Advent 1 - 12/1/2013

(Guest homily by Malcolm Heath)

This is the first Sunday of Advent, and I found myself wondering, as this day approached, what this season of the church means.

The other seasons of the church, I feel like I have a pretty good idea what they’re about.  Easter is of course pretty clear.  Pentecost, perhaps less so, but I still have some idea. 

But I found that when I thought about Advent, I came up with very little. 

When I was a child, we used to celebrate Advent in my home.  We had candles, and a wreath, and a little book of readings, and each Sunday we’d light a new candle, and do a little service, and as I recall, this was somehow combined in my mind with opening the panels of an Advent calendar.  I have since learned that some of these have a little treat for each day.  The calendars of my youth didn’t – just a little picture for each day.

What I got out of this was mainly that Christmas was coming.  Of course, in a child’s mind, this wasn’t connected to the idea of God becoming Man, the Incarnation, the Word becoming Flesh.  Instead, it was a simple countdown to a big meal, and presents. 

I don’t think my conception of Advent has really moved much past that in the intervening years.

This year, however, has been a bit different for me.  My wife and I have gotten all of our shopping done already.  I don’t have any really major things to accomplish before the big day.  I have the time to think about it, which is a pretty amazing situation, and very unusual. 

I’ve got a lot of time to just do nothing.

But then, as I thought more, it occurred to me that the idea of waiting is central to Advent. 

But why have this season of waiting?  And what is it that we are waiting for?  People talk about “preparation” which makes it seem like we should be doing something, like we should be dusting and vacuuming, that we should be putting out trays of food in preparation for the arrival of an important guest.   But I don’t think that’s it. 

What I think this season is for is to realize something really simple.  It’s making space for the realization that there’s something missing, and that we don’t, and can’t, know what we’re waiting for.

It’s easy to ignore the things in our lives that aren’t actually there.  We have lots to do, more immediate needs to deal with, and even when we have all that we need in terms of necessities, we can still find plenty to do to avoid thinking about things we’re lacking.  So, it’s actually kind of difficult to have the time, and space, much less the motivation, to really sit down and ask ourselves what we’re missing.

So this Advent-tide, let me ask you all a question.  What’s missing in your lives?  What do you lack in your heart?  Do you have that feeling like there may be something that you can’t quite put your finger on?  Something that despite perhaps having all you might need or require, and having a high degree of confidence that if only you could figure out what this certain something is, you could possibly find it, or make it, or buy it at a mall, that nevertheless, you know that you won’t be able to find it there?  That it’s beyond your abilities somehow?

Because it’s that feeling that I think Advent is about.  That need.

Without that need, I think, Jesus is just another prophet.  A wise man with some interesting things to say.  And those have been a dime a dozen over the millennia, and that’s hardly worth writing home about.

Without that need, that understanding of lack in our hearts, Jesus is just a man, and he’s just another poor kid who was born out of wedlock to poor parents, a very long time ago.

Without that need, that understanding that this is not something we can do for ourselves…there really isn’t any place for him to come.  Nowhere to lay his head.  No room at the inn.

Now, I’m not sure if this is what Advent is.  But it seems to me like it might have something to do with it. 

How's the house look?

Proper 27 C 2013
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CProp27_RCL.html


“How does this house look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing?”

Two Vestry members recently walked around the church building with a parish member who has taken a keen interest in the condition of our property. They noticed things that we who walk in and out for an hour or two on Sunday learn to ignore—disrepair, disheveled grounds. The west face of the church, the side we never see but the neighbors do, is peeling paint from back to front.

I do not think I have ever preached about the church building before, but our first reading is about a building and what it means. Haggai the prophet preached during the time when the people of Israel had returned from exile and were trying to rebuild their lives in and around Jerusalem. It was hard, discouraging work: so much needed to be done, and they had so little energy and funds to do so. Re-building the Temple itself started then stopped—other projects seemed so much more important.

Take a look, says Haggai. Does anyone remember what it was?

