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.
