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Sermon at the Chrism Mass, April 19, 2011
Grace Cathedral, Topeka, Kansas
By the Right Reverend Dean E. Wolfe, D.D., Ninth Bishop of Kansas
A New Creation
Come Holy Spirit and kindle the fire that is in us.
Take our lips and speak through them.
Take our hearts and see through them.
Take our souls and set them on fire. Amen.
It is always so good to see you here each year. It is good to be with you all.
In the year 1930, Anglican divine Evelyn Underhill wrote a letter to the bishops in attendance at the Lambeth Conference, in which she said, “The Church wants … a disciplined priesthood of theocentric souls who shall be tools and channels of the Spirit of God; and this she cannot have until Communion with God is recognized as the first duty of the clergy.”
Communion with God as the first duty of the clergy? It’s not as if this is news to us, but what is part of our on-going revelation is how the forces conspire to make what was once so primary a thing for us into something so easily secondary.
To be “a disciplined priesthood of theocentric souls” will require us, truly, to achieve the deepest possible communion with our Lord. And, yet, it’s difficult to remember our principal duty when there are so many lesser duties to which we are so loudly called.
We are called upon continually to moderate conflicts, but never to become angry ourselves. We are called to enter deeply into the unbearable sufferings of others, while continually proclaiming God’s infinite goodness and mercy. We are called to lead God’s people with passion and urgency, but never to express impatience when they lack the passion or urgency to follow. We are too often asked to be building managers, middle-managers, number-crunchers and fund raisers, while always suspecting that we were called to so much more than these.
And so we come here today to remember our original vows, to listen to our own voices saying them out loud, to hear our colleagues repeat them with us. I am present as your bishop for my own soul’s sake, to repeat my own promises, and to be encouraged and strengthened by all of yours.
And, in this unique liturgy, I hope to express my deepest gratitude to you all.
Some of you may think I overdo this, and others may feel I could improve on my expressions of appreciation for your hard work and sacrifices. I don’t really know.
If I say it too often, you don’t believe me. If I say it too seldom, mysilence, added to the all-too-frequent silence of your parishioners, may allow you to conclude your sacrifices are unappreciated and wasted.
So much of the work you do as clergy, by its very nature, is hidden, obscured from public view. If you ask most parishioners about the work of a priest or a deacon, they will mention their liturgical leadership. And while leading the people of God in worship is crucial, and interpreting and preaching the Good News of Jesus Christ is essential, these activities don’t capture all that we are called to do.
I read an interesting survey of parishioners that indicated the vast majority of parishioners believed preaching was, far and away, the most important activity of a Protestant clergyman. Yet, clergy surveyed in the same study believed their pastoral care, particularly in moments of crisis, was the most important contribution they made to the Christian community.
I believe every sermon you sweat over, every class you stay up late to prepare, every pastoral visit that leaves you just a little bit scarred, is a sacred sacrifice to the Immortal One that is remembered by God forever.
In baptism, at the chrismation, we say, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”
Perhaps we also aremarked as “Christ’s own forever” by every hurtful word, every obscenely violent image, by every inexplicable loss we necessarily witness as deacons and priests in Christ’s name.
A couple of weeks ago a young man sat down next to me on a Southwest flight to San Antonio, Texas, where I was going to attend a meeting. He had on a short-sleeved shirt, and his arms and neck were completely covered with tattoos. When he sat down…honestly? I sunk a little deeper into the biography of Edmond Browning I was reading and felt relieved I didn’t have on my clerical collar.
But my new seatmate saw Edmond Browning’s collar on the cover of the book I was reading, and so he asked me if I was a clergyperson. I said yes, I was – and then he told me about his two tours of Afghanistan, his fiancée and the Special Forces training he was completing at Fort Benning. He also told me about the huge losses he had experienced as a very, very young man.
A little later in the conversation, he asked me if I believed in fate. Did I believe everything was predetermined? I told him no, I couldn’t believe everything was predetermined. I told him I thought we had the ability to affect change and to determine our future. I told him I believed prayer can change things.
Echoing generations of veterans before him, he said somberly, “You know, war isn’t like what they show in the movies. There isn’t any rock music blasting in the background.” He said, “You’re walking on patrol and the sun is shining, and it’s like the most normal day in the world…”
Thankfully, that young man’s body was left intact, but his soul, his spirit, had sustained a series of brutal assaults. He was carrying such tremendous losses, such overwhelming grief, on behalf of a sometimes grateful but too-often fairly indifferent nation. He was carrying those losses for all of us.