As Rector of an older congregation I tend to be allergic to “good old days” stories—nostalgia tends to surround memory with a golden glow. Sometimes “good old days” stories are told with a kind of bitterness by people who are upset because life changes and they themselves have changed and aged. But this month we remember the dead and their witness. We unearthed a scrapbook of past generations of church-people living and worshiping and serving right here, each generation with their hopes and their struggles and their sense of mission.

We’re here now. We are here, doing our best to live out what we believe Christ calls us and empowers us to do. We are a different congregation from those who photos are in the scrapbook in the hall. They in turn were different from the generation that they succeeded in this place.

It’s up to us to answer those hard questions that the prophet poses: “How does this house look to you?”

Church buildings do not exist for their own sake. They exist for the sake of the Gospel and the people of God. We have a distinct mission here that has evolved over recent years. We have a special gift and call to reach out to the poor. We have a special gift and call to break down barriers of culture and race, most specifically through our growing Hispanic congregation and who we are now because of their presence. We have a special gift of welcome and openness to our neighbors. We are strengthened and sustained in this mission through ancient Catholic and Episcopal faith and practice, lived through lives of prayer and shared Word and Sacrament.

God is so good to us. We have a reason to be here.

The building is where we gather, where we welcome, where we celebrate and serve. It is the visible symbol of our presence in this neighborhood, our mission.

I think this season leading to our Consecration Sunday asks us vital questions. We’ve lived faithfully through many changes and challenges. It is our time to claim our life here in faith, to celebrate it and give thanks, and to re-build and renew whatever in our lives and yes, in the property and building given to us in trust, calls for renewal and new life.

We’re not poor, and we’re not small. Hear the prophet’s words to us:

“Take courage, work, for I am with you”

“My spirit abides among us; do not fear”

“Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth… The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the LORD of hosts. The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts; and in this place I will give prosperity, says the LORD of hosts.”

Consecration Sunday!

Consecration Sunday Is Coming!

Congregations that approach financial stewardship from a biblical perspective do not view the money Christians give to their church merely as a way to pay its bills. Rather, such congregations see financial contributions as a way to help people grow spiritually in their relationship with God by supporting their church’s mission and ministry with a percentage of their incomes.

Saints Peter and Paul’s Vestry has selected the New Consecration Sunday Stewardship Program as a way to teach the biblical and spiritual principles of generous giving in our stewardship education emphasis this year.

New Consecration Sunday is based on the biblical philosophy of the need of the giver to give for his or her own spiritual development, rather than on the need of the church to receive. Instead of treating people like members of a social club who should pay dues, we will treat people like followers of Jesus Christ who want to give unselfishly as an act of discipleship. New Consecration Sunday encourages people toward proportionate and systematic giving in response to the question, “What percentage of my income is God calling me to give?”

During morning worship on Consecration Sunday, we are asking our attendees and members to make their financial commitments to our church’s missionary, benevolent, and educational ministries in this community and around the world.

Every attendee and member who completes an Estimate of Giving Card does so voluntarily by attending morning worship on Consecration Sunday. We urge people to attend who feel strongly opposed to completing a card. The procedure is done in such a way that no one feels personal embarrassment if he or she chooses not to fill out a card.

We will do no home solicitation to ask people to complete cards. During morning worship our guest leader will conduct a brief period of instruction and inspiration, climaxed by members making their commitments as a confidential act of worship.

We will encourage participation in Consecration Sunday events through the Consecration Sunday team and Vestry members. Since we will make no follow-up visits to ask people to complete their cards, we will make every effort to inform, inspire, and commit everyone to attend Consecration Sunday worship.

Thanks in advance for your enthusiastic participation in Consecration Sunday events.


Jamie Marks Fr. Kurt Neilson+
Consecration Sunday Chairperson Rector

fierce mercy

Proper 18 C 2013
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CProp18_RCL.html


A young monk sought out one of the old Abbas, the elder monks of the desert. The young monk began to speak to the Abba about very profound spiritual matters, highly advanced notions of prayer. The old Abba listened patiently for a time. Finally, when the young man had paused for a moment, the elder remarked “You have not yet made your way to the shore. You have not yet made yourself a boat. You have not yet crossed the sea. You have not yet climbed out of your boat onto the shore on the other side of the sea. And yet you wish to speak to me about the streets of the city that lies on the other side of that sea.”

