Lost In The Desert

December 14, 2019

The Ordination of Catherine Anthony Jaime Briceño Ruth Ann Gaston Brenda Kilpatrick Sandra Siegel Miller to the Sacred Order of Deacons and Shawn André Evelyn to the Sacred Order of Priests 

It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables.

The question – the question that I need to pose on this momentous weekend – is a simple question. A simple, but deeply profound question. A question which, really, has pretty much dominated the week for me and my wonderful colleagues who work here at St James Cathedral. The question, that must be asked today of all days, is What do you call a penguin in the Sahara Desert?

That burning issue arose for me and my team, as we sat around my dining table for that most sinful of gatherings, a Christmas lunch held during the season of Advent. And, to make matters worse, being British, our Christmas lunch had to reflect my own traditions and cultures from Mother England, which means that we had to start with crackers – and I hope you all realize

that I am not referring to savory snacks designed to be eaten with cheese.

Any British Christmas meal starts with pulling your crackers, and as you do that, after the satisfying little bang, out will fall a crown made out of tissue paper, a small toy or ‘novelty’ that is usually something utterly useless, and, most importantly, a small slip of paper with a joke or a riddle. And so, this Wednesday just past, as we started our cathedral Christmas meal together, the first little slip of paper to fall from a cracker demanded of us this deeply theological question: What do you call a penguin in the Sahara Desert?

But such a question is, of course, way too frivolous for this morning’s great undertaking. Back in the Church of England, where I was ordained over two decades ago, they are more constricted by history and tradition than over here in the Episcopal Church. And, back there, on the certificates of ordination that you get given at the end of a service like this, the wording would say something like, Jeffrey, by divine permission Bishop of Chicago, solemnly administering holy orders…

And so, even though that wording is not what is used around here, nevertheless it probably means that you and I should take this morning’s proceedings very seriously, and forget about jokes or riddles.  Indeed, we have already heard a good number of solemn, weighty questions:

Have they been selected in accordance with the canons of this church?

Do you believe their manner of life to be suitable to the exercise of this ministry?

Will you be loyal to doctrine and discipline?

Will you obey your bishop?

Do you know of any impediment or crime because of which we should not proceed?

Manifestly, what is going on this morning is – truly - no joke, and it’s about to get a lot more serious. If you turn over the page in the bulletin, you will see another 15 questions that will have to be asked and answered, before any of these six wonderful people sitting just here will get to feel Bishop Lee’s hands upon their heads. And, given just how solemn is this undertaking, we would, I hope, be ready to forgive them, should they feel just a tad nervous.

At this great moment, we might understand if they began to feel just a little like the great Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, who faced something equally solemn in an encounter not with a bishop gloriously clad in robes and miter, but with none other than God. An encounter which leaves Jeremiah nervously saying, “Truly I do not know how to speak… I am only a boy…”

But God, clearly, has no truck with excuses of this kind. God rebuffs the nascent prophet, and grandly tells Jeremiah you shall speak whatever I command you. And so, God puts God’s words into Jeremiah’s mouth, and, to use the refrain of the hymn we will sing at the conclusion of our liturgy, God empowers Jeremiah for the work of ministry, and it turns out that, in fact, Jeremiah manages to speak perfectly well – and, indeed, he carries on speaking for another 51 chapters, plus five extra chapters of bonus material that we call his Lamentations. 56 chapters of Jeremiah proclaiming God’s Word, before we get to Ezekiel’s turn – and all of that from someone who tried to make the excuse that they were only a boy, and didn’t know how to speak. Somehow… the word got proclaimed nevertheless.

God’s word gets taken duly seriously, and there is no hint whatsoever of the prophet neglects his task, whether to wait on tables or do anything else that could be considered a diversion.

And thus we come to the rather awkward and nuanced element of today’s great liturgical event. For it is a wonderful and great thing that we are celebrating the ordination of Cate, Jaime, Ann, Brenda, Sandy and Shawn. But, whether we are old hands at this, and committed members of the Episcopal Church, folk who know exactly what is what on a day like today, or whether we are visiting family members and friends who don’t understand all the complex ins and outs of the Anglican/Episcopal world, it is plain that more than one thing is happening this morning.

For a start, Shawn André Evelyn is being ordained to the sacred order of priests, while these other five people are being ordained to the sacred order of deacons. And, on top of that, some of the five people being ordained deacon this morning will be what we have come to call ‘transitional’ deacons, which means that if God continues to will and ‘the people’ consent, then two of them will follow in Shawn’s footsteps and be ordained as priests – a path down which the other three do not feel called to follow, meaning they will be what we have come to call ‘vocational’ deacons.

And, whether you understand about the three sacred orders of the church’s ministry (as we grandly like to refer to most of those who are dressed up in funny clothes), or whether this morning is your first encounter with an exercise of this kind, it is plain that in our liturgy, and – apparently – in our readings from the Bible, we are being presented with some different models of service. And – just so nobody could possibly accuse me of neglecting not just to name, but to call out the elephant sitting in the room – it might just seem that not only are these different patterns of ministry not identical… they might also seem not to be equal.

And the reason we might find ourselves thinking that is because, as we heard at the opening of our second reading, Jesus very special friends, ‘the twelve’ – those particular people he called to follow him and learn from him as he preached and healed and taught for three amazing years – these twelve men are apparently very clear that It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables.

