As
part of the process of a minister separating from a congregation, our
denomination has instituted “exit interviews”, whereby the minister (and
separately, the governing board of the congregation) get to sit down with our
District Executive and discuss how things have gone during the ministry that is
drawing to a close—major accomplishments, whatever challenges there were,
lessons learned, pitfalls or ruts that might have been avoided.
Even
though this was something new to me (we didn’t have “exit interviews” twenty
years ago when I left Rockland, Maine to come here to Stoughton), I think it’s
a useful process. The ancient Greeks used to say that the unexamined life
wasn’t worth living, and I suppose the same is true for the unexamined
ministry. It’s always good to pause, take a breath, consider where one has
been, and where one might be headed.
So
it was that on Monday afternoon of this week, our District Executive, Bill
Zelazny, came here to Stoughton, and we sat in the church parlor and chatted
for about an hour and a half about the past twenty years (actually, nineteen
years and ten months) here in Stoughton. (The Board of Trustees would have
their chance to meet with Rev. Zelazny later that evening.) As I said, I think
it was a helpful process.
Bill
had sent me a series of questions (over 20 of them, I think), so I’d had my
chance to formulate my answers ahead of time, and submit them in writing, and
we then went over them. One of the questions in particular, I thought, was
quite interesting, and I have been pondering it since. “Imagine this time you
served this congregation as a play or a movie,” the question read. “What was
the story?” If this had been a movie we
were in over the past two decades, what movie would it be?
Hmm…
The card file in my head got to rolling, and I started to think of some of the
movies I had seen down through the years. That was too many to process, so to
narrow it down, my mind jumped to this past February, when Elizabeth and I went
to the second week of the “2013 Best Picture Showcase” at the Lowe’s AMC
Theater on the Boston Common and saw five—count ‘em five!— Oscar-nominated films at one sitting (and it was a blast, by
the way). So I went through those five films in my mind, to see if any of them
fit:
Beasts of the Southern Wild was about
Hurricane Katrina and Life of Pi was
about a shipwreck. It hasn’t been that bad.
Silver Linings Playbook was about
bi-polar illness, promiscuous sex, and ballroom dancing. None of those
metaphors seemed especially apt.
Zero Dark Thirty was about the capture
(and execution) of Osama Bin Laden. No, Kids Cook was pretty exciting but it
never got quite that dangerous. (Almost as loud, but not as dangerous.)
That
left Lincoln. Now, I think I have a
pretty healthy ego; I really do. But Lincoln-esque?
I don’t think so. And happily, we have pretty much avoided those “civil wars”
to which some churches seem prone. We have been very fortunate in that regard.
None
of those films fit. So I just wrote that the main plot line of our ministry
together would involve a group of people endeavoring to care for one another to
the best of their abilities, and succeeding pretty well in fostering the day
in/ day out ties that bind us to one another.
Nothing
too dramatic there. But a true statement, and right from the heart.
Then,
after Bill left, I remembered the movie Babette’s
Feast.
Babette’s Feast was a 1987
Danish film (“Uh-oh,” some of you are now saying, “a weird European flick.
Figures.”). It was based on a novel by the Danish writer Isak Dineson, who also
wrote Out of Africa.
The story is set is the
1880s, and Babette, a woman approaching middle age, was once a renowned chef in
Paris, something very unusual for a woman in that time. But in 1871, both her
son and husband die tragically in the civil war that was then raging in France.
She flees her war-torn city and seeks refuge with two kindly old sisters in a
small, isolated Norwegian village. The sisters are poor, but deeply religious,
and they are trying with all their might to maintain the small religious
community which their father, a brilliant minister, has established years
before, but which is now in danger of dying out.
Several years after
arriving in the village, Babette wins 10,000 francs in the French lottery—an
amazing amount of money at the time—and asks the sisters for permission to
prepare a special dinner for their small community, to mark the 100th anniversary of their father’s birth.
With some hesitation and with deeply mixed feelings, the sisters agree. The
other members of the village aren’t sure the great banquet is a good idea
either. They wonder if all this fine food and wine, all this feasting, all
these earthly delights, won’t draw them away from their deeper, spiritual
calling.
But out of politeness to
Babette, and out of deference to the honor of their founder, they all, somewhat
reluctantly, decide to go to the feast. And they are transformed by the
experience.
Not so much by the food
and drink—which was sumptuous and abundant. They are transformed by the grace
of sharing this magnificent meal together.
The members of the community discover the power of reconciliation and the
love and hope that had brought them together in the first place.
All because they had
shared a feast together—a feast not so much of food, really, but of love.
At the heart of my vision
of ministry, especially here in Stoughton for these past twenty years, has been
my desire to feed and to nourish, body and mind and soul alike. In so far as I
have succeeded, I owe it all to you, my faithful friends around the table. You
have inspired me and uplifted me and have taught me so much more about human
decency and courage and hard work than I could ever offer to you.
Maybe it hasn’t been a
movie, this life we have shared together for the past twenty years. Maybe it’s
been a song. A song that can still echo in our hearts, and can still sing in
our ears, even when we have gone our separate ways.
I’m no expert on movies
(which doesn’t stop me from enjoying them, and talking about them; not being an
expert about something has never stopped
me from talking about it.) But I suppose that, according to National Public Radio
at least, and the Bio Channel, and various “Classic Rock” radio outlets around
America, I do (somehow) rank as an
expert on music—or, at least, the music of one contemporary artist in
particular.
So, when I had finished
cogitating on which movie best represented our ministry together, my mind (such
as it is) turned to the question of “Which
song”, or more particularly, “Which Springsteen
song?” best sums up who and where we have been over the past two decades,
and where we may be going.
A different set of file
cards started flashing through my mind—a BIG set of all 269 songs recorded by Bruce in a career stretching back to when I
was in high school (which gets to be a longer and longer time ago, even as we
speak). My mind raced through “Lost in the Flood” and “Born to Run”, right up
to more recent fare like “The Rising” or “Working on a Dream”. Some fit; some
didn’t (“Cadillac Ranch”? Not around here.) And it always came back to “Thunder
Road”.
Because “Thunder Road”
has always been a song about change, about graduation, about moving from one
stage of our lives to the next. Which
is, when you boil it down, what life is all about.
Often, it is at those
times of great transition that we might well feel most unsure of ourselves,
uncertain that we have made the right choice. But once we are truly committed
to change, deeply committed, then darkness breaks and morning with its immense
possibilities finally arrives. Then the river of life delights to lift us free,
if we but dare let go.
This is our story; this
is our song. The story of decent men and women who have done their best over these
twenty years to tend to the ties that bind past, present, and future
generations (as only churches can) in a living garment of caring and love. Who
have dared to offer this old world a youthful song of acceptance and
affirmation and hope and courage.
It has been an honor for
me to sit at this table with you over these years. It has been a joy, as well.
You have been so kind to
me and to my family, and for this Elizabeth and I are so deeply grateful. You
have worked so hard to keep this church going, and when I think back at those
others who worked so hard, who are no longer among us, then my heart surges
when I consider what a privilege it has been to have been your minister.
Beethoven once said that
“Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.”
I don’t know how “pure”
any of us are. But the soup has been good. And nourishing. And may we pray it
will sustain us well for the next stage of the journeys that are ours to make.
Godspeed on your journey.
God bless you all. Amen.