I empathize with that young monk as I am confronted with today’s readings. Today we are faced with just how profound a commitment it is to follow Jesus. We are faced with the severity of the Gospel, and with the richness of the mercy of God all at once.

Today it is Jesus who provides the most severe note. I do not know of any newcomer committee who would print his teaching on their brochure or on the homepage of the website! “Unless you hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and yes even life itself, you cannot be my disciple.” Many preachers will take this text and in essence try to tame it, to say that Jesus did not really mean what he said, that there is some inner or symbolic meaning at work here.

When the Gospels were composed, this text was meant quite literally. One of my biblical professors told us that the four Gospels are “handbooks for martyrs.” I agree. The Gospels were composed in communities who were struggling to be faithful amidst stress and pressure and persecution. In those early decades, followers of Jesus were being cast out of synagogues. This made them very vulnerable, because in the Roman Empire Jewish folk enjoyed a certain amount of protection and privilege. If these followers of the Way were not Jews and also did not acknowledge neither the divine Emperor nor the official state worship, they could be tried, pressured to submit to the Empire’s worship, fined, imprisoned, or even killed. As fear and anxiety built and people were betrayed by friends and family, as they were hauled off or forced into hiding, many wavered and renounced Jesus for the sake of their own and their family’s safety. These communities reflected and prayed on what they were to do and what was God’s will for them. So they remembered their Master, who also was betrayed and tried and went to his cross. These are the Gospels we have today.

This fierce reality, the life and death immediacy of following Jesus, often feels far removed from us today.

When I was in my twenties, I lived under fear and threat while working as a missionary with base Christian communities in the Philippines. Our work training local lay leaders and helping raise up communities who reflected on the Gospels and the realities of their lives was labeled “subversive” by the government. We were often shadowed by the military and informed on by spies. I had friends who disappeared or who went into hiding. When I was about to return to the States, some of my local friends said to me, “We’ll pray for you, returning to the belly of the beast. It is a luxury living a Gospel life here, where choices are clear and where there is real risk in following Jesus. Back where it is easy—that will be harder for your soul.”

They were quite right. Here it was possible to live a risk-free Christian life, or at least one that is lived comfortably. It is possible to profess the name of Jesus and have that profession of faith not interfere much with life lived in the comfortable and prosperous developed world. I wonder if some of the indifference of the surrounding culture to the Gospel lies not so much in a rejection of it, but rather people do not see evidence that it much matters if one practices Christianity or not. Why bother with a little inconvenience in the Sunday schedule if there is little evidence in churchpeople’s lives that this is a commitment that matters?

I am painting with broad brushstrokes here. I know that there are many of us who quietly observe a costly faith. Since our own empire does not find enough offense in us to persecute us, the demands of the Gospel become more interior, a personal way of transformation, a cost paid that is not easily visible. But today our Lord is gracious in reminding us that the journey with him is costly. Following Jesus is not to be taken lightly or half-heartedly. Over and over again in my life I bump up against these stark demands, and I am called to account, again and again.

But with these demands there is help, and there is mercy.

Fierce old Jeremiah lends a note of hope as he watches the potter at his wheel. Perhaps you’ve seen a potter at work in real-life. It is delightful to watch a pot begin to rise from the spinning wheel, only to have the potter bring it back down to a lump of wet clay and begin again. There is infinite possibility in the clay, and there is always the capacity to begin again.

On our own strength, following Jesus is impossible. Perhaps that is why we tend to gloss over fierce texts like that of today. But with God this journey is possible. And always we begin again.

Another old desert abba said, “When you pray, just say this: ‘As you will, and as you know, have mercy on me O Lord.’ And when the fight get fierce, say ‘Lord, help’.” Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy—the ancient cry of prayer that is a matter of life and death. God is rich in mercy—the Greek word for mercy refers to olive oil, poured out richly on us. Mercy enfolds and surrounds us and bears us up. All we need do is ask.

As I write this, a next-door neighbor is walking the 500 km road to Santiago. It is a long, hard road, and on her ‘blog she writes that she has already run into some difficulty and injury. She is 70 years old.

