The world may be about its usual frantic activity, going very much its own way, for nothing much seems to change.  Unending war costing untold lives and treasure, food banks which are bare, food pantries and soup kitchens turning away hungry people desperate to stay alive and stay afloat.  Politics as usual where opinion polls and scoring points against one’s adversaries eclipses any possibility of sharing a vision of a more just and humane world.  A world that is being ravaged by out-of-control consumption and energy use, where pollution and global warming threaten so much—and so many things seem always to stand in the way of mobilizing governments and societies to live sustainably.

     And so many of us here have had a vision of a truly inclusive church that could actually be about being what the church is supposed to be in being a beacon and a light for something better, a force for justice and love and hope.  Instead, we are consumed with the need to simply establish that the church is in fact called to be truly inclusive.

     On a much closer-to-home individual level, how many of us struggle to find our way when so many things seem to conspire to undo us?

     Swimming against the tide so much of the time seems more like being up against a tidal wave.

     It is against this hugely complex backdrop that I say to you, “welcome to Advent.”

     As we enter into a new church year, the themes are watching, waiting, anticipating—as what has been gives way to what will be.  It is that time of complexity and ambiguity, between the times, feeling travail within us and with anxiety concerning all the things that are dear to us.  Advent is a time of endings; Advent is a time of new beginnings.

     Advent is about waiting.  Watching.  Preparing.  Being open.  Being ready.  Accepting each other in our brokenness.  Accepting our acceptance by God. Perhaps most importantly, of trusting in God in spite of all the world can throw at us.  And that is simply because for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, for those who can discern the signs of the times, Christ is coming.  And Christ will come again.

     The whole point of saying that Christ will come again is to affirm that in God's plan, there is meaning to that which we cannot fathom, that in Isaiah's vision, there will come a time in the ultimate consummation when hunger, war, bigotry and prejudice will no longer rule.  It is that ultimate hope and vision that all tribes and nations will “beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword again nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”  That is the ultimate hope, the ultimate vision.

     We are called to have our eyes open, to seek understanding and wisdom and mercy as we try to hold together some sort of coherent world view, and at the same time be very involved in that world.  And yet we are also told to wait and to watch, for we do not know the hour our Lord is coming, when all will be both fulfilled and redeemed.

     The grand themes of Advent are important to have in mind as we seek to understand and have a sense of what is going on in our own lives, our own community.  For Advent is always and ever about endings—and new beginnings.

     It is about a sense of fulfillment and wholeness, even consummation.  And new beginnings are about new possibilities for hope, for sensing that God is doing something new, calling us out in ways we may not have sensed, may not have imagined.

     And it certainly is about watching, and waiting, where what was is giving way to what will be—even though we live with uncertainty and ambiguity.  That can be hard, at times, very hard.  And yet, in time, travail gives way to new birth, new life, new hope.

     Twenty three years ago to this very day, the First Sunday of Advent, 1984, was a time of new birth, new life, new hope—as well as a whole lot of uncertainty, ambiguity and even misgivings.  It was on that day that I first stood before this congregation, as your new rector.  I want to tell you, we were not at all clear we had a future.  What we did have was a sense we were called to be faithful to the vision that God was calling us to be a very special presence in this community.  The buildings were falling down and in desperate need of repair.  We hadn’t practiced deferred maintenance.  We quite simply practiced no maintenance, period.  A feeding program had begun a couple of years before, and it had grown like topsy.  But we had never had more than a couple of months of funds to sustain it at any given time.

     Any number of times during the nearly year and a half I had been here under Rand Frew, I had thought to myself, thank God, the problems here were his problems, not mine.

     And of course, if I had had any idea of some of the things that lay ahead of us, I would have run the opposite direction, very fast.

     Much to my astonishment, Bishop Paul Moore had allowed the vestry to consider calling me as rector as Father Frew was departing, and even more to my astonishment, the vestry had said yes to calling me.

     Father Frew’s last Sunday had been Christ the King, just the Sunday before, and now I was here as your new rector, and my first official actions were to appoint one Cathy Roskam as well as David Norgard as my full time clergy colleagues.

     What we didn’t have in resources, we made up for in energy, in enthusiasm, in grit, and drive, and in having a vision of a church made whole and thriving, while embracing completely the sacred task we had been given, of feeding the hungry.  And we were tenacious and untiring in embracing that vision, in living out that dream.  And, it probably needs to be said, we were, I was, not just a little brash in thinking that, just maybe, and God willing, we could pull this off.

