LAST GOODBYE

 

One of life’s poignancies is that we often don’t know we are doing something for the last time. There comes a point when we kiss someone for the last time; when we visit the cinema for the final time; when we read our last book; when we make our final trip to the seaside; and most importantly, when we see someone we love for the last time. Perhaps that is a blessing. For when we know it is the final time, it causes real pain – none more so than when we say goodbye to those we are closest to.

 

When the apostle Paul asked the elders of the Ephesian church to meet with him in Acts 20, they didn’t receive a Zoom link; it would have taken them the best part of a week to make the journey to Miletus, so it would have been clear to them that something was up. The account Luke makes in Acts takes a handful of minutes to read, but can only have been the headlines of what Paul had to share. These highlights give us much to think about and Paul has three messages to give to those who oversee the church.

 

These are the primacy of preaching the Gospel; offering pastoral care and attending to the neediest in the community.

 

Paul talks of declaring the whole purpose of God, and it takes discipline and courage to do this. Once we know a story, we can be lax in how we share it. You have probably all had the experience of listening to someone tell you a story where they slip in the names of lots of different people without explaining to you who these people are or how they relate to one another; and where the story is not told chronologically – like one of those tricky TV dramas with lots of flashbacks when you’re never quite sure it’s the present or not.

 

We can assume too much in sharing the Gospel – that the people listening to us have a working knowledge of God, Jesus and the Bible. This is probably less true today than at any point in the modern era. Rule number one is not to assume anything and not to tire of telling the story of Jesus, from his incarnation to his death and resurrection, to his ascension and coming again. And to tell it in a way that helps people to make sense of their own lives and longings. The best evangelists are those who intuitively feel that their story flows with the rhythm of God’s story. And we should tell it in a way that helps people to live as everyday disciples of Christ.

 

That people should live as followers of Jesus from Monday to Saturday and not simply by attending church on Sunday is not as blindingly obvious as it seems. If it was, we wouldn’t be dreaming up so many initiatives to help them. Many roles in our world increasingly demand wisdom and strength to fulfil. Helping people to figure out how to follow Jesus while being a lawyer or a care worker, a traffic warden or a nurse, a business leader or a chemist is fundamental. Without this assistance, people tend to compartmentalise their lives, boxing off Sunday from the rest of the week. And there is a special risk for clergy, that they begin to forget what the secular workplace is like, if they really knew it in the first place. It shows the inestimable value of lay leadership in a church, but also the need for curiosity in clergy. To help people follow Jesus, we need to know more about the paths that parishioners walk down each week, and we can only do this by listening attentively to how they describe them.

 

This flows into the question of looking after others. Pastoral care is not an optional extra. From time to time, clergy say to me they delegate pastoral care and visiting to others to do, so they can focus on the strategic issues and preaching the Gospel. I do not think it is an either / or issue, and I don’t think it ever has been. In his valedictory words to the elders, Paul says he taught publicly ‘and from house to house’. I doubt he was talking about thirty bedroom villas on the Mediterranean coast. These would have been intimate settings, with people living on top of one another. Paul cared deeply