at the church. Jeannette, Lucy, Bob, Gale, Pamela, Gloria, Pedro, Ernie, Ed, Dick, Mary, Glenis, and Lyn are all wonderful. Glenis made the comment at a recent staff meeting that what we have right now is one of the best staffs in her memory of working here. Thank you all for the time we’ve had together. I want to particularly thank Mary Darne for all you have meant to my kids, they are really going to miss you. And Ed Carlson who is like our secret extra minister, thank you for your friendship. And Lyn, thank you for not letting Roger hold my sermon longer and make me sweat more. And Roger, for your patience, wisdom, encouragement, and your friendship, thank you. And there are so many little things each of the staff have done to help me, I really should spend a few more pages here thanking them.

And of course, how many of you here in the congregation can I name and thank in twenty seconds? I won’t even try. The blessings I have received from you, the members of this congregation, are staggering and uncountable. You are amazing people and I have grown for having known you.

There is a little scene in the first book of The Lord of the Rings, one line really, that didn’t make it into the movie. The scene is when Gandalf, the good and powerful wizard, has asked Frodo, the main character, if he will go on a long quest. Frodo is reluctant to leave his home, the Shire, but eventually decides to leave. Now the reasons were many and in bringing up this scene I do not mean to compare myself to this character and his long quest. But the reason he gives to the wizard as to why he will go, despite his love of his home and his reluctance to leave it is this:

And so I leave you with that thought in my heart. You shall always be for me that firm foothold in my memory where my journey officially began. You shall always be my beginning, the place from which I wander. You shall always be my Shire. "And I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again."