It is funny that we worry about empty space in our church pews, but the hard Road to Santiago is thronged with people. Perhaps we need to make it clear that our journey here is challenging and difficult too.

Leaving the building

(Note: this is a synopsis of a homily delivered for our Sunday observance of "Mary the God-Bearer", "St. Mary the Virgin" on the Episcopal calendar. I've added reflections based on our exploration of outreach ministries at Saints Peter and Paul--kn+)

A colleague of mine, a respected rector of a vital urban parish, once told me that he tries to spend at least twice as much time each week in coffee shops and brewpubs than he does in the church office. "If I am in the office too much" he opined, "I have the wrong conversations."

Well, he is very quotable on this and, I think, very right. These "wrong conversations" may not be "bad conversations" per se. But they are predictable conversations, about bulletins and church calendars and attendance and building maintenance and church programs and a great deal of things that have absolutely no meaning to anyone once one puts a foot over the threshold of the doorway. Frankly, I think those things I listed increasingly have little meaning for many of the folks who come inside the doorway as well!

The other day I was speaking with a parish member, in a coffee shop, about life and values and God and spiritual seeking. A woman I did not know walked past us, saw the book I had brought with me, and said "Richard Rohr! I have to talk with you some time!" Another customer, a young woman in a sleeveless top, walked past with her cup. I saw that she had a beautiful, full-color Our Lady of Guadalupe tattooed on her upper arm. It was August 15, the actual day of Our Lady's feast.

I smiled at seeing the beautiful tattoo and thought, "There she is. She's right where she should be." Like my colleague, Our Lady wants to have the right sort of conversations, and is outside of the walls of church office and sanctuary where her people are.

That is the outrageous character of the Gospel. God has left the building.

Most of us love temples. It is human instinct to build a temple, to provide a beautiful place for meditation and for prayer and for gathering groups of people to perform sacred acts. Temples establish mailing addresses for God, or at least we hope they do. Every major culture builds and has built temples, whether we call them cathedrals or mosques or synagogues or stupas. They are wonderful to visit and often invite prayer and reflection.

But the God of the Bible has left the building!

Remember David, the great king of the Hebrew Scriptures? He too wanted to built a temple, feeling guilty that he had a nice wooden house while the Ark of God was still under the old tent that was carried by the people of Israel while they wandered in the desert. The prophet comes to David after a dream and says, "Thus says God: I did not ask you to build me a temple. I traveled with my people in the wilderness." The God of the Bible is a pilgrim God, and the best and most intimate time with this God was when they traveled with God in the desert. On the road, in exile, homeless, learning in humility how different a God this was and how different they were called to be. The whole business of a temple was a very mixed experience for Israel, and prophets criticized the temple and predicted its destruction as much or more than the temple was praised.

And when the pilgrim God wished to break free of culture and time and ethnic loyalty, what happened?

This pilgrim God chose a young woman, anonymous and unmarried and away from the power and privilege of Jerusalem. On the day that everything changed, the Temple in Jerusalem was conducting business as usual, sacrifices and sung Psalms and incense and offerings and all. The Temple and its priests and singers and those attending were ignorant of the fact that God had left the building. God was up north, in a small town, where a mighty archangel spoke kindly and politely to a young woman and respectfully waited for her answer. For she was free to say yes or no.

The young woman, Miriam, said "Here am I, the servant of the Lord: let it be."

And God took up a new home, in the body of that young woman. Mary became the new Temple, which is why old litanies call her things like "tower of ivory, mystical tabernacle". God took a chosen place on the margins, in frail flesh, with people forgotten and pushed aside and silenced. God had left the building. Years later, when the God-made-flesh died on the cross, the Gospels speak of the curtain in the Temple veiling the Holy of Holies being torn in two. Out, out, no longer in a temple made of stone, but wild and out in the world. Look to where people are in exile and on the edge. Look to the margins, the forgotten places. There the divine wind blows and there the God-made-flesh will be found, making Nowheres into Somewheres and Nobodies into really Somebodies and leaving the powerful and the self-righteous standing silent with wide-open mouths amidst their offerings and their rites.

