Departure Time

    Most of us are familiar with reading the big screens at airports announcing the details of arrivals and departures.  Who hasn't heard the announcement:  "Flight number so and so, for such a city , is departing from Gate number whatever, in ten minutes."


    With what mixed emotions I hear these words.  As a boy of twelve, being sent away to school for the first time, those words sounded an note of dread in my heart.   But at the opposite end of the school year, with exams done and the long vacation stretching deliciously before me, what rapturous joy the same words evoked.
    Even today, I hear those words with mixed emotions.


    In his Second Letter to Timothy, Chapter 4, verse 6, Paul makes the announcement of his own impending departure:
   "For I am already on the point of being sacrificed, the time of my departure has come."
How did he feel about it?  Typically, he was looking up, and yet he made no effort to minimize his precarious situation. 


     This was his second time of imprisonment in Rome, but unlike the house arrest recorded in the Book of Acts, he was now in chains, facing a trial with one foregone conclusion, his own execution.  On the point of departure, he looked back at his work accomplished:
     "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."
He also looked around him, at his companions and the colleagues who had shared in his ministry.  It is a surprising list.
   Demas, "in love with the present world," had left him.
   Crescens and Titus had gone on errands to other places.
   Tychicus had been sent to Ephesus.
   Luke alone was with him.
   There was a warning about Alexander the coppersmith, who had done him great harm. 
   And then there was faithful Timothy, whom Paul urged to come quickly, bringing his papers ("parchments") and his cloak, for winter was soon to be upon them.


   The danger was immanent, but so was Paul's hope.  The very word "departure" is his favorite word  to signify the Christian understanding of death.  A nautical term, it is a testament to his thinking, and means a loosing, a casting off, and setting sail for the open sea.  For him physical death was not an ending, but a beginning.


     The same expression was used by the English poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson, who compared of his own impending departure from this world to a boat leaving harbor at the end of day.  It is called Crossing the Bar   (try reading it aloud.):


      Sunset and evening star
      And one clear call for me!
     O may there be no moaning at the bar,
     When I put out to sea,


He pictures the tide on the move:
     But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
     Too full for sound and foam,
     When that which drew from out the boundless deep
     Turns again, home


As the light fades, it is a time for farewells:
     Twilight and evening bell,
    And after that the dark!
    O may there be no sadness of farewell,
    When I embark;


And it is a time of hopeful expectation:
    For though from out our bourne of Time and Place,
    The flood may bear me far,
    I hope to see my Pilot face to face
    When I have crossed the bar.


 Now that is a departure I am looking forward to.