Acts 20:16-38
In two Sundays we'll be decorating the church for Advent. Thanksgiving is less than three weeks away, and before we know it we'll be lighting candles on Christmas Eve and singing Silent Night. For a lot of us, that means things are about to get nostalgic. Nostalgia is the bittersweet longing for what used to be, when things felt simpler or easier. The word was coined in 1688 by a Swiss medical student who combined two Greek words: nostos, homecoming, and algos, pain. Nostalgia is the pain of wanting to go home. Psychologists tell us it tends to show up when we feel lonely, uncertain, or a little lost, and that what we usually miss is who we were back then. We were needed. Life made sense. We knew where we fit. Nostalgia can be good for us, but it has limits. When the pull of the past is stronger than our hope and vision of the future, we get stuck. We can't move into the future God is preparing, and we can't return to the past, because it is no more. Beneath that longing is something we don't always recognize: grief. If we don't deal with it, the longing for what was will keep us from embracing what God has for us today.
In Acts 20, something is coming to an end for the Apostle Paul. For eight years he has traveled through Macedonia, Greece, and the province of Asia announcing the good news about Jesus. Churches were planted, lives were changed, and the power of the Spirit was on display. It may have been the best season of his life. Now he's hurrying to Jerusalem, so he stops at Miletus and sends for the elders of the church in Ephesus. It will be their last conversation.
First, Paul teaches us that even good seasons end. He reminds the elders how he lived among them, with humility, with tears, and through severe testing, teaching publicly and from house to house. Most of us know how to end bad things. Ending good things is harder. Henry Cloud, in his book Necessary Endings, says endings are a normal part of life because life has seasons. Some endings come because something went wrong. Others come because something is finished. Paul has proclaimed the whole will of God. The work in Ephesus is done, and it still isn't easy.
Second, sometimes the next season looks uncertain. Compelled by the Spirit, Paul is going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen there, except that prison and hardship are waiting. We expect the Spirit to lead us around hard things, but here he leads Paul straight toward them, and Paul goes. He holds one thing tightly, finishing the task Jesus gave him, so he can hold everything else loosely, even his own life.
Third, we will face opposition. Paul warns the elders that savage wolves will come, some from outside and some from their own number. Endings leave us exposed. Sometimes opposition comes from people who pull against what God is doing next. Sometimes it comes from voices inside us: "It was better back then." "Maybe we should go back." Opposition isn't always a sign we're in the wrong place. It means we keep watch, the way Jesus told his disciples when he sent them out like sheep among wolves.
None of this feels good, and it isn't supposed to. We're supposed to feel grief. Hebrews says the faithful who came before us were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Augustine prayed, "You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." We're homesick. That longing is good. God put it there. Every good season was a taste of home, but it was never meant to be home. The home we long for is ahead of us.
So how do we let go of what was? We grieve in order to go. Paul and the elders show us how. They named the ending. Paul didn't slip away quietly. He told them they would never see his face again. They remembered honestly, the good and the hard, unlike Israel in the wilderness, who remembered the free fish in Egypt and forgot the slavery. They handed it over. Paul committed them to God and to the word of his grace, because the church never belonged to him. Jesus bought it with his own blood. And they grieved together. They knelt, prayed, wept, and held one another. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus even knowing he would raise him. Tears and trust go together.
This holiday season, have a send-off. Identify one season that has ended. Sit at the table with the people who lived it with you, or with God if you're on your own. Tell a few stories, the good and the hard. Pray Paul's words over it. Then ask, "What will we take with us into this new season?"
We can mourn the season that was and move toward the season that is. That's what it means to follow Jesus. The road ahead may be uncertain, and we may face opposition, but we won't walk it alone. Jesus promised, "I am with you always." His way isn't always the easy way, but it is the way that leads us home.
