Dear Sisters and Brothers,
As I sit here trying to think what I should say in my next to last headnote, I am filled with mixed emotions. Shakespeare put it well when Juliet utters “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” It is hard to think that in ten days I will be fully retired, and you will have a new rector. As our collect this past Sunday spoke of our use of the Bible, the holy Scriptures, we need to “hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.” Part of those calls to us means we need to reflect not on just what they say, but what they can mean in our lives and the lives of others today. We proclaim that they are more than a series of books written in the past, but are living documents guided by the Holy Spirit, we need to treat them as such. Yes, there is history in them, but also prose and prophesy, poetry and biography, every form of literature know to us. One of things that has struck me about Calvary is your lectors. It is clear they have read and re-read the lessons before they rise to the lectern. Yes, mistakes are made, on rare occasions lines missed, but being as close as I am to them, I can see in their faces every time they think they have made a mistake or mispronounced a name. I have told many of you of the priest that came upon a list of names and as he read, he said, “and on his right were twelve men with unpronounceable names and on his left were twelve more.” That gives us the hearing we ask for. Our bulletins put the words right in front of us, we can read them as they are being spoken. While Liz’s Sunday morning bible study participants review the lessons before they come to church. They pick out words or passages that speak to them. They research ways those words are used in other portions of scripture, and more. They certainly mark and learn them. With their discussions, and hopefully the sermons for those who do not attend the class, all hopefully have a chance to inwardly digest what you have heard. But overall, we do not spend enough time with the holy Scriptures. As you will soon enter the Advent season, I would ask you to take on a discipline from next Sunday through the end of the Christmas season. Yes, six weeks, enough time to start a new habit or break and old one. Take your bulletins home with you. Reread the lessons, mark, learn and inwardly digest them. Talk about them to each other at home, especially those with children in the house. Search for what God is saying to you in them, reflect. As I find myself often sitting in silence reflecting on forty years of ministry and what lies ahead, those mixed emotions rise and fall. One sign it is time to retire is when I decide I want to write about silence in our worship only to realize I did that near the end of this past June and at the same time realize that maybe five percent of the congregation would understand my reference to the song “Silence is Golden” by the Tremeloes; even Mick Jagger was young then. Next Wednesday, my wife and I close on a house that has everything we were looking for. Surely God was with us in the search. She will be able to get back her father’s pool table that was used in the movie “Flim Flam Man” that stared George C. Scott, Harry Morgan, (Col Potter for another dated reference), and Slim Pickens (ditto), which was filmed in Winchester. I will have a woodshop and the dogs will have almost two acres of fenced -in yard to run and explore. I will also have time to read and study scripture and not always looking for sermon ideas. And by the way, I will have to hang around for a long time, because the mortgage will not be paid off until I am one hundred.
Peace,
Bryant+
