Bishops Gregory V. Palmer and Julius Trimble are retiring this year . . . sort of.

Bishop Dan Schwerin (Northern Illinois), preaching at the two bishops’ retirement recognition at North Central Jurisdictional Conference in Sioux Falls on July 12, read Merriam-Webster’s definition of retirement: “to leave one’s job and cease doing work.”

Bishop Schwering offers some good-natured roasting of his retiring colleagues.

Bishop Palmer and Bishop Trimble may be leaving their jobs, but they are not ceasing doing work. Don’t expect to encounter them as greeters at a discount store, however.

Bishop Trimble becomes general secretary of the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society on Sept. 1. Bishop Palmer will become secretary to the Council of Bishops.

“Just hobbies in retirement,” Bishop Schwerin joked.

What he most appreciates about them—besides their tireless passion for helping the church—is their courage.

“Your leadership has been courageous,” Bishop Schwerin told his retiring colleagues. “It encouraged the church to be courageous.

“It takes courage to imagine the abundance out of which God calls us. It takes courage to get up the next day and imagine the abundance that God will work through us.”

Paul’s Epistle to Titus, verses 7-9, describes the necessary characteristics of a bishop. These are virtually identical to those expected of a Roman military leader. The one difference, Bishop Schwerin noted, is that Titus’s list includes hospitality.

The early church yearned for the hospitality of Christ to be known through us. Yet it seems that the church in our time and region of the world does not give hospitality much thought.

Bishop Trimble enjoys Bishop Schwerin's retirement humor.

Bruce Longenecker, a scholar of early Christian history, proposes that the story that may have influenced Christianity the most is also its most neglected, Schwerin said. This is the parable we know as The Good Samaritan.

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers,” the story begins at Luke 10:30. The thieves beat him and leave him for dead. Two clergy pass the victim walk by, but cross to the farther side of the road. The one who stops is a Samaritan—a person who is disdained in that society and not expected to be a righteous, upstanding citizen.

“The Samaritan was moved by the beaten man’s plight,” Bishop Schwerin said. “Perhaps he could imagine himself in the same situation.

“The Samaritan led him to the inn and to a new possibility that had not been imagined.”

The kind man was a leader in compassion: he also instructed the innkeeper to take care of the person with the funds the Samaritan left.

Bishop Palmer (right) appreciates the humor mixed with seriousness with which Bishop Schwerin honored him and Bishop Trimble.

“Maybe for this despised person, there is grace,” Bishop Schwerin said. “Maybe God could use this innkeeper. Maybe there is so much grace that it can come from anyone to anyone.”

The Samaritan’s response was more than a handout, Bishop Schwerin noted. “It was an invitation to be a community of compassion. He drew others into a resistance of those who have religion without compassion.”

In this story Bishop Schwerin sees “shades of Martin Luther King Jr. and his teachings about the Beloved Community.”

“This community starts with the belovedness that we are transformed,” Bishop Schwerin said. “There is love enough for us to become community.”

We decide whether we will be a community of inequality or one of compassion.

“It takes courage to imagine that God can work with us to become hospitable so we can share it with others,” and this is the courage that Bishop Schwerin sees in Bishops Trimble and Palmer.

The two bishops led in courageous hospitality, and those left after these men retire must choose whether follow their example and form a community of hospitality.

“Decide before you walk out of this place,” he said. “How hospitable will you be?”

He praised the outpouring of God’s grace through these bishops’ lives. It is this grace that creates a community, and “the Beloved Community is the framework that can heal us now.”

Fittingly, the NCJ Committee on the Episcopacy, on behalf of the jurisdiction, gave the Bishops Trimble and Palmer the gift of framed images titled “Let’s Pray,” depicting Rev. King joining others in prayer.

Watch Bishop Schwerin’s speech