There are good goodbyes and there are bad ones.
Long ago, back when I didn’t want girls to be interested in me, think middle school, there was one particular girl who had a crush on me. She told everyone in the school she did, and what do you think happened? Every day lots of people would run up to me at recess and say, “Troy, did you know that this girl has a crush on you? She wants you to ask her out.”
I wanted to do nothing of the sort. I wanted to run as far as I could from that conversation.
This went on for a couple of years, ebbing and flowing with the seasons.
Finally, one day she caught up with me and asked me if she could call me that night. I think I was so worn down, I said yes to her. Of course, this is the era of home phones. I was in the kitchen when the call came, and I have to say, friends, I was the worst.
I said “hello.” I think I grunted a few times. She just kept talking and talking. Finally, my older brother came walking into the kitchen. I covered the receiver and said to him, “How do I get off of this call?”
His answer? “Just hang up.”
So I did.
She was mid-sentence. I always wondered how long it took her to figure out I was no longer there.
The good news? It worked. She was done with me. The bad news? That was a really jerky thing for me to do. That was a bad goodbye. It took her years to want to speak to me again. We did finally move on with our lives, and it’s now water under the bridge. But I have to say that wasn’t my finest moment.
Life is a series of beginnings and endings. The band Semisonic nailed this in their song “Closing Time,” when they sang, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”
There are, of course, good goodbyes. I can recall my parents dropping me off at college, and when it came time for them to drive home, we all hugged and cried. I got to relive this a few years back when we took our daughter to Michigan State for freshman year. She was running late for something, so we had a fairly quick hug, but then Jess and I walked through Brody Hall in silence, both with tears in our eyes.
Why do we have to say goodbye?
I think it’s part of the rhythm of how God created us. There is something in life that requires blessed departures. You have to go to grow, and God knows this.
Really since Easter this year, I’ve been dwelling on the need for Jesus to depart so soon after his resurrection. He’s gone forty days after doing the one thing that has most revolutionized the world, being raised from the dead. Imagine how quickly he could have changed the world by sticking around for longer. He could have gone on a world tour — Come and see the man who defeated death! Crowds would flock to him. Who wouldn’t want the chance to hear him now?
Yet, he leaves. And for ten days his disciples are left waiting and wondering. They were pondering what he had told them, but they were unsure what really would happen next. Their minds were still set on things that weren’t really what God was up to in Jesus. They asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” That is, now that Jesus has risen from the dead, will he kick the Romans out and restore the kingly rule of David back to Jerusalem? But Jesus’ project was different and grander than their hopes.
He said to them, “It is not for you to know the times or the periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.”
In other words, Jesus needed to go so that they could grow. If he stayed, their growth would have been stunted. They needed room for the Holy Spirit. They needed space to see who they would become, growing into all they had learned and seen in Jesus.
You see, Jesus needed to make room for the Holy Spirit to come — a blessed departure. No doubt his departure brought tears to their eyes. They surely spent the next ten days going through the swirl of emotions all of us have when someone we love is no longer with us. I can only imagine their conversations where they wrestled with what was next for them.
And then things changed.
On the Day of Pentecost, the day we mark today still, those fearful, lost disciples received the gift that they were waiting for. Jesus went away for the very reason that they needed the capacity to receive the Holy Spirit.
As the Spirit came over them with power, they suddenly were equipped in a way they had never imagined. This ragtag band of tax collectors, zealots, and fishermen were transformed into so much more than they were without the Holy Spirit. This group that more often than not got things wrong suddenly were equipped to speak powerfully and truthfully to all about God’s business. The languages that they usually spoke transformed into sounds that others could now understand.
They burst forth from their hiding place into the streets of Jerusalem with their message. Now — finally — they were ready to do what Jesus has been training them to do.
It’s a bold start. It’s almost like a football team that has scripted its first fifteen plays with an eye to overwhelming their opponent. For the first quarter, they’ve got them on their heels, but then things slow down a bit. The opposition finds a way, shifting the momentum.
As Acts continues, the disciples are now called apostles (which means those who are sent), except these guys who were supposed to be sent hunker down in Jerusalem. They don’t go to Judea and Samaria and the ends of the earth. They don’t go into all the world to make disciples. They stay put until the persecution in Jerusalem becomes so great that they flee for their lives.