We all love a temple. We, meaning church-folk, usually love our churches. It is good for the praying community to have a home, a place to gather to celebrate and to pray. It is good to have a roof for our ministries, especially for those that benefit someone other than ourselves. But we must always be on our guard to have the right conversations, and to regard our buildings and other possessions in the right way, the way of the Gospel. The Gospel is a message for those who have not heard it, the divine energy pushing us past our inward-looking preoccupations and self-involvement and into a world where God has chosen to dwell, among people whom God has loved so much that he became one of them and is within them still. The right conversation for church-folk goes something like this: how do we seek and serve the Christ who walks past our doors, whom we encounter in work and errands and in our streets? It is one of the greatest irony of the organized Christian project that a church can be where we hold the least amount of conversations about the Gospel. So often we talk about other things, and at great length.

Last night as I write this, the Senor Warden and I accompanied a young couple, with us for the past year, as they walked the streets of Montavilla with an attitude of curiosity and of prayer. They are helping lead us into exploring anew some basic Gospel questions: Who is our neighbor? Where did we see you, Lord? Our steps took us down Stark Street, where a lone homeless woman welcomed us into her space of sidewalk that she shares with a lone white dove who keeps careful watch on her. Then up north, eventually to Montaville Park, where under trees we found small gatherings of homeless already worried about the ending of summer and the coming of the rains. Out of the church building with its lovely silence and lingering smell of incense and flickering candles, out among those who have not croseed our thesholds but whom Christ loves dear and lives among to this day. It can feel oddly vulnerable to be out and about in the streets and the lots, away from the protection of role and title. But it is one place to have the right conversations, like "Where is God when you are out on the street? How can we approach these people with respect? What is the Good News for them?"

I did not see another colorful tattoo, but I did not need to. The God of the Gospel has left the building and journeys with the people. It is still the Octave of Our Lady's feast and, unseen but powerful, she was already walking among those vulnerable and poor, those among whom the pilgrim God loves to travel.

Climb

Sermon: Feast of the Transfiguration
Exodus 34:29-35 • Psalm 99 • 2 Peter 1:13-21 • Luke 9:28-36

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

It is such a joy to be back in this place after a year away. The last time I stood in this pulpit, I had come to church from an empty apartment, all packed up to move to Boston for divinity school. It’s been a great adventure for my wife, Heather, and for me, but it sure feels good to be home.

Our new home on the East Coast, we share with a housemate. She is clean, quiet, mellow, with only one flaw: She loves to start big, serious conversations right as I’m trying to go to bed.

I’m walking to the bathroom, holding my toothbrush: “Catherine, I picked up more dish soap. And how do you know if you’re on the right career path?”

I’m getting a glass of water at 1:00 AM: “Catherine, I’m out of town this weekend. And how do you know when it’s time to have kids?”

And every time, I rub my bleary eyes and say the same thing: “I don’t know, but I think when the time comes, the answer will present itself.”

The Transfiguration answers the question the apostles must have been asking: How do we know if all this is true?

How do we know if you’re really God? How do we know if it was worth giving up everything we had to follow you?

I know I asked that question last summer. I believe in God: I do. And I want to follow Jesus: I do. And even though my faith in the church has taken some serious hits over the years, my faith in Christ has stayed strong.

But still, I wondered: How do I know if quitting my job and uprooting my family and leaving my friends and putting my cats on an airplane – horrible – is worth the risk?

The Feast of the Transfiguration is the answer presenting itself.

Peter and James and John were the lucky ones. They got to see Jesus transfigured: his face shining, and his clothes dazzling white. They heard the voice of God from the cloud, telling them all their greatest hopes and fears were true.

And they saw Moses and Elijah and they saw Christ in his glory and you better believe that after that they were never the same.

And that is what I want in my life of faith.

I want it so badly that sometimes I skip right over the prologue.

They had that transcendent experience on a mountaintop.

But to get there, they had to climb a mountain.

And here in the land of glaciers and mountaintops, we know that is no easy thing.

If you’ve ever climbed a mountain, you know: No matter how badly you want to reach the top, the climb only feels good for the first ten minutes. After that, your throat burns and your legs ache. You feel like you can’t get enough air. You look at the dark clouds rolling in above you and long for the safety of level ground.

