To Be A Sign

June 16, 2018

Ordinations

Good morning! What a wonderful and joyful gathering of family and friends, colleagues, old and new, who have borne our ordinands, on loving hearts and arms, here today to be made priests in God’s church. As a soon-to-be fellow presbyter, I am humbled and delighted to have been asked to offer the sermon today as Shay, Brian, Adam and Scott will soon join with their colleagues in the work of the sacred order of priests.

Among all of the things that one is trying to sort out at the beginning of ordained ministry, wardrobe winds up being a surprisingly consuming concern. After years of discernment and preparation, final course work and canonical checklists you suddenly find yourself faced with needing to acquire “the outfit”. Where does one buy such a thing?  What do I need? You find yourself perusing various church goods catalogs—confusingly filled with vestment models who don’t look nearly weary enough -- and are far too conventionally attractive to be believable as clergy.

Roman or Anglican cassock, full collar or tab?? I don’t want to accidentally buy something that only a bishop is supposed to wear […oooh, look at the pretty piping on that one—breaks up all the black!] We discreetly instant message our friends and call our sponsoring rectors, trying not to reveal our ignorance, and somehow piece it together to show up for our ordination in a semblance of appropriate vesture.

And then, after we begin ordained ministry, as our four ordinands can no doubt attest, that question of “what to wear” continues to haunt us – is it alb or choir dress?  Just ask any of the attending priests here this morning if they didn’t have a momentary panic as they grabbed their stole to come here this morning, “Did the invitation say white or red?!” It’s pretty obvious and straightforward what one ought to wear on Sunday morning, but what about to the Saturday vestry retreat? or a clergy gathering? or the church picnic?

I was struggling with just such a quandry early, just a few months into my priestly ministry, and had gone wandering the halls of my church in search of one of my senior colleagues, and was relieved to find the senior female associate in the office fiddling with an uncooperative piece of machinery. I asked her “Should I wear a collar to (such and such) event?  I’m wondering if it’s important that I go in my role as a priest” She looked at me like I was an idiot, and she replied, “My collar isn’t what makes me a priest.” And then turned her attention back to her project.

As I returned to my office, I thought, “Well that must be nice… because right now, it feels like it’s the only thing thatmakes me a priest!”

You are coming to your priestly ordination in a week where we have heard the attorney general of the United States makes claims about a passage in Romans, and then a late-night talk show host countering him with a different interpretation of scripture. And with this little strip of plastic around your neck, people are going to turn to you and ask, “Who’s right”?  Not because they believe that you personally have some great knowledge, but because by taking on this role, you have become the outward and visible sign of the church, and of the authority invested in you by the whole church, to teach and preach, and interpret the scriptures.

There is something about these outward signs.  One Ash Wednesday many years ago, my then teenaged daughter, Grace, shocked me by asking me about the worship schedule at church --  because she wanted to be sure to come and get her ashes. After I recovered from the shock of the question, I gave her the schedule for the day and then asked her, if she wouldn’t mind, if she could tell me why it seemed to be important to so many people (who perhaps didn’t regularly attend church) to come and receive ashes.  She thought about it for a minute and then said, “I think it’s because it’s the one day a year that the rest of us get to wear the fact that we’re Christian on the outside for others to see—like you guys do with your collar all the time.”

Today you take on the outward and visible signs of your priestly ministry. Today you become a living, breathing sacrament. As in all sacraments, the church gathers, prays, and makes its vows, but it is God who acts. In a very short time now, the gathered church, singing Veni, Sancte Spiritus, will bid the Holy Spirit, “Come”; the Bishop will offer prayer and will invite the gathered presbyters to join in laying our hands on you; but it is God who will make you a priest. 

And like all sacraments, your priesthood is not meant to be an end in itself; it is meant to change something around it. When we are baptized, we are to go out into the world, bearing the death and resurrected life of our risen Lord in our flesh -- changing the world around us. When we gather for the sacred meal, the bread and wine are blessed and consumed, we are sent out: transformed, renewed, and strengthened for service.

Your priesthood isn’t for you. It is for the church. It is for the world --  a world that at this time is feeling pretty harassed and helpless. Like sheep without a shepherd.

Shay, Brian, Adam, and Scott, God is making you priests of the church in a relatively terrifying time. God is making you priests of the church in a time when public officials are bandying about scripture verses to justify immoral behavior. People are gong to turn to the authority for answers. In just a few minutes that authority will be you. Be ready.

And by that, I don’t mean be ready to ‘Priest-splain’ the scripture at  people in ways that make them want to run, screaming, out of your churches! But rather, to be ready, you must make of your life a living sacrifice – a holy offering, daily drawing closer to God, through prayer, study and service. And use the authority invested in you this day to be a powerful and faithful witness to (as our presiding bishop puts it) our “loving, liberating, and life-giving God”.

And in a nod to the sermon at my own ordination years ago, you must be so steeped in that life-giving word that you are able to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ not only to those who lives are going reasonably well, but to those whose lives are wracked by pain and devastation.  Because as our own bishop has said, we do not preach Gospel of “Ten Steps to Better Christian Living” but rather we preach Christ crucified, and risen; Christ who defeats death and drags us all along with him into risen life. You must hew so closely to Christ that you can find the words to proclaim the Good News to children who at this moment are at our nation’s border in cages  --  and to their bereft parents all crying themselves to sleep this night. You must be able to find a way to preach the Good News to those in the crucible of horrific pain and unimaginable fear. And you must be able to preach the Good news to the people who put them there. This is a high, and hard, and holy calling that is by definition too big for you; it is too big for all  of us. And so we must rely on God, and on one another.

My clergy colleague all those years ago was right: it isn’t your collar that makes you a priest; God makes you a priest. But your collar shows others that you are a priest.  And it’s ok if for a while, your collar needs to show you that you are a priest too. Sometimes, in the early days, I would go find a mirror just to remind myself. I would see my face with a collar at the bottom of it, and just shake my head wondering, “What was the church thinking?”

And of course I would go to look in the mirror—not because I was vain, but because, if you think about it, when you are wearing it, you can’t see your collar- only others can. And while it might feel like a crutch to you while you get your footing, ultimately your collar isn’t for you; it is for others --  it is for those who are able to see it when you wear it. Your priesthood isn’t for you. It is for those who can see it.

It is a sign. You are to be a sign- a living, breathing sacrament: an outward and visible sign of the priesthood of all believers. And like all sacraments, you are meant to transform the world in Christ’s name. Amen.