How Do You Say Goodbye?

May I speak in the name of Christ who sends the sweet, sweet Spirit to this place.  Amen.

How do you say goodbye?

Imagine.
.
.
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Spending three years of your life with the same group of people.

You’ll see them at their best and their worst.

You’ll be annoyed at them. Laugh at their jokes. Watch them cry,   across the room. Pray for them.

Get angry at them sometimes.  Maybe hate them.  Feel rejected by them.

You’ll be desperate for solitude, for silence, for personal space.

You’ll be so lonely you can’t stand it. 

You’ll know every detail of their personality. 

You might know something of their faith.

If you’re lucky, you’ll treasure them always.

 

The thing about goodbye is,     you can see it from a long way off.

But you don’t really believe it will come.

In my mind, it’s kind of like death that way.

Right after graduating college, my choir toured Europe.

Some simple goodbyes were easy.

“You won’t see me for a little while.

After a little while you’ll see me again.”

My best friend Ryan was on the choir tour.

We saw goodbye, but didn’t believe it would come.

8 hours on the plane from Rome to JFK.

12 hours from JFK to Houghton, and I have never been sicker.

Packing until 3 am.

A flight at 8, an hour a way.

Up at 5 to shower, still sick.

Ryan put my suitcase in the trunk at 6.

I opened my mouth to say the words,

And all I could do was cry.

There are certain things you can’t just say to certain people.

You have to use the wrong words

To get at what you really mean.

Good-bye.

I love you.

Jesus can’t shut up in the gospel of John.

You know where I’m going.  There are many mansions there.  I’ll send the comforter.  I am the vine, You are the branches.  Abide in me.  Greater love has no man than this: that he lay his life down for his friend.  You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy.  I pray, Father, that they all may be one.

Prophecy?  Philsophy?  Theology, metaphysics?

No.

Jesus is human like the rest of us,

Afraid. 

Hurting.

He’s trying to say goodbye.

He’s trying to say I love you.

I count it a deep tragedy that in my three years here, I have heard

And I have used

All the wrong words.

I have only said the words “I love you” to a handful of people.

I have only heard them from a handful of people.

And believe me, both saying them and hearing them is terrifying.

Those words are powerful.

It costs us something to say them.

No wonder we use the wrong words!

It is so much easier to only hint at what we really mean.

I think we die a little bit to ourselves each time we say them.

It is any wonder I strain so hard to hear the calling placed on my life?

Is it any wonder I strain so hard to hear God’s voice saying “Shane, I love you?”

The right message is covered up in the wrong words.

The problem with saying good bye is that what we really mean is “I love you,”

But we never found the time or the words to say it.

My prayer for all of us –

Seniors coming to graduation,

Middlers and Juniors with lots of time left before their final goodbye.,

Inspired by the sweet sweet spirit in this place,

Is that we find the times and the places to say “I love you” to each other,

To die to ourselves.

To let the sweet, sweet Spirit fill us with God’s new life.

With God’s very self.

Then, goodbye can be simple.

Because love will already be so,

                                                            So,

                                                                   So very deep.

Amen.