I give thanks in every remembrance of you, remembering your partnership in the Gospel from the first day until now. That is the Scripture that seemed to fit for us today. For “thank you” may well be the words you will hear or say most today. Around here, that seems to be what we do—experience the joy and blessing and opportunity, and recognize and share the gratitude. So I give thanks in every remembrance today, Vince.

Thank you for bringing the music to us, through your own voice in solos sung and psalms chanted in worship services and funerals. Thanks for the wacky duets you and Andy wrote and sang together, for the summer hymn sings and writers’ services, and for the weird ways you’ve opened our appreciation of different kinds of church music and the instruments that play it. Never will I forget that ukuleles are not just for luaus and can play anything anywhere… including, “Were You There when they crucified my Lord.”  You put the music in us, word by word, note by note, bird by bird.

Thank you for inviting the silence in us, too, through your practice of contemplation, prayer, and sacred study. Your leadership in small groups, Bible studies, prayers, and a steady invitation to all of us to discover our own practice, however known, has opened the way so that we may experience the Holy One in the mystery of our own souls. And our lives are so noisy, it helps us heal when we sit in the quiet.

Thank you for being family with us. You made us family in holy rituals–performed marriages and baptisms, shared in memorial services and blessings, celebrated and mourned in the seasons of love. Through your leadership of our open and affirming ministry, you reminded us that we are all family. All of us.  We have expanded the family circle, year after year, hello and goodbye, laughing and crying together.

As Andy said, your family is our family, too.  Rachelle the good, someone called you once, more than once, your leadership with those in pain in the support groups here, your good work at Oak Hammock and Shands, the courage and fortitude, and kindness and grace with which your life is lived, all have touched and taught us. Watching your courage has taught us to have faith again and again, in the days and nights. As you lay in the hospital while we all prayed and prayed and lit candles everyday when it seemed Nola would slip away from us, you offered us an example of a holy tenacious mother’s love.  We learned about being a mother and a father, about letting go and holding on, by sharing Nola with you.

Thank you for being a preacher with us. You have spoken the words of God as revealed in your own soul with conviction and questions, articulation and beauty. Your sermons have opened the possibilities of Scripture to those who’d long since given up hope that there was value to be discovered in those pages, and you also reminded us that the Spirit still reveals light and truth in our own experience in sometimes funny ways. You have spoken and lived unapologetically as a person of faith among us, equally magnanimous with those who do not believe they believe anything at all as with those who claim a spiritual path. In the beauty of what you have written and spoken, we each have found a bit of wisdom for the road we make by walking.  That is the mystery of good preaching—it always sounds like it was meant just for me, and the person next to me feels the same.

There are a lot more thank yous that could be said, but I stop with this one—and this last one is the hardest. Thank you for leaving. Not because we won’t miss you so terribly, because we will. But thank you for saying yes to the vocation of your life. You said yes when you were called here. You said yes to the leadership opportunities you have been given and have made new ones. And now, stepping into an unknown future, you are saying yes again to the Spirit who is inviting you to do a new thing. And your faith community here deeply mourns your leaving AS we also rejoice with you in the yes. In every conversation I have had with other UCGers about your leaving, without exception, we have all said to each other, “We will miss them AND I know they are doing what they need to do.” Because you say yes to the mystery of the calling, you also invite us to do the same. For our calling here, to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly is one we share with you. It is our vocation as well as it is yours. That we have been given the chance to travel on the road together here for awhile has been a grace—and our sadness at your departure is but evidence of the bounty of blessings we have enjoyed in one another’s company. And, we can do no other than to celebrate your going forth to continue to share those blessings and learnings with others.

So, Vince, we thank God in every remembrance of you, Rachelle, and Nola, and with hearts full of gratitude, we look back in love and look forward with anticipation, blessings, and YES. Thank you, go with God and with our love. Blessed be.