Sermons by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
The Making of Four New Priests
Cathedral of the Nativity Bethlehem
September 29, 2001
The Rt. Rev. Paul V. Marshall, BishopGen 28:10-17
Psalm 103:19-22
Rev 12:7-12
John 1:47-51To what shall I liken my joy today? It is a like the smell of a new car to welcome you from so many states and dioceses as we celebrate the vocations of our four newest priests. I also see in our assembly several distinguished guests and old friends, including a few from my Long Island and academic pasts, and offer them a special greeting here in NE PA.
That said, there is another kind of preliminary, yet not-so-preliminary, observation to be made. We meet to celebrate what God gives us in Jeffery, Albie, Pat, and Bill and we do so with real joy. But if this celebration were taking place on August 29th, or July 29th, that joy would be a little more intense. Something has died a bit in America. Beyond the great tragedy of lives lost, we are also now startled to know ourselves to be vulnerable, yet feeling ironically relieved that more planes and buildings weren't taken down, and thankful that we haven't yet lived through anything like the Blitzkrieg our English cousins endured or the almost daily bombings our partners in Sudan endure almost daily. We have joined a larger part of the human race.
I don't recite these reminders of our mortality to rain on a parade we that have worked on for months. I mention them because it would be dishonest not to, and because we all need to remember something about ourselves as God's people in Jesus Christ: we worship God no matter what. We have praised God in the catacombs; we have praised God in the mouths of lions; we have praised God during wars and plagues; some of us have praised God while wearing the yoke of slavery. We do not know what is coming next amidst the war fever and financial paranoia that grip this country, but we do know that whatever it is, we will come together just as our people once came to the catacombs-to sing the praises of him who died and rose for us. There is no other way we know how to live. Or to die. Those who are priests among us must keep that reality before us always, raising the cup of salvation and calling on the name of the Lord.
But to our primary business. The priests we ordain and receive today form an unusual group, in that three of them come from outside the diocese, and none of them knew each other in their process towards this event. So we did some intentional community building. We met on some Saturdays during the summer, did some socializing, and went last week on retreat together, assisted by Canon Gwendolyn-Jane Romeril and Canon Bill Lewellis.
I took a little bit of a risk and decided to organize our time together on the model of the Wizard of Oz, except with two twists. The first was that we ran the movie backwards in the sense that we started with the curtain torn away and the allegedly great and terrible wizard totally revealed as just a man, pretty much naked. From there we all told our stories, so there were no illusions of wizardry anywhere amongst us. The second was that we reversed the technique of the film and saw reality in color and our fears and fantasies in black-and-white - it cuts the terrors down to size and sanctifies the reality Christ gives us.
Obviously this lesson plan or metaphor was never announced, but still we discovered that in each of us there was some indeed of Dorothy's strength of character, and some of her innocence, and some of her lostness. We found that each of us, like the lion, had some bravery and cowardice; or some brains and stupidity, and so on. And we learned that we had all been on journeys for years. The bricks were of all colors, the roads in several directions, but we had all been attempting to go where we would find ourselves and be ourselves in God, whether we always knew it or not. We were all looking for the place where we would best serve the living Lord Jesus Christ whether we always knew that or not. It was hard to tell who of us was most surprised for that journey to end up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, least of the diocese in the Commonwealth, a diocese where instead of munchkins they have croutons.
That very context of journey and surprise is the stuff of our first lesson for Michaelmas. Little brother Jacob was on the run. In collusion with his Mom he had stolen the birthright given to Abraham and to his seed for ever. Now note this. Jacob wanted the real estate and the headship of the clan, but they came with that third treasure, the promise to Abraham that in his posterity God was also sending a blessing for the whole world. AND JACOB STOLE THAT TOO! Whether he knew it or not.
It's breathtaking - he had stolen a Rolls Royce not knowing or thinking about the Hope Diamond that was in the trunk! There is no evidence before Jacob wrestles God at Jabbock that he has any idea of what' really going on in his own biography. Anyway, Jacob had the pink slip but had to leave the car at home and took off on foot to escape Big Brother Esau who wanted nothing less than blood.
