Producer: Client

PRODUCER: CLIENT: 1 DATE:

4/16 FINAL VERSION TITLE: BISHOP MIDDLETON “A LEGACY OF HOPE” TIME VIDEO: AUDIO: CODE: 1. [Mark 14:26-28, 16:1-7]

2. LOWER THIRD: St. Francis of Assisi said, “It is in dying that we are born again into eternal life.” BISHOP JANE ALLEN MIDDLETON Jesus Christ, through his life and death and resurrection, gave hope, not only for eternal life, but for our lives here on earth. That is our greatest legacy of hope.

Tonight we gather to honor those giants among us who have crossed into life eternal. They too have left a legacy of hope to us. This wonderful inheritance calls us to leave a legacy of hope to others.

3. We celebrate the lives of those bishops who have given themselves to God and to serving God’s people in ways we cannot know or measure. With hearts of gratitude, we rejoice in the legacy we’ve been given by them. It is not an exaggeration to claim that millions of lives have been impacted by their collective ministries. These bishops were bishops for a combined total of 563 years. They have influenced generations! Through these wonderful saints whom we honor this night, God has granted to us a witness that, because of their legacy, lives on. They have lived the mission of the United Methodist Church: they have made hundreds of thousands of disciples of Jesus Christ and by their ministries, praise God, the world has been, transformed.

4. Tonight, we symbolize the gift of their lives for all time as boats are released into the sea, this sea of life. A beautiful poem by Henry Van Dyck, paraphrased, describes the mystery of passing from this life to eternal life; 5. 6. SHE DOES NOT WANT THIS TO APPEAR ON SCREEN The Ship I am standing at the seashore. A ship at my side spreads white PRODUCER: CLIENT: 2 DATE:

sails majestically in the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until at length she is only a ribbon of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says: ‘There! She’s gone! Gone where? Gone from my sight – that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and just as able to bear her load of living freight – to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her, and just at the moment when someone at my side says: ‘There! She’s gone!’, there are other voices ready to take up the glad shout: ‘There, she comes’ ’

7. It is in going, that we arrive! It is in dying that we are born again into eternal life.

8. On a morning long ago three women, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome went to the tomb where Jesus had been placed. They were in despair. They expected to find death.

9. What these women found was not death but instead they found an empty tomb. And they received the unbelievably astonishing news: “He's been raised up; he's here no longer, He is risen!” (Mark 14:6 The Message). And then the messenger told them to tell the disciples that Jesus will be found in Galilee. My beloved sisters and brothers, we proclaim the reality that because of Jesus’ resurrection, the empty tomb is a symbol of hope.

10. The image of the empty tomb inspires and impels us! This is the hope of the world. The tomb is empty. When hope is rare, the empty tomb proclaims life is possible. Death, discouragement, despair does not have the last word.

11. Gary was one who found hope in spite of the most unimaginable suffering. PRODUCER: CLIENT: 3 DATE:

12. Gary was an exuberant 29 year old pastor, living life to the fullest, when he was caught in a freak wave while swimming off the coast of New Jersey. He was instantly a quadriplegic and because of complications also lost speech. He experienced anger, despair, and many obstacles. Eventually, he became a resident of a nursing home. I was visiting Gary one day with our friend Martha. As we looked around his room we saw many framed paintings. He had learned to paint using a brush in his mouth. When we asked him about them he communicated by following letters on a letter board with his eyes, “They are Christmas presents. I can’t afford anything else.” Martha said, “Do you miss hanging out at the mall?” He communicated, “I don’t miss anything. I’m more of a minister now than I was before.” I looked at him in astonishment and said, “Gary, for you to say that is a miracle.” He replied, “You have to lose your life to find it.” His faith grew because of his circumstances. Gary’s capacity to trust God and to see resurrection promise provided for him and for those who knew him a legacy of hope. It is in dying that we are born anew.

13. Our legacy as people of faith is our encounter with Jesus. Jesus brings hope to a world torn by strife and turmoil; conflict and confusion; cynicism and suspicion; disease and death. In the midst of problems and circumstances for which there seem to be no way forward, of issues around which the differences seem unbridgeable even as we gather here at General Conference, especially in these times, our encounter with Jesus offers a third way and hope breaks forth. This is the fundamental promise of our faith.

14. The four teenagers on our small team were part of a group of dozens of teens committed to mission work who were scattered over York Pennsylvania. They repaired homes, cleaned parks, tended community gardens and for a week made a statement of Christ’s presence in that community. These four teens spent days reconstructing a porch at the small home of Nadine and the four generations of her family who lived with her. Four year old Solomon and his friend Jamal watched from the locked front PRODUCER: CLIENT: 4 DATE:

screen door as the teens worked and chatted with the two of them. Solomon frequently said that he sure wanted to be out there working, too. At last there was great celebration as the porch was finished. As Solomon jumped up and down on the new porch he exclaimed, “When I get big I wants to build porches ‘n help peoples.”

15. Our Christian faith provides a wonderful cycle of hope for life. “In the bulb there is a flower, in the seed an apple tree . . .in our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory, unrevealed until its season something God alone can see.”

16. Archbishop Desmond Tutu says, “There is not a situation anywhere in the world that is not transfigurable.”

17. The women who encountered the messenger at the empty tomb heard the message “You will see Jesus in Galilee”. The bishops – those beloved servants of God whom we honor this night – give us hope today. We are now the messengers who must proclaim the message of the empty tomb. Life is promised even in death.

18. As we celebrate the lives of those saints who have gone before us we do not see those ships sail away. Rather, because of the legacy they leave we see the ships coming in full sail, carried on the wind of the spirit.

19. Jesus has left for us a legacy of possibility, of reconciliation, of new life. We are called to recommit ourselves to live in such a way that we offer to the world a legacy of hope.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. PRODUCER: CLIENT: 5 DATE:

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. PRODUCER: CLIENT: 6 DATE:

83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125.