And this is what it looks like to climb toward transfiguration.

If we want to see God in our own lives, if, like Moses, we want our own faces to shine, we have to start climbing that mountain.

And each one of us will have a different path, but nobody gets an easy way up. Part of the journey comes in those late-night moments of asking:

How do I know that this is worth the effort?
How do I know that God hears my prayers?
How do I know that God is even real?

And these are normal. And these are real. And these are part of the climb.

The author Patrick Califia tells us, “The true worth of our character is not determined by whether we have the ability to experience transcendent moments of insight or union with divinity. Rather, it is determined by whether we can remember the things that we are told during those moments and live them out during the long stretches of ordinary time when we are cut off from such inspiration.”

But we know the mountaintop is there, even in the moments when we can’t see it. We know that if we wait and we watch and we pray, if we commit ourselves to the climb, the answer will present itself.
And so we remember the Transfiguration, right in the middle of this long stretch of ordinary time.

This is my prayer for all of us: That we are brave enough to ask the hard questions, knowing the answers will come; that we remember the mountaintop, even in the middle of the climb.

Amen.

by Cat Healy Canapary 8/11/13

Of donkeys and Orders: at Sean Wall's ordination

Sean Wall’s ordination
July 6, 2013
Jeremiah 1: 4-9; Ps 119: 33-40; 2 Cor 4: 1-6; Luke 22: 24-27


The story is told that Abba Isaac, one of the early Desert Fathers, was chosen by his fellow-monks to be ordained a priest. Hearing of this, Isaac fled. His fellow-monks pursued him, stopping to rest by a farmer’s field. While they rested, their donkey wandered into the field and stood still where Isaac happened to be hiding. The monks, retrieving the donkey, found Isaac and tackled him, and began to tie him up to lead him back to be ordained. But Isaac sighed and said, “No need for the ropes. Clearly this is the will of God.”

Now that’s a call and discernment process!

There are a number of stories like Abba Isaac’s, where far from seeking ordination the early monks and other early Christians dreaded it and avoided it, even to the point of being held down while the bishop imposed hands.

In those days there was one clear call, the call of God through Jesus Christ in the Spirit given in Baptism. Those were still the great days of baptismal catechesis, and the ancient power and dignity of baptism had not yet faded. Women and men fled to the desert so they could live that all-consuming, all-absorbing call to radical simplicity and poverty of spirit and humility and immersion in the mystery of the Christ that is the baptismal call of us all. Ordination was seen as presenting real problems, possible distractions from that one love of the one Lord, real temptations to pride and vanity and ambition cloaked as ministry.

Well, green and well-watered Lake Oswego is not the Egyptian desert, but as we gather here Christ gathers with us, and with Christ come all his friends, Abba Isaac among them. Old Isaac’s tale invites us to recall the one Baptismal call that we all share, the one Lord who gathers us, the one Love above all loves without whom nothing we do or say has life and light. Only in the light of Christ who calls us all can we understand ordaining Sean today.

It is that one Lord who gathers us. It is his Body, that wonderful and sacred mystery as the Collect says, that shines with his presence. It is the sacrament of the gathered assembly, the glorious and broken and comical and sinful and maddening and beautiful Body of Christ on earth, who calls us all into fellowship and who calls some of the baptized to Orders. Sean, you are to be ordered today as a deacon preliminary to, with God’s help, being ordered a priest according to our present practice. Holy Orders are just that, the church’s orders to be a specific presence that the Body needs, ordered to do certain tasks that the Body requires to grow and nourish our common life in Christ.

I can tell you with complete confidence, with the authority of my own existential experience, that what you are being ordered to do and be is humanly impossible. A transitional deacon on the path to priesthood is apprenticed to gather the Body in Christ’s name. You are apprenticed to unfailingly point not to yourself but to Christ, just as Saint Paul did when he said “We do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord.” You are to allow Christ to love and heal and speak hope in you and through you. You will be expected, on both regularly scheduled occasions as well as at barbecues and bus stops and brewpubs and hospital waiting rooms, to speak words that are not your words alone, but Christ’s words enfleshed in your words. You are to lead the Body of Christ to grow in mission and service in an age and a culture wherein the Gospel and Jesus himself are in disrepute, are out of fashion, are looked upon with indifference that quickly turns to suspicion.

