Homily for the Ordination to the Diaconate and Presbyterate
Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal 1st June 2008
The Very Revd Michael J. Pitts
Genesis 6:9-22, 7:24, 8: 14-19
Psalm 46: 1-12
Romans 1:16-17, 3:22b-28 (29-31)
Matthew 7:21-29
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven."
I always find it a little too easy to assume that we know exactly what is the Gospel and what is the will of God. It is a little too easy to assume that we, like Noah, are the righteous ones who will float away in the Ark leaving the rest (those we disagree with), to drown in the rising waters. My own house in Fr Edward Simonton's parish is built on eighty feet of sand, so I am glad that the Gospel of today is a parable, and not a set of building specifications. But it would again be too easy to assume the house of my faith to be built on solid rock, and the houses of those of a different theology to be built on sand.
The biblical character who most encapsulates my experience of the journey of faith, and ministry in the past four decades is Jacob, who wrestled with God. Of course, he is not alone. Moses and the prophets, the judges and the kings, Jesus and Paul, Martha and the Marys all had to wrestle with God. But for me it is Jacob struggling all night by the Wadi in the desert to gain God's blessing, who is my hero.
Jennifer, Shirley, Geoffrey, Joel and Karla, in a few moments you will come forward, and as the church has done from the beginning, after your examination, you will receive the laying on of hands for the work of ministry. This is not a passing out parade or a prom. It is not the marking of the end of your studies or apprenticeship in the diaconate. It is a call from God and the church, and your answering commitment, to a life of ministry and mission in the Body of Christ. I want to suggest three ways in which you will have to wrestle as you fulfill that vocation and commitment.
You will have to wrestle with ancient texts.
Your studies have provided you with the apparatus to understand how and why those texts came to be written, and how they came to be collected into the canonical corpus. You can read, at least the New Testament, in the language in which it was written. You have learned what is generally, in an ongoing process, which always continues and develops, thought to be the original meaning and significance of what was written. You may think that that was enough wrestling, but it was merely an appreciation of some of the basic moves. Now comes the real struggle, the struggle to discover for yourselves, for the Christian communities in which you serve, and for the much wider world outside, what is the significance of those texts for today and tomorrow. What meaning do they have, not merely for spiritual and religious life, but for careers, for families, for ethical and political decisions, for local communities and for the world wide community of humanity? What you wrestle out of the ancient texts, you are called upon to communicate to the church and to the world. You have to do all this in the context of a society where, by and large, any text older than ten years is thought to have passed its best before date. You also have to do this in the context of a society where increasingly, we live with others who are wrestling with different ancient texts, the Veda and the Vedanta, the Adi Granth, the Qur'an and many others. It would be my hope for the future that we could more and more wrestle with these ancient texts in cooperation rather than in competition.
You will have to wrestle with the Risen Christ.
I have always found it significant that in Matthew and John, the risen Jesus meets the disciples in Galilee. In John's Gospel, when he meets them, they are engaged in their old daily work of fishing. In many medieval cathedrals the outer porch was called the Galilee porch, In Durham Cathedral, where I was ordained, there is a Galilee chapel at the west end, containing, by the way, the tomb of the Venerable Bede. At the end of the Eucharist, the procession makes its way there. The risen Christ is to be found in Galilee, that is, out there in the world of work and community, industry and research, communication and healing. It is not too difficult to think of the risen Christ as we see him in the stained glass window, the statue or the icon. But we have to wrestle to find the risen Christ in our next door neighbour, particularly if she has a different skin colour or sexual orientation. We have to wrestle to find the risen Christ in the greed of the capitalist system, or in the revolution, on the floor of the factory or the stock exchange, or, as the case may be, among the corn stalks or in the pig barn. We have to wrestle to find the risen Christ in an election campaign or among those involved in war and civil strife or in a labour dispute. And when we have met with the risen Christ, we have to tell the world about the meeting, and point people where to look to make their own discovery.
You will have to wrestle with the church.
You are being ordained in a church whose structures are imperialist, patriarchal, paternalistic, power-hungry, obfuscating and obscurantist. It is a church whose future is going to be almost unrecognizably different from its past and present, or if not it will die. You are going to minister in communities where wrestling with faith often takes a back seat to maintaining a building or a secure community of like-minded and like-experienced people. You will work in communities which know that they need more people, yet make it almost impossible for the newcomer the get more that a toe in the door. You will minister to people for whom the word change denotes a terrifying idea, for whom the word change is forever coupled with the words and decay in all around I see. You will work in communities when conflict is experienced as so normal that if there is no conflict, somebody will manufacture it. And you will always get the blame.
In the midst of all this wrestling, though, there is one special place to which you can return each week. And those who are ordained as priests have a special responsibility for maintaining it. Each week you and your community gather around the Lord's table to perform and celebrate the ancient drama of the Eucharist. Each week we recall, for ourselves and for the world the foundational narrative of our faith. We perform the drama in the concentric circles of the Christian Year, the Lectionary and the Eucharistic anamnesis. It is here that the Scriptures the Risen Christ and the community come together, inform each other and give to the church its reason for existence as we hear the scriptures, meet around the common meal and receive the life of Christ into ourselves and our community.
This Sunday by Sunday return to the source and roots of our faith is vital for our spiritual nourishment as ministers, and it is vital for the nourishment of the community. But it is only a temporary return, a place to rest. The story we tell here is meant to continue in the story of our lives in community and society. The food we receive here is food for a journey. If the entire spiritual, emotional and physical resources of ministers and community are consumed in maintaining a Sunday service and a building in which it is held, and if nothing else happens, then we are failing in our mission and vocation. Sunday worship is not the end purpose of Christian faith: it is the beginning, from which we go out into the world, the world of our neighborhood, the world of our work, or education or leisure, the world of social relationships and politics. Into that word, with all its dimensions, we are to take the great gifts of God, love, compassion and wholeness for individuals, and their social counterparts of justice, equity and humanity, all summed up in that wonderful biblical world, Peace-Shalom. I would hazard a guess that our failure to live Christian lives, and undertake Christian ministry in the market place is one of the main causes for the contraction of the church in our time.
Do not be
ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
Jennifer, Shirley, Geoffrey, Joel and Karla, you are called to be the leaders of your communities to help them engage in the mission of the Risen Christ in the World. Members of those communities, you are called to fulfill that mission under their leadership.
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven."
Quoted from the Hymn Abide with me (verse 2) #24 in Common Praise.
