Here is some prerequisite information:

· The Church year is divided into season, which each season telling a different part of our story of salvation. Each season is represented by a different color that shows up on the altar hangings and on my stole (fancy churchy scarf). After Pentecost is the “season after Pentecost”, which just means this is where they stick all of the lessons that don’t neatly match the other seasons. Some call it “ordinary time”, and it is honestly my favorite season. It takes up just under half the calendar year and its color is green. After this season is Advent, which marks the beginning of the next liturgical year.

· We read almost the whole bible every three years in the Episcopal Church following prescribed readings from a “lectionary”. Each year has a predominant Gospel with Mark being in year A, Matthew B, Luke in C, and with John being mixed in throughout. You know that fancy book I read the Gospel out of? It is organized according to the lectionary. The beginning of year A in the first page. The end of year C is the last.

· I am horrible with music. When I got my “23 and me” results back it told me that I was of European decent, I had brown hair, and that I was likely tone deaf. My poor music skills are literally written on my DNA. One time a couple I was marrying insisted that I sing the Eucharistic Prayers. I was so nervous that I took vocal lessons for six weeks. It was so bad someone left a bad Facebook review about my singing.

And now for my article.

Friends,

It is the end of an age. As I write this article, I wore my green stole for the last time at the Paul Springs Retirement Community Eucharist. This coming Sunday is the last day of the Season after Pentecost, which we call “Christ the King Sunday” and we traditionally wear white. The week after that we are in a new Church year, and everything will be decked out in blue for Advent. When I read from the Gospel book this Sunday, it will be the very last lesson, as we are at the end of year C in our lectionary. The next Sunday, I will get the rare experience of reading the Gospel from the very beginning of the book. I’ve always felt that this is a profound thing for a priest to do. The last time I had the chance was three years ago and the opportunity was robbed from me. I think the bishop or someone important was in Church with us that Sunday and they got the privilege. I felt cheated, and totally forgot about it, until I realized this past Sunday that we were on the very last page of the Gospel book. We have been through a lot the past three years, and all along we were slowly making our way through the story of our salvation one Sunday at a time, with one Gospel lesson at a time, and this cycle is coming to an end.

In this coming age, I can hold onto a good thing for a little bit longer, but when we get to the beginning of the Gospel book again on December 3, 2028, that good thing will likely be gone. Maybe not totally, but different and smaller. You see, I am in the only phase of my life where someone demands that I sing to them. Since my oldest was born I sang “A pirate looks at forty” by Jimmy Buffet to him at bedtime, that is more commonly referred to as “mother, mother ocean”. My younger son decided that this song was not for him about a year ago, and he wanted his own special song. Being musically deficient, I don’t know many songs, but I do know “All the small things” by Blink182. So, I sing that pop-punk song to him slowly and gently and now it is his song. This summer, we got bunk beds, so I sing both songs to both boys, and they demand those songs. They are not like me and seem to have their mother’s knack for music. Soon, they will see as what I am, a tone-deaf loving father, and will be too old for “mother, mother ocean” and “all the small things”, and when that happens that phase of my life will be over. It will be sad, but I would want it no other way. They must grow up, and I must constantly reinvent how I tell them that I love them.

The lessons around the end of the “season after Pentecost” have strong overtones of violence and tragedy. The lesson from Luke for this Sunday is Jesus on the cross with the criminals with the second criminal asking to be remembered in Christ’s kingdom. The other took the salve of bitterness and vile, while the other facing a horrible death, chose to embrace hope.

Scripture is full of unbelievably horrible things. At the end of every phase, God was always waiting on the other side. Being cast out of the Garden of Eden would have been akin to the whole world crumbling down, but it was really the world being opened with all its glory and hardship. Not unlike how birth is the end of the world for the infant being born. I wonder how the ancient people of God felt as Jerusalem was being sacked by the Babylonians and the Romans. It was the end of everything, and the beginning of something new.

Use cynicism sparingly. It dulls the pain, but it doesn’t fix anything and its addictive. When faced with the end, I hope that we will have the audacity to ask to be remembered in Christ’s kingdom.

Blessings,

Nick