The doors are open if you want to make a break for it. Ushers, please stand ready!

But know this: if this task and this life seems daunting, then you are in good company. Jeremiah’s call makes that clear. There is never a comfortable time to be a servant of God. Jeremiah’s “yes” to God’s call meant a life of tension and conflict. He names before God his sense of inability and his lack of preparation. I wonder if he passed all his GOE’s? But call is call because it is unexpected and unlikely, and any of us who are called rarely feel equal to the task. But with call comes a promise, God’s promise to be strength and rest and Word and voice, for Jeremiah and for all who hear and respond and for you.

We prayed a portion of Psalm 119, a Psalm that Celtic monks used to repeat daily from memory. They did this to renew their commitment to listen to and respond to God’s Word, to be people of the living Word. That is a wise idea—to be soaked daily in the living Word, in Scripture, in prayer, in the living Word made flesh in the Eucharist, in the living Word heard by listening deeply and carefully to God’s speech in the world.

And the Christ who speaks today in the Gospel says to us and to you over and over: Serve. Be in the world as a servant. Do not fear, because the Master came to serve. Let him serve through your service.

That simple call to serve is the most life-giving, unfashionable, deeply needed, and counter-cultural word you can proclaim with your mouth and with your fingers on a keyboard and, above all, by your actions and your stance in the world. So surrender to it. I know you have sought to.

And you do not come to this day alone.

Your wonderful family has supported you and challenged you and healed you and stretched you and make sure that you keep it real and that you keep your feet on the ground. That’s their job and I’ll bet they are good at it. Love them and treasure them for that gift among many. If they are like my family, they have already put up with a lot.

Value this community who raised you up. Value the years spent in a plane cockpit where I suspect this day seemed as remote as the horizon-line. Value the simple servanthood you have exercised feeding the poor at Brigid’s Breakfast. Your studies, your friendships, those who have challenged you, all those with whom you have served to this date—all are part of the journey and all are here today with you in this ending which is a beginning, this beginning that marks an ending.

The wondrous, maddening, dying and rising Body that we call Church is in a period of extraordinary change. Much has grown old. Much has reached the end of its course. And although there is much talk of leadership these days, the need for the ordained to lead, the paradox is that any skills or knowledge we may learn or deploy will not change the fact that most of what is happening in the Church and the world is utterly, utterly beyond our control.

Some may consider this a disaster. Me, I think it is an opportunity—to remember who we most truly and deeply are. Before his death, Henri Nouwen said, “I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God’s love.” We are being given a terrible, wondrous grace in this age: all is falling away except Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as servants for Jesus’ sake. This is actually a wondrous gift of God.

So my brother Sean, in the name of this gathering I ask you to do what you know you are called to do. Do it as a life, one day at a time, with the help of God.

Answer the call of God in Christ. “Call” is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Your call will come daily, hourly. Keep your ears cleaned out and open, your attention alert, your eyes sharp. Your call to serve will be renewed each time the phone rings, each time the doorbell rings, each time an e-mail pops up on the server, each time someone tugs on your sleeve, each time someone springs into your mind unbidden.

Immerse yourself daily in the mystery of Christ. Do this by soaking in prayer, by marinating yourself in Scripture, by asking for grace and help over and over again. Never let this soaking be something that gets done if you have time for it, because you won’t. Do it as if your life depends on it. It does.

Love the church. I do not mean love the culture of an institution. That is changing under our very feet. I do not mean love the church as it might be, because that is a dream shaped by our own hopes and fears. Do not love the church you think you remember, because that is nostalgia often shaped by rejection of the present. Love the wonderful and sacred, comical and tragic, delightful and heroic, faltering and cowardly, and very real collection of pilgrims that we are and that Jesus loves right here and now.

Seek the servant Lord over and over again. Ask him humbly to serve in and through you.

And know that there will be days when you want to do nothing but cut and run. Believe me on that. But don’t worry—God will have Abba Isaac’s donkey all ready to look for you!