by Matt Fitzgerald
December 10^th
Isaiah 12:2-6 and Phillipians 4 selections
click here for MP3

At the very end of the letter to his beloved church in Phillipi Paul gives this goodbye - "receive and experience the amazing grace of the Master, Jesus Christ, deep, deep within yourselves." He leaves his people with an admonition, an instruction, a call to open their hearts and their lives to the grace of God.

I would like to leave you with this same farewell, but there is an important difference between Epiphany and the Philippians.

When Paul founded that church the people of its city did not know Christ's story. Incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, are far too outlandish to intuit. And so the Apostle had to teach them what grace is. He told them that while God's love can never be earned, it comes to us nonetheless, a free and unearned gift. He preached that while we do not deserve God's embrace, She embraces us. He taught them that "yes we are broken people who wound the ones we love the best even as we walk right over those we do not notice. And yes, God is our judge." But Christ, Christ is our witness and his testimony is convincing, winning us eternity rather than the judgment we probably deserve. And so, Paul taught, we are set free, free to live lives unfettered by anxiety, free to live as if the Good News we spend a lifetime waiting for, has already arrived. So step out of the world and start living in a state of grace.

This message birthed a church. It shaped the Philippians' relationships. It took their raw and unformed speculation about God and sculpted it into something beautiful. It changed their thinking. It delivered a people, carried them into a state of grace.

I have done my best to echo the Apostle from this pulpit, but I most certainly did not introduce you to God's grace. Indeed, Epiphany, you taught me and my family the meaning of the word.

Kelli and I found you in a state of grace. And our family will leave you in that exact same place. Much has changed in the last seven years, the ceiling is purple and the pews are full, but in the most important respect, we leave you exactly as we found you. In a state of grace.

To live in grace is to know that you are loved. To live in grace is to believe that God is at your side. To live in grace is to believe that Christ has closed the gap between the peace we long for and the violence that surrounds us. To live in grace is to know that God has at last brought us out of the exile by our ancestral orchard thieves. It is to know that Christ has saved you, changed you, made you the person you can't quite be. Which means that to live in grace is to rest easy. For if God has done everything for you need not do a thing. Just trust the gift. Which means that properly viewed life is not a struggle. It is more like Christmas morning.

When putting my thoughts on paper I have never stopped and started the words of a sermon as often as I did this week. Trying to leave you with some bit of profundity that would occupy your minds for years, I raced out of the gate to trip over my own foot again and again. What I forgot is that today we are not running a race, vainly sprinting toward the finish line. No. Today we do a simple thing. We take a final step together.

Simple, but not easy. And so I have to move slowly, to speak slowly. This sermon will be plain. All I want to do is name several of the ways we have lived in God's grace together. These will be quiet examples.

In 1999 up in Minnesota, two weeks before this position was official, one of my childhood friends got married. This was the wedding of Chris Lokken and his wife Anne who now live on this same block and belong to Epiphany. At that point they lived in Minneapolis. At their rehearsal dinner I met Jeremy Glenn, the husband of Jennifer, another high school classmate of mine. Jeremy, as many of you know, has the sort of kindness that will lead him toward whoever might look uncomfortable at a party. I showed up late and stood there, kind of looking around. Jeremy walked over introduced himself and then asked what I did for a living.

I'd heard horror stories from seasoned pastors who managed to clear entire cocktail parties by announcing their profession. And so I spoke softly and told him I was about to become a pastor. "It seems like a great church," I said, "you should come on a Sunday." And he replied, "In Chicago! That's where we live. We'll come to your church." One month later Jeremy and Jennifer showed up. Three years later Jeremy stood in worship and shared how glad he was that their twin daughters would grow up in your midst.

To get here they trusted, what, an old classmate Jen hadn't seen for years? A two-minute pitch from a decidedly awkward evangelist? No. They trusted their own thirst for church and the grace of God, a miracle that appears in unlikely places, rehearsal dinners, and the most tentative of invitations.

And so you were teaching me grace before Kelli and I had even packed a box in preparation for our move. Once we arrived the lessons accelerated. I remember a trip to a restaurant supply wholesale store with Noel Fowler in my very first month at Epiphany. We needed paper cups and plastic utensils, and one very particular size of Styrofoam plate. The place was huge, thirty foot-ceilings and thirty-foot shelves, stacked high with cooking oil and frying pans and every manner of restaurant supply. After about 15 minutes of a fruitless search I walked away from Noel to find a store employee. They proved equally elusive, and so I returned to where I'd left Noel, ready to give up. He was gone. I looked in all directions and then I heard his voice. "Pastor, I think I've found just the plate we need." I'm not sure if God speaks in a Welsh accent, but the voice came from on high. I looked up, and saw that Noel had climbed the shelves as if they were a ladder. He was at least twenty feet in the air, holding on to the shelf with one hand, opening a large box with the other. Apparently this is how they do it in Wales.

To climb that shelf Noel trusted what, his seventy-five year old athletic skills? The fact I might have caught him if he fell? No. He trusted the grace of God. He trusted the sanctity of his errand. Noel lives inside a state of grace and so he knows that every bit of church-work, from the highest note in a descant to the lowliest of chores has certain holiness about it.

When you travel you bring your geography along for the ride. Joe Burt may as well have earth from Alabama in his briefcase, for he brings the place with him. And Kelli and I are proud to something of Chicago into the town of Wellesley. The same phenomenon is true for those who travel from a state of grace out into the God-forsaken corners of our world. You bring something of Christ with you.

