Bishops' Blog

Diaconal Ordination Sermon

My three friends, you are in a moment to be ministers of the diocese in a new way and in a special relationship to your bishop! We are in one way a typical diocese, with our own possibilities and challenges, our historic wins and losses. But at the same time, not any old diocese. Where else, thanks to ‘The Chosen,’ did Jesus walk through his ministry once more in Midlothian Texas! Or maybe you’ve read the cult classic Canticle for Leibowitz where you learn that, after nuclear holocaust decimates the earth, the sole fragments of culture and learning are found in a monastery in Texarkana, Texas. I was told early on in my time here that the Red River is the origin of the pecan in the world, and AI tells me that just might be right. Things getting monotonous in your home town?  who else has Paris, Athens, Palestine, and Malta. In a pessimistic mood? Have a cup of coffee in Fate, or, just over the line, in Uncertain!  And anywhere you might go, under your feet could be a buried arrowhead of the greatest horsemen in history, the Comanche, or a bone of some conquistador searching for the lost cities of Cibola.  Closer to home, many of our parishes once saw dusty Bishop Garrett pull up with his wagon, laden with organ and altar, to give a lecture about news of the world, and to bring the Gospel in what was still the wild west.

These are fun to think about, but what’s the point here?  At the ordinary and accustomed, look again, with a longer and deeper perspective, to see the extraordinary in your midst.  I am not saying that being a deacon (or a mature Christian for that matter) is being Don Quixote, though we shouldn’t go through life seeing only windmills. We need to see reality through with a Biblical imagination, so as to see the really real, the yet more real, beneath and throughout, the extraordinary dimension of the world around us and ourselves.

Consider in this light our Gospel reading from Luke 22. Jesus is the prototype, not just the first, but the foundation and model. Jesus says we are to be deacons because he was a deacon, a servant. But we imitate him in such a way that he is always prior, always more authentic. His servanthood is always prototypical. But the Gospel places us with Jesus in a familiar narrative. The community is in conflict and rivalry, with the effects of culture running around and through us. There ensues the surprise of Jesus himself in the Gospel, with the claim He makes, generating a new kind of common life, at table and amidst suffering. All of this now has an horizon of the kingdom, of ultimacy. And a church squabble becomes the doorway into the deeper reality that lurks in everything with Christ.

Theology at its best clarifies the Scripture’ description of what is really real.  It isn’t a tool. It is, in the words of St. Augustine, not to be used, but rather enjoyed. That being said, it can help us, in the same way that Jesus tells us to seek first the Kingdom of God, though we ought not to be surprised that other goods would, in His kindness, be added unto us. You all are to be servants of Christ is a twisted and confused world. This will be not a little stressful. And repairing to the imaginative vista which Scripture promises, so as to see the world around you, and its conflicts, and yourself with your own conflicts in its midst, in a new light, promises its own kind of relief. I am reminded of that great hymn which tells us that ‘the peace of God it is not peace, but strife closed in the sod, but brothers (and sisters) pray for but one thing, the marvelous peace of God.’ You can be sure of receiving this, as cognitive, affective, practical corrective. Authority is not what the world imagined. Whatever we were fighting over isn’t worth what we sons and daughters of Adam and Eve supposed. The outcome of all this is only partially related to us, and far better than we suppose or deserve.  And how we see time, and how the Lord does, are blessed disjunctive. The one thing irreducible to a life stratagem turns out to be the one thing actually helpful in that domain.

 I must confess that I hope you all have retained at least a bit of optimism, a slight refraction of the rose-colored lens, for the Church. This work can be fulfilling. But uplifted is a matched-set with downcast, which sooner or later we all fall into. Think of the movie ‘Aliens’, where the heroes realize that the bad guys have gotten into the space ship’s air-ducts. The world you as deacons are witnessing to isn’t just out there, its in here, and in us!  This is underlined in Luke 22, where, before you get to today’s reading about serving, we hear that the chosen apostles included a betrayer, and communion with Jesus is being fed with the bread of his death. After our passage we hear that Peter himself will be sifted by Satan, and the Son of God himself praying that the cup might pass. Anyone who supposed that faith is not realistic about the world and about life hasn’t read the Gospel story. But what you are being ordained into is real participation in the life of the Son. It is a taste of the Kingdom. It prevails against the gates of hell. It is the Lord calling your name of the far side of Good Friday. It is glimpse of the benighted sons and daughters of Adam and Eve in their festal garments. Just as its grasp of the blight is greater than we imagine, so is its consolation.  Think of Ezekiel here- the cup is gall to the taste, but it turns sweet in his stomach, milk and honey.

Well, that last paragraph isn’t ‘clergy wellness’ as it is usually conceived, but rather as the Gospel conceives it. And finally, remember this. In the Gospel you and I together must answer to the Lord ourselves. But there is little of what we moderns call individualism. You are a deacon because you, we, plural are deacons, which is important because you, the Church, the body, is diaconal, though we do not always remember or rise to it. My friend Kathryn Greene-McCreight in her profound Christian mediation on depression wrote that there were times when all she could do was stand in the congregation and let the others, known and unknown, pray in her stead  May such times be few. But her meditation reminds us that this order is a symbol on behalf of all, and at times all will in turn encourage you when you wonder where the progress is. But what matters is that He is a deacon, He washes your feet. And for this we rise up and serve, most of all in gratitude, all the days we are given. Amen. 