When the plane landed and the young soldier left his seat, I was under no illusions I had made any impact on his life, but he had made a deep impact on mine. I was a clergyman, and I did what clergy do. I listened to his stories, and in the process, I became, if ever so briefly, a companion in his suffering. I did not leave that plane unchanged.
“The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Encounters like these are everyday occurrences for all of you who deal with suicides and car accidents, sudden heart attacks and slow, insidious cancers. Do you think this work comes without a cost? It does not. It c annot.
That we believe in the power of light over darkness, the power of good over evil, the power of life over death, grants us only partial protection when we walk into the heart of darkness, hold the hands of the dying, cradle the mourners as their tears fall on our shoulders, while desperately trying to remember the faith that is in us.
We are sentinels of the Resurrection we believeand proclaim, but which we only glimpse, as through a glass darkly.
There is no effective pastoral care without deep involvement. The idea that some of us were carefully taught in seminary long ago, that we should always keep a wary distance from our parishioners, was a well-intentioned but unfortunate lie. It was intended to protect both the clergy and their parishioners and to give us the distance needed to make objective pastoral judgments – but in the end, it cannot be achieved.
Love is cruciform. It never comes without a price. As we repeatedly remind our parishioners, there can be no Easter without Good Friday. You do not wrestle with the angels without walking away with a limp.
And, please, I know you won’t misunderstand me. Boundaries are important, and using, in any way for any reason any parishioner for your own purposes is always wrong. But we are doing ministry in a moment in time when so much attention and energy is being paid to watching the boundaries that I fear not enough attention is being paid to the people of God who live on the edges.
Jesus will always be calling us to the edges and in the next several years the relationships you and I have been building with our parishioners will be put to the test. The issues which face our Church will force us to depend upon the relationships we are building now and I believe we will need to have the deepest communion with God possible in order to be the grace-filled “tools and ch annels of the Spirit of God” which are so desperately needed by our people in this moment.
Paul wrote, “So, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new.”
If everything can become new, wecan become new. Our models for ministry can become new. Our enthusiasm can become new. Our hope can become new.
If everything old has passed away, then all our sufferings can pass away as well. Our negativity and cynicism can pass away. Our doubt and our faithlessness can pass away.
Brother Ramon, an Anglican Franciscan friar, suggests that along with “the problem of suffering” in the world, there is also other evidence that presents itself to the universe which he describes as “the problem of beauty.”
He writes, “In the world as I experience it, as well as the obvious pain and sorrow that we know well enough, there is also a design and harmony, a balance and a beauty found around us and within. It is found in the rhythmic cycle of the seasons, the melody of music, art and poetry, and especially in the many expressions of love between human beings. There is delight in the laughter and playfulness of little children, the joy of parents, the ecstasy of lovers, the affection of friendship, and the solid faithfulness of older people. All these, together with the creative and joyful impulses in our world, are celebrated on a popular level by Louis Armstrong singing, “It’s a Wonderful World.” 1
Now aside from simply enjoying the thought of this wise, old Anglican hermit making reference to the music of Louis Armstrong, I think Brother Ramon is onto something quite significant.
Jesus shocked his listeners when he said, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Today, everything is different. All the old models of “church” are crumbling. All the old models for “priesthood” and “diaconate” are crumbling. All the old models for the ways in which a diocese works, all the old models for the ways in which the episcopate works, are crumbling, crumbling, crumbling away.
But there are people who live out on the edges who are waiting for someone to risk the journey to fetch them in. There are young soldiers desperately listening for fresh opportunities to make a new beginning. And who knows? There may be middle-aged clergy sitting next to them, wondering what can possibly be next? They may be someone who recognizes communion with God is their first duty. You see, there are people who are waiting for a word from us.
Allison St. Louis, in a recent sermon, recalled a Lenten retreat at the Holy Cross Monastery where the Reverend Martin Smith, an Episcopal priest and spiritual director, invited his listeners to ponder the following questions:
“What has life told me I am supposed to be?”
“How much of who I am is a script written by others out of their needs?”
“What are the stories I’ve been told from which I need to extricate myself?”
In the end, it won’t be up to us. We think it is. We act like it is, but it’s not. We won’t be able to bless enough oil of unction to heal this broken world. A dozen tankers of healing oil wouldn’t even begin to make a start. It will take Christ.
“So, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”
Amen.
_____________________________________________________
1 Brother Ramon, My Questions, God’s Questions, Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., Macon Georgia, 2000, page 129