I remember sitting in the operating waiting room at Children's Memorial Hospital two years ago, waiting, waiting, waiting as Isaiah had heart surgery. A room full of parents barely able to release their children into anesthesia; nearly undone by the awful gift of hours to contemplate the prospect of a far greater loss.

Kelli and I sat in that God-forsaken room. And then you began walking through the door. Chef Guy was first and he told some jokes and shared some wild stories. Edward was next and he prayed and read and listened carefully. Late in the day Dave Cunat walked in and we sat with him in silence. And each time Epiphany stepped into that day the grace of God came with you. And so stumbling, reeling, we were steadied, sustained by the Christ you carry.

Finally, a quieter example. Last Spring I drove to the Harmony Nursing Home on Foster Avenue to visit Margarethe Hansen. She had moved from her lovely apartment to take up residence with a roommate she did not know, in a good facility, but a facility - not her home. After nearly seven years I'd seen enough to know that these transitions never go well. And so I walked down the hall toward her room feeling bad for Margarethe, and more than a little sorry for myself. She was sleeping. I sat down in a chair next to her bed and she woke up a few minutes later. She smiled, and I said, "How is it here." And then, she pointed to the window next to her bed, to the treetops and the sunlight and she smiled again and said, "Pastor, you can see seven different shades of green from this window."

Grace taught Margarethe how to see and so in her window there are no iron bars, just green and sky and the goodness of our God. This woman's vision was formed in Europe, by the deeper strains of German Lutheranism that continue to inform our church. But it was sustained in this place. That state of grace that Margarethe stepped into when she first found Epiphany was here twenty-five years later when Kelli and I walked through the doors and it will be here two-hundred years from now.

A few more thoughts, a coda. Grace, of course, remains, but I intend to take one vivid instance of that miracle with me. I was twenty years old when I first met Kelli. I told her I wanted to be a minister on our second date. She could not have been more enthusiastic. I wonder though, what her response would have been if I'd said that I also wanted her to be a minister's wife. Which has to be the most strange office in all of Christendom. Not that Kelli could ever show the strain. She has prayed for you and loved you, delighted at your triumph and cried with you in your pain. I cannot tell you how many times I have hurried down to coffee hour, searching for a church member who I knew to be suffering or rejoicing, bursting with the need to talk. I walk through the doors, and I see Kelli, already at your side, listening with the most focused sort of attention to your stories, to your lives. She's coming with me. And Epiphany will be poorer for her absence.

But miracles will continue to unfold within these walls and to pour forth from these doors. And someday, one day, I will hear about them. In 1749 the great Congregational minister Jonathon Edwards was dismissed from his pulpit by a vote of 200 to 23. * His congregation fired him because he refused to serve communion to some young members of the church whom he suspected of reading improper books. In his farewell sermon Reverend Edwards, "we will soon be separated, but not forever." And then, in a literal but odd interpretation of Paul's letter to the Colossians he predicted that at the final trumpet call, when all stand before Christ for judgment he would meet his church again, "to bear witness against them, with Christ, as their judge and assessor, to condemn them."

Sad as this morning is, aren't you glad we're ending on a very good note? And aren't you glad that in the intervening 150 years we've realized that if the cross is for one of us, it must be for all of us? I hope Rev. Edwards felt joy when his expectations were upended and he saw all his people streaming into God's embrace.

I do love his conviction that someday, ministers and their congregations will stand together before the throne of God. Imagine, standing on the threshold of paradise, and being asked "Epiphany, you were given a piece of Christ's Kingdom on earth, in your church there was a state of grace. How did you live within it?" I suppose that at first our answer will focus on our more obvious accomplishments. Marching in the street for peace six months before war was declared. Feeding thousands of hungry people while candles glow and the piano plays. Teaching children in Romania. Throwing the doors of the church open as widely as we knew how and then inviting an entire neighborhood to worship. We have earned the right to brag a bit. But then, I think, after that initial burst, we will speak in softer tones, to report the everyday miraculous. Telling God and reminding each other of the gentle and sustaining grace made real here on this corner. Until that day, I say farewell and with all my heart I thank you for teaching me how to be a minister, for revealing Jesus to my family, for being wholly and completely, the church. Praise God. Amen.

Rev. Matt Fitzgerald

December 10, 2006

The Second Sunday in Advent

Pastor Matt’s Farewell Service and Sermon

* Note on Rev. John Edwards

In 1748, there had come a crisis in his relations with his congregation. The Half-Way Covenant , adopted by the synods of 1657 and 1662, had made baptism alone the condition to the civil privileges of church membership, but not of participation in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper . Edwards's grandfather and predecessor, Solomon Stoddard, had been even more liberal, holding that the Supper was a converting ordinance and that baptism was a sufficient title to all the privileges of the church. As early as 1744, Edwards, in his sermons on the Religious Affections, had plainly intimated his dislike of this practice. In the same year, he had published in a church meeting the names of certain young people, members of the church, who were suspected of reading improper books, and also the names of those who were to be called as witnesses in the case. It has often been reported that the witnesses and accused were not distinguished on this list, and so, therefore, the entire congregation was in an uproar. However, Patricia Tracy's research has cast doubt on this version of the events, noting that in the list, he read from, the names were definitely distinguished. Those involved were eventually disciplined for disrespect to the investigators rather than for the original incident. In any case, the incident further deteriorated the relationship between Edwards and the congregation. In a time of significant cultural foment, he was associated with the old guard.