     It was a wild and wonderful and even heady time.  And it was premised on the audacious belief that if God wanted us to be here pursuing these things, God would be with us through thick and thin.  Please note that I did not say that it would be easy, clear sailing, without controversy, without pain.  No.  Definitely not.

     Whatever else one could say about my time at Holy Apostles, and different people at different times have not hesitated to apply a variety of terms, some nice to hear, some not, one theme was constant.  I had a lot of energy.  And I was tenacious, determined in pursuing the vision.

     Well, God has a way of playing tricks on us.  And one of those I have discovered in the last two or three years is that, willy nilly, and not with my consent, I am getting older—and I am feeling it.  And I have less energy.  And I have discovered that I like several other things a whole lot better than determination and tenacity.

     But the environment in which we find ourselves has not changed that much. To keep this place alive and vital in all the ways that make it all that it is, that make it the place we love so dearly, even so passionately, this place needs and deserves an energetic rector who can dream new dreams, who can work with all of you to find new ways of incarnating all that God continues to call this community to be.

     Over the past few months, I have come to realize very clearly several things.  The challenges aren’t just large, they are daunting.  The sources which have funded so much that we do here are evolving, going out of business, changing priorities.  And yet we are serving more of God’s children than ever before.  And, therefore, we need to hustle as never before to hold this place together in simple economic terms.  Now, I want to stress that we have often faced worse, far worse.  But the present is daunting nonetheless.

     That said, we are also in a strong place, a strong place in human terms, a stronger place than we have ever been in actually having a reserve to get us through lean times in terms of soup kitchen funding.  In countless ways, this parish is stronger now than it has ever been in its history.

     And then it came to me.  Would it not be better to retire sooner rather than later, in order to let this community determine who its future rector will be, and to let that person come into a parish that is strong, where the daunting challenges of the present can be faced with new life, new energy, new vision?

     The more I thought and prayed about that, the more it became clear to me what I needed to do.  And the more it became clear to me that this was right for this parish, and this was right for me, in very personal terms.

     In recent years, you need to know that I have talked with the Bishop of New York, and the wardens and vestry have discussed the fact that, inevitably, there would be a transition in the not too distant future.  And we have discussed that the nature of Holy Apostles calls for a smooth transition, with as little time between rectors as possible.  And that is why I have set my departure date far enough in advance to enable your wardens and vestry to move as far toward calling my successor as possible—before my own departure at the end of July.

     Your wardens will be briefly sharing more of what this means during announcements at our coffee hour, and there will be a parish forum on all that is happening two weeks from today, on December 16.

     You also need to know that apart from being available for consultation on an “as requested” basis, I will, quite simply, not be involved in the search for your new rector, even though in every other way, I will be here as your rector until the end of July.

     I have tried to put this news in a larger context, and in the context of the ongoing life of this parish.  But I do need to own that announcing this news conjures up in me deeply personal feelings, and, I  have to acknowledge this is a  difficult moment for me.  As much as I feel in my bones this is the right decision, and as much as I look forward to having the time and space to doing a new thing myself after I leave this place, I have truly loved being your rector.  I have given my heart, body, and soul, to this parish, its mission, its ministry, to all of you who make it all that it is.  Having the privilege of serving here has been one of the greatest gifts of my life, it has been all I could have dreamt of as a priest—and more. I feel richly blessed, and so very thankful to God—and to you.  And I intend to savor the eight months I will still be here as never before.

     I want to close using words I have used in other Advents, but seem very apt today—in the midst of such uncertainty in our world—and in a time of change from the known into the unknown both for you, but also for me:  Reinhold Niebuhr once defined Christianity as a citadel of hope built on the edge of despair.  Martin Luther was once asked what he would do if he knew the world was coming to an end tomorrow--and he said he would plant an apple tree.  The prophet Jeremiah in prophesying Jerusalem’s end, turned around and bought land there.  Where God is present there is hope.  And God is most assuredly present in and through us and in and through a world God still loves.  And God is present here, in this Church of the Holy Apostles.

     We are called to watch, to wait, to prepare, to work--to have faith that whatever lies ahead, ours and the world's salvation have been won—and that Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.

     Amen.