But see what happens. Jacob stops to camp for the evening in strange country, and just as you might tuck a 9mm Biretta under your pillow if thought they were after you, Jacob takes to bed the biggest rock he can find. And our friend Jacob, whose name in Hebrew is the con man, the supplanter, in the uneasy sleep of a bad conscience with one finger on the trigger, has this vision of stairs to heaven, with angels on both the up and down escalators, and at the top, Almighty God, the God whom Jacob has cheated and lied to. And Almighty God, whose faithfulness to his promise is more important than patriarchal dysfunction, once again says he'll be faithful to the covenant no matter who bears it, and that would be Jacob. (So much for Donatism in the Old Testament.) God's position is, I'll be with you Jacob, no matter how you got here, so don't worry. It's gonna take you about 20 years to grow up, and it will be mostly difficult, but I'll be with you until you finally have that wrestling match and decide to have some integrity, and I'll be with you after that when you change your name to Israel and finally get a life that will do somebody some good.
And so Jacob, who was more clever than he was intelligent says the Biblical equivalent of "we aren't in Kansas anymore." He says, "Truly God was in this place and I did not know it." To which all the angels cried, "Duh."
A torture for me when I was teaching at Yale was that I was smart enough to know I wasn't a genius. Well this story is very helpful for people who come to ordination smart enough, holy enough, to know that their motives aren't always pure as the driven snow. People who come to ordination aware that even their best acts of loving can be tainted by their needs, impeded by their ancient wounds, and distorted by their sins. A God who can turn a Jacob into an Israel isn't going to have any trouble with you, Fathers, not any trouble at all. So drop your scruples, grab your maniples and hang on for the thrill of your life. A tenth grader in my OT class in 1973, Richard Lalek, now in his 40s, summarized our class reading of the Genesis history with stunning simplicity: he said, "So God works through jerks." If that's true, it will be relative fun for God to work with you in whom there is so very little guile, so much good, so much passion to serve Christ. The little neuroses that make us colorful, the wounds that make each step hurt sometimes, the sins we never quite overcome, can all serve us as Jacob's injured hip served him-reminders that it is by God's grace that we are who we are, and that grace has not been in vain. As St. Paul puts it "he who calls you is faithful. He will do it." It is not our good intentions but God's grace that makes us good priests. His strength is made perfect in our weakness.
But there is another movie running in our lessons today. Whenever I see or hear the words, my heart stops because of the essential contradiction, the same oh-no-this-couldn't-be-happening of the WTC falling down or the Pentagon lying in near-ruins. The words are, AND THERE WAS WAR...IN...HEAVEN. Here is an image that stretches my ability to imagine. Angels and ministers of grace, defend us! And they do. Even when there is rebellion in heaven itself, Christ is victor.
We don't live in heaven; we live in the church militant here upon the earth (a phrase you'll not hear from me in the liturgy), and if you listened to the lesson, you know that Michael chased the rebels out, but the battle continues on this planet-and even among the people of God. Before the Book of Acts has even gotten up to speed. the young church was beset by conflict, and we delude ourselves if we think there was any golden or even pewter age when we could have just ridden along quietly, saying our masses, preaching our sermons, and charming folks at parish events. If we are serious about being an example to Christ's people, it's not how do we look in a collar, but how do we look on a cross that is the fashion question of the day. There will always be war this side of heaven. There have always been new teachings threatening to choke out the gospel or twist the scriptures for sectarian use. There have always been ossified uses of theology that have choked people's souls. There have always been causes that want to displace the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed from their place as God's favorites. Your moral right to handle holy things on Sundays is directly connected to your willingness to speak the truth and serve God's favorites during the week. There is no other foundation than the one laid in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If your ministry has another, stop now.
The slaves in America sang about Jacob's ladder and by it meant freedom. Every time you as pastor or as priest help someone to find their freedom in Christ, and they respond in words that mean, Surely God was in this place and I did not know it, your soul will sing, "We are climbing Jacob's ladder, soldiers of the cross."
To give you a little encouragement for the battle that is here, I requested Canon Jackson to use as his postlude Mendelssohn's "The War March of the Priest." This is not meant to be a delightful sprinkling of camp on the ultramontane aspects of this liturgy. No, it is my clear charge to you to take on all that imperils God's people, and do so armed with word and sacrament, prophecy and absolution, presence and perseverance, and let God worry about your motives and imperfections. Most important, let God worry about outcomes.
As you come to rest in that grace, rather than in your talents or good intentions, 2000 years of faithful priest guarantee that you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. In glorious color. Hand-in-hand with the rest of us.
Even so, come Lord Jesus in the ministry of these your priests.
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