Sermons by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
The Ordination of James Turrell as a Priest
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
December 21, 1996
Isa 6:1-8 Eph 4:7, 11-16 Mat 9:35-38Today Jim comes to the end of a long road and begins another, longer, one. What we are about to do is very much like the eucharist: the people of God will bring him forward, the priests will help me as we all offer him to God and invoke God's blessing on him, and then we will all receive Jim back as a gift to us, with new significance and function for all our sakes.
For to those who have had a transforming vision of God, to those who have been cleansed by the live coal of God's soul-searing grace, there sometimes comes the call to be an apostle, prophet, evangelist, or pastor or a teacher -- all for the building up of mature Christians, for putting them to work in their ministries, for helping them grow into Christ.
In this context of Christian maturation, like a ton of maniples, our epistle drops the hint that not every religious sentiment is helpful, that some things said in churches may in fact serve agendas that are not friendly to Christ and his saving love. What's a presbyter to do? What's a new presbyter to do?
While it is true that Dr. Johnson said that anyone "who is good enough to go to heaven is good enough to be" a priest, there is a bit more to it than that. You, Jim, having mastered divinity, whatever that means, are now going to have to look at people with compassion, to love them just the way they are - as you tell them, No. Clergy are notoriously terrible about conflict, they are past-masters of passive aggression, and that may explain why we've forgotten how to say "No" to people, especially people who are actually in the room with us at the time. Unconditional love, unconditional acceptance, should never be mistaken for blanket approval. These are two very different things. The gospel words "neither do I condemn you" are followed immediately by "go, and sin no more."
That "no" that the epistle lesson asks you to say, needs to be addressed to all "theologies of inclusion" that do not call for repentance and conversion of life. That "no" needs to be said to any style of worship that leads no one present to suspect that God is in any way transcendent, or that God is important. That "no" needs to be said loud and clear to people who consider the content of their subjective individual experience as having a veto over the clear sense of scripture and of the church's patterns of believing and worshiping throughout the centuries. Finally, that "no" needs to be said unwaveringly to those who self-righteously use their supposed orthodoxy to punish others, rather than claiming orthodoxy as a launching pad for the back-breaking work that sometimes must come of compassion. Today's gospel urges you to have that compassion for all those who wander through a Wal-Mart-full of philosophies and self-help slogans, looking for some spiritual bargain to make sense of their lives.
For it is God's "Yes," God's compassion, after all, that is to be born along in these earthen vessels that we are. Those No's must be said - but said in compassion so that the Yes may shine through. That is because each no is said to something that keeps people from experiencing the depths of the riches of the love of God in the cross of Jesus Christ. Jim, as a card carrying intellectual, you will perhaps be in a position someday that will allow you to chart the winds of doctrine for us. But the purpose of identifying winds that can blow us off course is not the pride we can then take in being right, or the comfort of preserving what is familiar. The purpose of those "no's" is keeping the way to the saving and transforming love of God open, wide, clear, and compelling.
You recall that Jesus was sharply critical of the religious leaders of his day who would put heavy moral, ethical, and ritual burdens on people, but not lift a finger to help them bear those burdens. Show us what to do, and also how to do it, or how to be encouraged while doing it, or hold your peace. Show us the power of God working in us; show us God's willingness to give more than we can ask or imagine. And just occasionally, show us that it is also, from time to time, fun to love God, fun to be part of the body of Christ.
That very real fun notwithstanding, it is not always easy to be a priest today. Some people on the outside will assume that if you are an Episcopal priest, you are a little kinky; others inside the church will treat you with the offhand contempt shown to a hired hand. Still others will adopt the non-sequitur anticlericalism of our day, and consider your existence a bar to their doing the ministry that comes from their baptism, when the truth is that you come to empower them. But the worst part is that many people, particularly in the academy, but certainly here outside of it, will see you as, at best, a quaint but useless vestige of the superstitions of another day. At the worst, they may see you as an absolute menace to progress, to human liberation, and to the metric system itself. You have to know that going in, or you will be crushed in about five years, the typical half-life of new priests.
If you don't already, you will soon know what St. Paul meant when writing to those naughty Corinthians:
I OCR 4:9-13 "For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like those sentenced to death; because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to all on earth. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are ill-clad and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we try to conciliate; we have become, and are now, as the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all things."
Believe it or not, my brother offscouring, there is tremendous freedom in knowing that you stand outside of the mainstream -- if and when you make peace with that fact. (Some of us take longer than others to do that.) You have the freedom, the duty, the obligation to look like a fool. I do not refer to wearing clown noses in the liturgy, or to buffoonery in general: you are to appear as a fool, not as an idiot.
No, I'm saying that since you are already expected to be a little odd, just a little bit the tweedy eccentric, let that work for you and for Christ. In a world where everyone is clever, you are free to be kind, as indeed you are. In a world where everyone glories in power, stand up for the powerless, speak for the voiceless. In a church that sometimes appears to have a deeply rooted death wish, hold up the resurrected Jesus Christ as the only source and goal of real life. In a church that so often seeks to respond to theological problems with political solutions, insist that we do our homework. In a culture that has generally forgotten how to do it, show us how to rejoice, how to sing the Magnificat and mean it, and why.
Today you are made a steward of word and sacraments, a colleague with your bishop and the presbyters of the diocese. That is not a power you will hold for yourself, but a trust that you will bear for the sake of the rest of us. But let it work for you, as well. For maybe six months you are allowed to worry about whether you are doing the liturgy right, get to worry about not spilling wine, or which end of the baby to baptize. But after that, please let your leadership of worship, something you do for our sake, also become for you the core of peaceful piety. Learn to experience everything you do, from lining up the acolytes, to giving God's people holy food, to shaking hands at the door, as a prayer, and you will be transformed. You will find a very special joy in this. Be careful not to miss that -- no matter what anybody tells you, the absolutely worst place in the world to have performance anxiety is at the altar, because you will miss the joy. Don't ask me how I know this, just remember Hooker's observation about how liturgy ministers to that "imbecility within us," and you will be fine.
And may God make you a blessing to many.
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