And if you go back and read Acts in the original Greek, if you don’t already know, you might by now be able to guess that the word for ‘waiting on tables’, the Greek word for this action, is to ‘deacon’. And, because Peter, James, John and the other nine people of manifest importance know that it is not right for them to neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables, they set apart seven other people to become what are often claimed the first deacons of the church of God. And just as they prayed and laid hands on those seven, back in 33 AD, so, in a few minutes time, in 2019 AD, Bishop Lee is going to do pretty much the same kind of thing for Cate, Jaime, Ann, Brenda and Sandy.

And that’s led to centuries and centuries of a perception that the Word of God is important, and that waiting on tables – being a deacon – is somehow just not quite so important. Indeed, it was the case, even as recently as the previous iteration of our Book of Common Prayer published in 1928, that the final prayer of the ordination rite for deacons contained the blunt words Make them…to be modest, humble, and constant in their Ministration, …that they … may so well behave themselves in this inferior Office, that they may be found worthy to be called unto the higher Ministries in thy Church. That was what was being said on a day like today until 1979.

Well, let me tell you a paradox. The apostles were not wrong in what they said… but the church nevertheless did get it wrong! For way too many centuries, the church has managed to misinterpret the story of Stephen and the other six ‘deacons’ in a characteristically clumsy and hierarchical manner, that, sad to say, is iconic of much of the dysfunction that has hurt the church and hindered the kingdom.

Peter and the other eleven had a clear sense of their vocation, and, as the early church grew and grew, they knew they could not be and do all things that were necessary. There were a load of different things to be done as the church grew but that does not mean that anybody was expected to neglect the word of God.

And if you don’t believe me, just read through to chapter eight in Acts. Stephen is famous not for his waiting on tables. That doesn’t get talked about again. What Stephen is remembered for is his proclamation of the word of God. A proclamation so effective and so courageous that it ends up getting him stoned to death and becoming the very first martyr, the very first ‘witness’ for Christ and Christ’s church.

And that, my friends, that is what this morning is really about. It is about celebrating the call to proclaim the Word of God. That wonderful call that is at the root of the story of Jeremiah; that call which is the real raison d’etre of the events around Stephen and the others over whom the apostles prayed, as a result of which the Word of God continued to spread; that call which we see most clearly and most fully in the life of Jesus, whom we know to be the Christ. That Jesus who lived out his call, to go about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom.

Which means we have good news today… and we have, depending on what you came here to see happen, we have good news and bad news… or we have good news and really good news. The obvious Good News is that Cate, Jaime, Ann, Brenda, Sandy and Shawn have been called to particular ministries that will provide the church with different forms of leadership in the urgent task of proclaming of the word of God.

Ordination is not about some kind of religious or sacramental magic. It is – literally - about providing good order to a system – to the very large and complex system that is the church of God, and which works under the authority of a local ‘ordinary’, to ensure a well ordered system. A system into which we rejoice that these six will bring their gifts as ministerial leaders.

But, whether vocational deacon, transitional deacon or priest, the test, the real test of whether their ordained leadership will bear fruit will depend on them, and it will depend on the Holy Spirit, but it will also depend on everyone else.

Because the call to proclaim the word of God, and the ministry and the mission that should spring from that proclamation is actually part of the call to be a baptized Christian, and nothing that Bishop Lee is doing to these six this morning is remotely as important as what happened to them, and to each one of us when we came to the deep waters of baptism.

For there is nothing exclusive to the clergy about serving, pastoring, teaching or any of the other tasks that are the subject of all the questions and the prayers this morning. Other than a particular charism of leadership – and, in the governance and culture of the Episcopal Church, leadership is shared between those who are ordained and those who are not – the call to ministry, the call to proclaim the word of God is universal. So the bad news, or the really good news, is that these six people are only really being ordained today to offer the rest of us an icon of the ministry and service to which God is calling every member of the church.

And the reason that God is making that call to every member of God’s church is because of that fundamental question - What do you call a penguin in the Sahara Desert?

Do I have an answer?

The answer is ‘lost’. For, in Jesus’ own time, as Matthew just told us, the crowds were ‘harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd’. There were crowds of people who were lost then, and there are crowds of people who are lost now.

And that takes many, many forms – from the crowds who flock through the doors of this cathedral twice a month when we offer a warm meal and some friendship to those without homes or incomes, to the crowds of voters pushing politics in my mother country, and in this country and many others, to dangerous and nasty extremes. It is plain that, right out there, just outside those classic, red, Episcopal church doors, right out there, to quote an article written a few months ago by an English bishop whom I admire, Old world assumptions [are] being challenged and fundamental assumptions about the inevitability of progress – technological and educational leading to moral – [are] being questioned.  He went on to say, just this past January, that Three years ago it was unthinkable that a divorced atheist could be elected as President of the United States or an amoral liar could be appointed as the UK’s Foreign Secretary. And, whatever your opinion about the president of this country, back in my home country, the ‘amoral liar’ is no longer Britain’s Foreign Secretary, but Britain’s Prime Minister, and, having surrounded himself with some of the most hard and rigid right-wing political colleagues the UK has known, he has just won one of the biggest electoral victories seen in my mother country for decades. Have no doubt, my friends – a great many people are lost.

And Jesus knew that. And Jesus knew that the laborers were few, which is why he told his followers to ‘ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest’. So, as we rejoice that six of those laborers are about to be ordained, don’t ever forget that the call to labor is not just one given to the clergy. If you think that, then, boy, we’ve got problems.

Because that call to labor is given to all of us, and it is ever the more urgently and vitally necessary, because there is more than one penguin who has managed to get lost in the desert.

So, you six, whether you wait at tables, or undertake any other great activity in God’s name, make sure you never neglect the word of God. But – even more importantly - make damn sure the rest of us don’t neglect it either. Amen.