Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter (April 26, 2026)
Transcript
This transcript was generated by YouTube AI and edited for clarity.
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Please be seated.
Just before I left my home in Syracuse to come here to St. James about three and a half years ago, I had lunch with a dear friend of mine. At the time, he was the pastor of the Congregational church in downtown Syracuse. I was talking with him about the mixed feelings I had—not about coming here, because I was excited—but about the sadness of leaving behind friendships, work, and ministry that I loved.
Eric said something really wise to me—one of those things that seems simple and obvious, but that I’ve heard echo again and again over these past few years. He said, “Meredith, ministry is full of hellos and goodbyes. And life is full of hellos and goodbyes.”
I’m remembering that simple truth this week, because we have some hellos and goodbyes among us.
This morning, I was standing in my kitchen thinking about Bryn and Alliona moving away, and saying farewell to them today. They’ve been here and have transformed our church with their infectious joy, their curiosity, and their growing faith. And I stood there and started to cry—though I told the 8:00 service not to tell them that. You know how it is when you drop your kid off at college: you let them close the door, and then you cry.
I don’t want to say goodbye. But life and ministry are full of hellos and goodbyes.
Many of you also know that the O’Halloran family, such a central part of our life together, is moving to Ohio. Their presence and witness, with their son Gil, helped shape who we are. I’m not sure we would have undertaken the parish house project—the ramp, the accessible bathroom—without them. When I visited them yesterday to offer a gift and a prayer, I thanked them for the ways they’ve changed us for the better. They are moving to be closer to their daughter, who is expecting a child in June. So this is both a goodbye and a joyful hello.
This week, too, a member of our community lost their beautiful mother. She was a witness for justice—one of the first same-sex couples, with her wife Bonnie, to be married in Massachusetts. To the very end, she had an incredible sense of humor. It was a privilege to know her and to be part of her goodbye.
And I know there are others among us carrying their own goodbyes.
With all of that—the hellos and goodbyes that make up a human life—we turn to the Gospel.
Jesus says, “I am the gate. I am the door. Whoever enters through me will come and go, and find pasture.” They will be nourished. They will belong.
And I think of Psalm 121, which many of us know by heart because we say it at noonday prayer. Noonday is often a time of coming and going—a pause in the middle of a busy day when we are moving from one thing to the next. And in that moment, we remember that it is God in whom we live and move and have our being.
Psalm 121 ends like this: “The Lord shall watch over your going out and your coming in, from this time forth forevermore.”
That is what Jesus is saying when he says, “I am the door.”
All of our comings and goings, all the hellos and goodbyes that make up our lives, happen through that door—under the protection and love of Christ.
So I want you to think about the doors in your life. Your comings and goings, your hellos and goodbyes.
You can take this very literally. What does it feel like to come into this space? What happens inside you as you walk through that door? And what is it like when you walk back out again—when you see the trees and the sky, and feel the wind? How are you different?
And then think about the doorways through which you have passed from one season of your life to another. Many of them happen in church: baptism, marriage, death. But there are also classroom doors, hospital doors, the doors of friends’ houses that you walked through for the last time without knowing it. Doors of workplaces, courtrooms. Our lives are full of these thresholds.
And when we pass through them, we are not the same.
What if, from this time forth and forevermore, every time you walked through a doorway, you remembered Jesus saying: “I am the gate. I am the door. I will watch over your going out and your coming in.” And that whoever comes through him will find pasture—will be nourished—through all the hellos and goodbyes: the joyful ones, the painful ones, and, as is so often the case, the ones that are both.
As Psalm 23 says: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
One more thing.
Jesus says all of this about being the door in the context of the story of the man born blind—the one we heard a few Sundays before Easter. Jesus heals him, and then the man is dragged from place to place, questioned again and again. “What happened to you?” “Were you really blind?” And he keeps answering simply: “I was blind, and now I see.”
But there’s a detail we sometimes forget. Because of his testimony, he is cast out of his community. The authorities tell him not to come back.
And it is then that he goes to Jesus—and that is where Jesus says, “I am the door.”
I am the door you just went out through, and the door through which you come in.
For those of us who have found shelter in our comings and goings—who have found safety and belonging in this place, and in a life lived in Christ—it is our privilege and our joy to extend that same safety and belonging to others.
To everyone who longs for it. To everyone who has lost it. To everyone from whom it has been taken.
Christ came that we might have life, and have it abundantly—and that we might share it. That we might keep the doors open, so that all may pass through into safety, belonging, and love.
And when we say that, we are not talking about converting people. Jesus himself says, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold.” All people belong to God.
Our calling is to remind people of that belonging. To extend safety and compassion—such as we have received—whether they ever walk through these doors or not.
Life is full of hellos and goodbyes.
“The Lord shall watch over your going out and your coming in, from this time forth and forevermore.”
Amen.