They had to go to grow, but it appears that God had to kick them out of the nest!
Why did Jesus have to leave them? His departure made the space for the Holy Spirit to guide them into what was next. If he didn’t leave, their growth gets stunted. If he didn’t leave, the church never launches in all of its many forms around the world. If he didn’t leave, his empowering presence would not be with us.
One of the things I am learning in this season of life is that God has designed things purposefully with endings and new beginnings. They are necessary for growth, even if they are sometimes hard. When you dropped your child off at college for the first time, it was hard, wasn’t it? But it was also needed for them to grow up into who they were becoming. Or if you ever had a close friend who had to move away for a season of life to care for an aging parent, your goodbye surely wasn’t easy, but you knew that there was good in store for them.
You have to go to grow. It’s the way of life.
Did you know that our word “goodbye” is actually a shortening of “God be with ye”? At some point in the 15th century, our language contracted God be with ye into goodbye. So, every time you say goodbye to someone, you’re wishing them a blessed departure. You’re saying, “May God go with you.”
There’s also a flip side to this. There are bad departures. Bad goodbyes, if you will. The more I thought about how God has designed us for coming and going, the more I realized that there are good ways to do this and bad ways. Good goodbyes are hard but meaningful, but I wonder if this is why bad goodbyes feel so empty and bring up such hurt.
I had a small one of these just the past week. For four years now I’ve been a mentor to an elementary student. We’ve done a lot together in that time. I’ve helped with reading and math. I’ve listened when he shared what was going on in his life. We’d talk about how he was navigating relationships with others at the school.
His birthday happens to be late in the school year. The first couple of years I showed up with a birthday present close to his birthday, except he was never there that week. One of his parents has made it a point to take him on a special trip that week, pulling him from school.
This year I was prepared. We spent much of the second half of the year playing chess. It was actually his idea. I know the basics of chess and could show him, but he had a lot of natural talent for the game. I actually bought him his own chess set for his birthday this year. I learned my lesson and gave it to him a couple of weeks back, so we actually enjoyed some games on his new board.
I went this week knowing that this was the last week of tutoring and that there was a chance he might be off on a trip. The school didn’t call to say he was out, so I went, only to find that he indeed was gone. My heart sank a little. I didn’t get a chance to fist bump him one more time and tell him to have a good summer. There’s a chance I won’t continue on with him as he moves schools. When I said, “See you next week” last time, I wasn’t anticipating that it might have been “Goodbye.”
I think bad goodbyes have this element where the future feels unsure. I don’t know what’s coming next fall. It might all be over. Which is sad. It bums me out. It hurts a little, if I’m being honest.
One of the things I did not expect would be a regular part of being a pastor is that we are on the receiving end of a lot of bad departures. I cannot begin to tell you how many times over the past twenty years I have been ghosted by people with whom I shared a lot of life and attention. Those bad departures feel empty because there was no goodbye. There was no sense of “God is calling me to something different.” Pastors are left trying to chase people down who don’t particularly want to be found or we’re left guessing about the reason. Did I do or say something? Did I not do or not say something? Did I hurt them? Did someone else?
Bad departures make us feel unseen. That’s not only true for pastors. It’s true for us all.
I’m sure many of us have had friendships fray or even end because what we valued or believed moved further and further apart until things became irreconcilable. Relationships are hard work, even when things are generally fine. But when there’s a growing distance between people? It’s easy to let them drift off, fading like a memory.
Bad departures feel empty and make us feel hurt, don’t they?
Life will always be a series of hellos and goodbyes. That’s a given. But there are good ways and hurtful ways to handle those.
So, you may be wondering — what does this have to do with Pentecost and life as a church?
I think we see in Jesus a model for blessed departures. Done well, the closing of one chapter and the moving to the next creates the opportunity for growth. That’s exactly what Jesus did. He went to be with the Father so there was room for the Holy Spirit to come and build the church. Greater and greater things were done because Jesus took his leave.
We are a church today because Jesus did so.
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.
You have to go to grow.
But we also know how destructive bad departures can be. We can learn from Jesus that in ending one thing what we’re really doing is making space for the next good thing to happen. It’s “I wish you well,” not, “I’m outta here!”
As Pentecost people, I pray that we learn from Jesus how to handle our hellos and goodbyes well. When we do so, we create space for the Spirit to grow us, both individually and as a whole.