quick links:
Diocesan calendarBishop's visitation scheduleDiocesan cycle of prayersubscribe to
The Harvest, DioLog
search
Find a Congregation
Want to find a congregation near you? Use our congregation finder to locate the nearest place of worship. Choose from the pull-down-menu below or view the map.
En español
Para ver este sitio en español, haga clic AQUÍ
Sermon at the June 11, 2011 ordination
of Patrick Funston, Oliver Bunker, Beth Drumm and Peter Doddema
Grace Cathedral, Topeka, Kansas
By the Right Reverend Dean E. Wolfe, D.D., Ninth Bishop of Kansas
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.
Servants and witnesses
What a great day in the life of the Church! I want you all to hold onto this day. When there’s a summer Sunday when your church feels almost empty…when there’s a program in your parish this fall that’s been so carefully prepared but still no one shows up…when you give up a night with your family this winter to attend a meeting that goes round and round but never arrives at its announced destination…I want you to remember this day.
Because this is the kind of day, this is the kind of celebration, that reminds us of the possibility and the hopes of the Christian endeavor to which we are all so deeply and irrevocably devoted.
Today Oliver, Beth, Peter and Patrick have come to this great cathedral to make promises they will spend the rest of their lives trying to keep. And because the promises are beyond what they can promise on their own, each one of us has made a promise to uphold them.
Oliver and Beth are being ordained to the vocational diaconate, and they will permanently serve the Episcopal Church as deacons of the Church and servants of God. Peter and Patrick will serve the Church as transitional deacons for six months to a year, and when this period of service has been faithfully rendered, they will, “God willing and the people consenting,” be ordained priests in the Church.
Some people would argue (and a passionate group from our diocese argued this point at General Conventions for many years) that people who are going to be ordained priests should be ordained directly to the priesthood. Priests-to-be, they feel, should not diminish the crucial importance of the diaconate by “traipsing” through the order on their way to their own calling. I respectfully disagree.
I believe every order is deeply interconnected to every other order, and this practice helps highlight the interdependence of all our ministries. In the life of the Church in the world, deacons exercise episcope, priests exercise diaconal servant ministries, bishops exercise priestly ministries, and the laity does some of all of it.
Like a microcosm of the Trinity, the whole become greater than the sum of its parts.
The wider sacramental Christian Church (including, most notably, the Roman Catholic tradition) has ordained priests by first ordaining them to the diaconate since the establishment of the three orders in ordained ministry. Diaconal ministry was viewed as soessential to the good order and health of the Church that every priest (and every bishop, for that matter) needed to share in this order and its work.
Jesus said, “The greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves.”
We all seek, in our own and sometime feeble ways, to be more and more like Jesus. The proclamation of Christ, “I am among you as one who serves,” offers the iconic aspiration of every Christian, lay and ordained, to be a servant leader in Christ’s name.
Today we stand at the starting line of four vocations and, at a starting line of a long run, everything looks possible. No one is yet winded. No one is yet thirsty. No one has leg cramps, or feet that ache, or a heart that feels as if it might pound its way out of your chest.
No, at the starting line we find adrenaline and attitude and feelings of invincibility, which alternate periodically with feelings of pure terror. What else should we expect? This is a natural time for feelings of energy and invincibility, with a little anxiety thrown in for good measure.
The challenge, of course, is to keep running toward the goal, when the wind begins to slide out of your sails, when your thirst becomes a genuine distraction, and when the pain in your legs and your feet becomes truly disconcerting. The challenge is to be able to harness all of our anxieties and to bind up our woundedness so we can make this work more about others and less about ourselves.
So what are the qualities that finally are required? What can we say about what is expected of deacons? What can we say about what is expected of any of us who have the audacity to proclaim ourselves as Christian?
- We do not lose heart.
- We do not proclaim ourselves.
- We let light shine out of darkness.
- We are like the one who serves.
In the Second Letter to the Corinthians Paul writes, “Since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart.”
At every ordination over which I preside, I try to offer fair warning about the physical, emotional and spiritual dangers that lay in wait for every person who attempts to be obedient to this calling. This work only looks genteel. It only appears to be easy. The road is littered with those who set out with great confidence to be servants of the Lord but who ultimately found their own needs were more immediate and more compelling than the needs of those they were sent to serve.
To be a servant in a society that seeks primarily to be served is to be the recipient of great big, heaping doses of humility. We are, for the most part, more accustomed to being served. We know a good deal less about being the one serving, about delayed gratification and putting the other first. It is the unusual parent who, upon hearing the cries of his or her own child, can care first for the child of another who has even greater needs.
“We do not proclaim ourselves. We proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord.”
I have always tried to emphasize the radical and prophetic promise of the modern diaconate in this diocese. I’ve said on a number of occasions that as a bishop drifts off to sleep, his or her last thought should be, “I wonder what the deacons are up to.” Bishops and laypeople alike should be just a little bit worried about the claims deacons will make on our insular lives.
After a devastating fire destroyed much of the interior and the roof of this cathedral, there was a desperate need for restoration. The woodwork that had formed the pulpit and surrounded the altar was irreplaceable, and so an alternative plan was pursued.
This pulpit, as I understand it, was actually found on eBay. It came from an English parish church, and Nicolas Ferrar and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, once preached from it. Isn’t that a fun thought?
