Leave-Taking
Last week, I received a lapel pin to commemorate twenty-five years of service to public education. It has actually been twenty-seven years, but my school system has only recently begun such recognitions and is a bit “behind.”
I will not get a thirty-year pin. When I close my calculus text in May, I will close a chapter of my professional life. Earlier today, I signed all the paperwork required for my retirement. My wife, who is also a teacher, beat me to the punch last Friday. We will “go out” together, a sort of Exodus.
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Taking Leave: Reflecting and Sojourning
In our educational and professional Egypt, there were no harsh taskmasters, though, and no slave labor. I hope we made some bricks and built some monuments in students’ lives. I think we did. Looking back on the time, we realize how blessed we were and are, leeks and meat pots aplenty in the land of our sojourn. However, as a wise brother once told me, “There is a calling to a place, and a calling away from a place.” After much prayer, reflection, and wise counsel, we know it is time to leave.
At the end of the school year, there will be a picnic where my various department members will roast me. You can’t work in one place for twenty-seven years and not commit many roast-worthy faux pas. We will have a good time.
I will speak a few words of gratitude and encouragement; public education is difficult. The incredibly dedicated teachers there need encouragement. The school system presented me with a commemorative school bell. Then it will be over, and we will all go home, twenty-seven years wrapped up in a few minutes. There should be more.
Understand, I am grateful for what’s done; kind and generous colleagues and friends will bid me a true farewell. Many will genuinely miss me. But, I know that my work at the school has been more than a job, more even than a profession. It has been a Christian ministry, different in kind but not in degree. In retirement, I can now devote more time to the vocational priesthood.
Taking Leave: Similarities Between Secular and Sacred
What is needed in the leave-taking from this or any vocation done for the glory of God and to the welfare of his people is not merely a retirement picnic but something like A Service for the Ending of a Pastoral Relationship and Leave-taking from a Congregation (Book of Occasional Service 2003, adapted throughout).
The celebrant (maybe the principal or my department chair in this case) should begin:
Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
God blesses meaningful work done well, with praise and thanksgiving, and in service. Or because those who perform it bless God in act even when, perhaps, they cannot in word.
A collect should gather up our hearts and minds along with the years’ successes and failures, and a life of hope and dreams:
Direct us, O Lord, in all our doings with thy most gracious favor, and further us with thy continual help; that in all our works begun, continued, and ended in thee, we may glorify thy holy Name, and finally, by thy mercy, obtain everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Then, instead of a roast, there should be a homily on the dignity and gift of work, or perhaps just a hymn. I might even suggest Lord of All Hopefulness:
Lord of all eagerness, Lord of all faith, Whose strong hands were skilled at the plane and the lathe, Be there at our labors, and give us, we pray, Your strength in our hearts, Lord at the noon of the day.
Afterward, I would stand to speak:
In the academic year of 1989-1990, I was hired by Principal N. as teacher of mathematics. I have, with God’s help and to the best of my abilities, exercised this trust, accepting its privileges and responsibilities. After prayer and careful consideration, it now seems to me that I should leave this charge, and I publicly state that my tenure as teacher of God’s children ends this day.
Should my colleagues have a say in all this? Should the principal ask?
Do you, the faculty and administration of __________, recognize and accept the conclusion of this pastoral relationship?
Most would approve —some gladly, some with mixed feelings. A few might decline, mostly the ones who will miss me. Nevertheless, it is time, and most of us know it.
I would then take a few moments to express my gratitude to those who have been more than fellow-workers: friends, confidants, mentors. I would ask forgiveness from anyone I have hurt, slighted, ignored, or failed to pray for through the years.
Prayer Marks the Process
What follows then are the prayers:
O God, you have bound us together for a time to work for the advancement of your kingdom in this place: We give you humble and hearty thanks for the ministry which we have shared in these years now past. We thank you for your patience with us despite our blindness and slowness of heart. We thank you for your forgiveness and mercy in the face of our many failures. Especially we thank you for your never-failing presence with us through these years, and for the deeper knowledge of you and of each other which we have attained. Now, we pray, be with the one who leaves and with those who stay; and grant that all of us, by drawing ever nearer to you, may always be close to each other in the communion of your saints. All this we ask for the sake of Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord. Amen.
Perhaps I might even be allowed a final blessing, for blessing is what I have longed and tried to do each day I served: blessing to my colleagues, blessing to the students, blessing to the community, blessing to the profession.
The blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always.
Take Leave for the Glory of God
Retirement from any honest work well and intentionally done for the glory of God and in humble service of God’s people is a leave-taking of one pastoral relationship. Moreover, it is the beginning of another. The accountant and homemaker, the custodian and physician, the real estate agent and financial planner, the mechanic, and yes, the teacher in our parish is a priest in that place where he glorifies God through work. It is a blessing to have been reminded of that, and we all need to be reminded of that for twenty-seven years.
Blessings.+
So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
1 Corinthians 10:31
Image: Pete Linforth from Pixabay
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