Bishop Bruce Ough leads the Witness of Retiring Bishops during worship. Photos by NCJ communicators.

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 the North Central Jurisdictional (NCJ) Conference in Sioux Falls on Friday, noted that the two will be taking on other jobs. But don’t expect to encounter them as greeters at the local discount store.

Merriam-Webster defines retirement as “to leave one’s job and cease doing work,” Bishop Schwerin read.

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.

Bishop Palmer was elected to the episcopacy in 2000. He has served the Iowa Area (2000-2008), Illinois Area (2008-2012), and West Ohio Area (2012-present). In 2008, he became president of the Council of Bishops for a two-year term. From July 1, 2021 through January 1, 2022, Bishop Palmer also served as interim bishop of the Illinois Great Rivers Area.

Bishop Trimble, meanwhile, was elected to the episcopacy in 2008. He has served the Iowa Area (2008-2016) and the Indiana Area (2016-present).

What Bishop Schwerin said he most appreciates about the two bishops—aside from 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 that the hospitality of Christ would be known through us. Yet it seems that today’s church in the West does not give hospitality much thought.

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 but walk by, crossing to the farther side of the road. The one who stops is a Samaritan—a person who is marginalized in that society and not expected to be a righteous, upstanding citizen.

Bishop Dan Schwerin, Chicago Area, delivers the message titled, Parable of the Great Retirement.

“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.”

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

“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 said he 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, he said

“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 their retirement must choose whether to 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 Bishops Palmer and Trimble the gift of a framed image titled “Let’s Pray,” depicting Rev. King joining others in prayer.