This Sunday, we will celebrate Graduate Sunday, honoring two graduates in our congregation: one graduating from high school and one from college. We will also share in a “Farewell and Godspeed” for our high school graduate and their family as they prepare for a new chapter in another place.
All of it has me thinking about transitions — about the many thresholds of life.
A threshold is that place where something is ending even as something else is beginning. Life is full of them. We recognize many of them early in life: birthdays, first days of school, getting a driver’s license, graduations, moving into a dorm room. We mark them with parties, photographs, ceremonies, and cake.
But the thresholds do not stop coming once we become adults. We just tend to recognize them less formally.
There are thresholds everywhere: beginning a new job, retiring from an old one, moving into a new home, joining a congregation, becoming a parent, becoming an empty nester, discovering a new hobby, finally deciding to clean out the attic, saying goodbye to neighbors, friends, coworkers, pastors, or fellow church members who shaped us for a season and then moved on.
Some transitions arrive with excitement. Others arrive with grief. Most carry a little of both. That is part of why the church’s rituals matter so much to me.
Celebrating graduations and sharing in rites like “Farewell and Godspeed” give us an opportunity to stop long enough to recognize what is happening among us. They remind us that relationships matter, that seasons of life matter, and that we ourselves are changed along the way. The liturgy for “Farewell and Godspeed” says, “God has blessed you in this community of faith, and God has blessed us through you.” I think that is exactly right.
At the end of April, we celebrated the ministry of Ford, our longtime organist and music minister, after more than thirty years of faithful service among us. Long enough that hymns, holidays, funerals, weddings, choir rehearsals, and ordinary Sundays all carry the imprint of his ministry and care.
We also recently marked the Emmanuel Senior Enrichment Center’s departure from our building after forty years of shared ministry and partnership.
Both moments reminded me how important it is for communities to pause and acknowledge that something meaningful has happened — that people and ministries have shaped us, and that we are different because they were here.
Years ago, I worked with a pastor who often said during moments of transition, “We are now a different congregation, whether we want to be or not.” I have never forgotten that. Because it is true. Every arrival changes us. Every departure changes us. Every threshold leaves its mark.
As a pastor, I have come to appreciate moments when we stop long enough to tell the truth about what is happening among us. Not every transition gives us the gift of a formal liturgy or farewell. Often, people leave quietly. Seasons change before we fully notice they are ending.
But I think there is something deeply faithful in being able to say, “This was the place God called me to be for this season.”And perhaps there is equal faithfulness in blessing one another as we step toward whatever comes next.
So this Sunday, we will celebrate achievements. We will offer prayers. We will say goodbye. We will wish one another godspeed. And in doing so, we will help one another cross life’s thresholds with gratitude, courage, and the reminder that wherever we go next, God is already there.