In this last newsletter column, I found myself wondering what I wanted to say that I had not said already. I’ve described my decision and the reasons for it – that I’ve decided to resign my call here so that I can rehabilitate my back without fear of shortchanging my service. I’ve thanked many of the people who have made my service here such a pleasure and I know I haven’t mentioned every kindness and every blessing, but if I did that, my farewell would have to take as long as my stay, since every day brought a blessing of one kind or another.

But I realized that I hadn’t yet had much to say about the journey itself. A first call pastor expects to learn much about him- or herself in that first congregation – as it turns out, I learned a lot about God as well. You have done much to educate this pastor in how God manifests His justice and love (mainly through His people), why we worship (because God is worthy of worship), why we pray (to struggle with God), why we give (to change our hearts because God wants us to be generous and joyful) and the paradoxes of being God’s flawed and beloved children (God loves us just as we are, and way too much to leave us that way.)

Over time, I became surer of what were, for me, fundamental and vital matters and what were matters for experimentation and change. I wanted to make sure that our youngsters felt loved and valued and respected. I wanted to make sure that believers who had deep roots had ways to exercise and grow their faith, while people who were just starting out also felt at home and well-loved. I wanted to make sure that I knew everyone’s name because the person who celebrates the Lord’s Supper with you ought to know your name. I wanted to be able to share with all of you the full range of the Christian experience – joy and sorrow, hope and resolve, vigor and exhaustion, humility and praise. And I think we did.

We have done much together for the glory of God, but as I visited with Susan Bullock yesterday, she reminded me that we hadn’t gotten a cabinet for the narthex and I thought of Reinhold Niebuhr’s comment that “Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.” Much remains to do and to learn and to be and I know God is not through with any of us, yet. We go forward in hope.

And as I thought of Linda’s and my journey with you, I was reminded of the journey of two disciples with Jesus on the road to Emmaus described in the quotation from Luke’s Gospel above. What the two disciples didn’t know and only learned in retrospect was that they were walking with Jesus all of the time. And so, we had moments of low comedy and high anxiety and I wouldn’t trade any of them. We shared wonder and beauty, love and awe and grace. And what we didn’t know, but what now is obvious, is that we were walking with Jesus all the time.

Pastor Greg