Now, Archbishop Temple was an amazing theologian, social reformer and prophet. He wrote these words in the early 1900s that are as applicable today as they were when he wrote them. And isn’t it amazing to think he could have preached them from this very pulpit?
“If Christianity is true at all, it is a truth of universal application; all things should be done in the Christian spirit and in accordance with Christian principals.
“Then,” say those who want reform, “produce your Christian solution for unemployment.” But there neither is nor could there be such a thing. The Christian faith does not by itself enable its members to see how a vast number of people within an intricate economic system will be affected by a particular economic or political idea.
“In that case,” say those who want to uphold the status quo, “keep off the turf! By your own confession you are out of place here.” Here the Church must reply, “No, I cannot tell you what the remedy is. But I can tell you that a society with chronic unemployment is a diseased society. If you are not doing all that you can to find the remedy, you are guilty before God.”
The Church is likely to be attacked from both sides if it does its duty. It will be told that it has become “political” when in fact it has merely stated its principles and pointed out when they have been breached. The Church will be told by advocates of particular policies that it is futile because it does not support theirs. If the Church is faithful to its commission, it will ignore both sets of complaints and continue as far as it can to influence all citizens and to permeate all parties.
These are words I want all our deacons to “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest.”
We are called to “Let light shine out of darkness.” We, who stand bathed in the startling light of the Ascension, are witnesses of these things! In the Ascension we celebrate the triumph of Christ, the King of Glory, who in addition to having defeated death, transports our human nature into heaven where, as our advocate, he continues to intercede on our behalf. In theological shorthand, we have an intercessor at the right hand of God, an advocate who knows our human frailties and understands our every human need. It is the unparalleled glory of the Ascension that humanity can never again be entirely separated from God because Christ, who is both fully God and fully man, now sits in the throne in Glory. And oh, how he does loveus!
In a court of law, the witness must tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth , so help him/so help her God.” But in a frightening time, witnesses become hesitant. They begin to forget. “I cannot recall that fact, your honor,” they mumble. They begin to lose the courage of their convictions.
Moses was keeping his father-in-law’s flock in a dark time long ago when an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush. When God said, “I have observed the misery of my people…I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed I know their sufferings…,” Moses was surprised enough to openly question the Lord’s decision to choose him to lead the Israelites. “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Who indeed? Who, in fact, are any of us without God?
Moses was called to be a witness.
On Memorial Day, Bishop Jerry Mansholt from the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Bishop Marty Field from the Episcopal Diocese of West Missouri,and I attended an Interfaith Healing Service in Joplin, Missouri. A member of the Jewish community read a psalm in Hebrew, a message was sent from the Muslim community, Lutheran, Episcopalian and Disciples of Christ clergy read scripture and prayed in the words of their traditions.
As it turns out, tornadoes are powerful things. They blow away state lines and political jurisdictions. The people who live in Kansas but who go to work in Joplin and shop in Joplin and visit doctors in Joplin aren’t joking much about the “border wars” anymore.
As it turns out, we are all Midwesterners…Americans…and you can’t go to Joplin without being touched by the American flags that wave on almost every wreck of a building you see.
Tornadoes are powerful things. They blow away denominational differences and minor theological distinctions. They say Peace Lutheran Church, which was completely destroyed by the tornado, is one of “their” churches. Well, you could have fooled me. It looks like one of ours. We are all Christians, and you can’t talk to anyone in Joplin without being touched by the way people of so many faith traditions are now working so closely together.
Tornadoes are powerful things. They blow us into one another’s arms, where we cling to each other for dear life until we finally realize that “surely it is God who saves us. We shall trust in him and not be afraid.”
We are like the one who serves, and clearly there is no shortage of opportunities for us to be servants to the world’s needs for bread, for water, for justice and for love.
As Christians, we are witnesses to all of this, and we pray, finally, to be raised up with Christ.
Raised up out of our anxieties.
Raised up out of our self-centeredness.
Raised up out of our darkness into the brilliant light.
Raised up out of our disillusionment into that sacred hope.
Raised up out of our despair into unspeakable glory.
Raised up!
Raised up!
Raised up!
Now, it is our custom for the bishop to extend a charge to the ordinands. Oliver, Peter, Elizabeth and Patrick, will you please rise?
My brothers and sister in Christ, I charge you to serve the poor, the elderly, the sick, the lonely, the imprisoned and the young. They are the ones it would be easiest for us to forget.
I charge you to be a deacon for all the time you are a deacon, and to cling to the values of the diaconate in whatever order you find yourself.
I charge you to remember that how you go about your ministry will always be more important than what you do in your ministry, because the process is so crucial, and it is God, finally, who is in charge of all our outcomes.
I charge you to become known for your patience, your generosity, your gentleness and your love.
Oliver, Elizabeth, Peter, and Patrick,
- We do not lose heart.
- We do not proclaim ourselves.
- We let light shine out of darkness.
- We are like the one who serves.
So come and join with us, your brothers and sisters in Christ, and find great joy in this work. Come with us and find spiritual riches you never could have imagined. Come with us and find a gladness that exceeds my every attempt to describe it.
Come with us and be servants and witness to the people of God, in the holy name of God, and discover that living the life of a faithful servant and witness is not just a way of life for the ordained few, it is the way of life for everyone who aspires to know Christ and make Christ known.