It’s time to go, not time to leave

The following is an excerpt from Dr. Garwood Anderson’s Valediction, preached during Evensong in St. Mary’s Chapel on May 19, 2023.

St. Paul to the Galatians: “My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you!” (Gal. 4:19 RSV)

While you are not our “little children,” we are in travail until Christ be formed in you. This is balanced by our own personal travail that Christ be formed in us along with the questions we have about how equipped we are to have Christ formed in you when we know he is quite incompletely formed in us.

And, yet, this has been our shared project for these last several years—that Christ be formed in us. The difference between you—students—and us, faculty, staff, and administration—is that we have fewer excuses. The rich banquet set before you for these past three years or so has been before some of us much longer. And even if we have had a hand in preparing some of the food offered to you, we are fellow diners; we have been on this journey with you.

I pray to God that we have been faithful. I say to you that you have been faithful. It is a remarkable thing about a community like this one—how much capacity the students have to make us better than before they came to us. And you have.

Earlier this week, someone asked me, when you are at Commencement, do you ever feel emotional as you see people graduating and leaving?

My answer was, No, not at all. Not even a little bit. I have to read Latin, and, mercifully, it leaves me no room for any emotions except for fear.

OK, so maybe not at Commencement. But in the weeks leading up and the many weeks to follow—oh, yeah. A lot.

Here is the thing: It’s time to go. And those words are carefully chosen. It is not time to leave; it’s time to go.

You might have thought this was a seminary, but it is a missionary sending agency. It always has been, and, by the mercy of God, it always will be. Or we should close.

So you are sent, and you are going, but you are not leaving. You cannot leave us.

We need you literally and figuratively to come back. We need to hear and to know about your curacy, what you’re learning and how you’re growing; your church plant of a parish for the ACNA; your faithful efforts to renew a moribund Episcopal Church parish; your chaplaincy to persons otherwise forgotten and alone; your ministry to persons on death row; how you are in way over your head and how you wish you had paid more attention in class!

We need to know, and you need to know that the investment—the blood, sweat, and tears of these last several years—has launched the hardest and best work for Jesus you could have ever asked for or imagined.

You see, your sentence was for three years, in most cases. Some of us are here for 10, 15, and 20 and more years! It’s purgatory, I tell you!

And if you leave us, the loss will be too much.

We need you, like Lazarus, to dip the end of your finger in water and cool our tongues. (Lk. 16:24 ESV)

Fulfill your calling, do the work to which you have been called; make our joy complete.

Dr. Garwood Anderson has served as Dean of Nashotah House Theological Seminary since 2017.