"A bookie, an historian, and a missionary go into a bar..."

A bookie, an historian, and a missionary go into a bar and grill. Can we predict who is likely to be converted to Christianity. At the individual level it is mysterious, why one hears and his brother cannot. But over time, and continents, en masse, patterns appear. Converts from the great world religions, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, are few and difficult. And the ground is relatively arid in the secular, modern West (with remarkable exceptions, to be sure). But when it comes to pagan groups, local religions, indigenous worship Christian evangelism has done remarkably well, regardless of continent or century. Why is that? For idolatry was in the great opponent of Biblical faith. What gives?

Here are some important clues to consider about our pagan ancestors, wherever they may have lived on the earth. First, they believed that spiritual forces, good and evil, were close, real, powerful. Theirs was not a thinned out world. Second, they had a story of their origin, the how and why of our being here, and hence our ‘who.’ Third their need to pray and to sacrifice was as palpable as to eat or drink. The world was dangerous, and an offering was required.

There is a famous letter from pope Gregory to St. Augustine of Canterbury, when the latter, having been dispatched to the wilds of England in the 6th century, encountered their vigorous pagan observance. ‘Tear down their temples, and build churches on the same places; cancel their festivals, and observe saints’ days on the same dates.’ While the strategy feels brutal, we might spiritualize the advice. That pagan has something within to be transformed. Conversion could be described in terms of just such a repurposing, for we are all acquainted with the inner pagan with his or her own spiritual agenda. There are powers- but the risen Jesus rules over them. There is an origin story, but it happened, and has been narrated in the Bible about Israel and Jesus. There is the need for sacrifice; and the blood of Jesus suffices; for Him is true worship owed! Jesus has taken captivity captive, and that entails repurposed pagans like us! Let that be your word to yourself for this Advent week.

But what’s all this got to do with readings? The first thing to note is that they all pertain to the Gentiles, la gente, the peoples of the earths, which means of course us (even Israel having been selected by God from among the nations). It is not an appellation we are used to, but the readings remind us of its importance. Of course the hearers of the readings in their original first-century context would have had in mind not only local tribes and nations- but Rome. They were complicated! The source of law and order, not to mention bread and circuses, and propaganda, and a vision of connection (read empire) bound to disappoint. They were also rich, corrupt, creative, violent. Incidentally they called themselves the ‘moderni,’ the latest thing. Rome in turn dreamed of a wonder-child to come, and launched pogroms against outsiders. They are not so far away, separated by two millennia though we be. Let’s look in more detail about what the readings look ahead to in relation to them. Predictably the themes I find are three, with which our yet partially pagan partially converted hearts will resonate with.

Well, what I have said so far has been a little abstract, (and I hope a little interesting), though it hasn’t gotten into our kitchen, emotional or cultural. But that is where the Gospel means to get. The Bible wants us to think of ourselves as something we don’t usually, namely as ‘Gentiles’, but if we do so, in our time and place, where does that take us?  That is also where our readings mean to take us. Here to we find three longings/needs/failings in ourselves. We live in a harsh conflictual, irreal, time. We are as Gentiles sons and daughters of Babel, the progeny of Cain. We want things to be set right, inside and outside of us. This means both becalmed and fair. But we are far from this. Our efforts seem to drive further from such a goal. Our politics be what they may, who does not feel this diagnosis?  Both Isaiah 11 and Psalm 72 are Messianic hopes for this forlorn, post-Babel world, that the shalom we hope for would be brought and embodied, by the king.

The second feature of our pagan hearts goes in contemporary parlance by the word ‘identity,’ upon which a culture fastens when it isn’t sure that it is.  Romans 15 contains a string of references to the hope of the Gentiles in Paul’s Bible, namely the Old Testament.  But the reader or hearer is given more than an origin long ago. We are given a history of which we are a key chapter, the situation in which we sit this morning, together in our diversity in Church, a key symbol of the point of it all.  ‘Praise the Lord (that is, the God of Israel), all you peoples.’ This event, the coming of the divided and confused nations to real faith, is what Paul in Ephesians calls the ‘mystery,’ which means something like ‘the key to history.’ Because of the Messiah, the very fact of the Church, with all its serious faults, is itself a sign of hope, not in us but in Him.

And the Gospel? Well, we long for the coming of the righteous king, the Son of the God of the universe. But should we? When he comes to this mess, what will He have to say? The prophet Malachi has it right, ‘who can abide the day of His coming?’ The third theme was sacrifice, because we know viscerally that, as Pogo, famously said, ‘we have seen the enemy and he is us.’  The coming of the Lord in judgment is a fearsome thing, which John the Baptizer knows well.  We are John’s ‘brood of vipers,’ the image being one of a field being burned off, and the snakes fleeing from the approaching fire. And we as Christians do not deny that this judgment is righteous altogether. But what the Gospel says to you and me each morning is that the king of shalom has taken upon himself the burn, he has absorbed it. No Gentile shaman, nor powerbroker, nor mystic poet, foresaw that. It is in neither our imagining nor our desires. It is far better than both. And it is why Advent in all of its realism, in our lives as well as our world, is the fitting preparation for the coming of this surprising prince of peace. Amen.