Sermons by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Not to accumulate power
You are Ordained to Disperse Power
May you never in your ministry feel that you have arrived
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Ordination liturgy of six priests
Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem
October 6, 2002Isaiah 6:1-8
Ephesians 4:7, 11-16
John 10: 11-18.Priests who devote themselves to the prophetic task often produce tediously self-righteous parishes. Priests who devote themselves largely to things "pastoral" often produce shockingly dependent and immature parishes. Unless and until we find a way to achieve wholeness in ourselves, parish life will be lopsided or somewhat schizophrenic.
How do we integrate the prophet's urgings and the priest's comforting?
One of the things I am most grateful for about my life in Bethlehem is that I have a doctor who does not consider Christianity to be a form of mental illness.
I am also grateful for the two times when my life was threatened by illness, once as a child and again as an adolescent, that I was saved by the skill and quick response of family practitioners (we called them GP's then). You can imagine my surprise to learn that, like many other professions, medicine has a pecking order --- and tied for last place are primary care doctors and pediatricians.
Isn't that odd? The people who keep the most people healthy have the lowest status; those who have the most patient contact and do the most teaching about staying healthy have the least clout. Those who have the best picture of how the specialties integrate are the least respected by their peers.
That is true also in my former world of teaching. Professors in higher tier universities have the least teaching or student contact. Heaven, of course, is All Souls in Oxford, where they have no student body at all, and one devotes oneself to research. writing, and the wonderful cellar.
That being so in our culture, how shall we esteem front-line parish priests? How much lower than the angels are the six priests to be ordained today?
We don't help this situation in parishes where only the curates see the sick and shut-in, and we surely don't help it in parishes where the rector has no meaningful contact with youth.
Remember how, last Christmas and nearly every other Christmas, we got all misty about the shepherds being the first to learn that Messiah had come? We remembered the shepherd's low social status, relative poverty, and entrapment in a job that made it impossible for them to keep all the ritual requirements of their faith. God privileged them with the news. So much for the pecking order.
Dealing with the pecking order issue pretty directly, Jesus chooses those same over-worked and under-appreciated folk to provide the image for his ministry. A real shepherd, he says, besides being all those inconvenient things we mention at Christmas, is one who is committed to the immediate needs of the flock for nourishment, guidance, and protection - even if that means putting the shepherd's own body between the flock and the wolf.
Jesus contrasts shepherds with uncommitted, wage-oriented folk, who put in their time adequately, but are not invested in the welfare of the flock. In their hands the flock could end up as mutton stew should the wolf show up.
We are here today because six rather amazing people have heard a call - and the church has heard it too - a call to join in caring for Christ's flock. Each of them has had a remarkable journey to this day; the sighs of happiness I hear are accompanied by sighs of relief.
Each of the lessons they have chosen has an earthiness, a physicality that will serve them in good stead as they exercise priesthood on the level of primary care. For there is nothing worse than priests who somehow think they have arrived because they are the rector of a solid Episcopal parish. You cannot focus on your own importance and be humble and compassionate at the same time. Whether it's vestry or vestments: if it's about you, you are a hireling or even a wolf, and probably don't even know it.
The gospel we have heard is not an exercise in animal husbandry in the wake of Friday's St. Francis' Day observances. In the context of this liturgy it is about the simple point that the ordained ministry exists for the Church. The newly ordained are immediately put to work delivering the sacrament and pronouncing God's blessing so that they and we know that they are not ordained to accumulate power, but to disperse it. They are not ordained to accumulate power, but to disperse it.
Humpty Dumpty told Alice, "Anything I say three times is true." So join me if you can: They are not ordained to accumulate power, but to disperse it. Sisters and brothers, that needs to be true of your first mass and of your ten-thousandth. To preside at sacraments is to disperse - not dispense - to disperse power.
It is, after all, what our lesson from Ephesians is trying to tell us about the Church - Christians have gifts that need to be nurtured and coordinated so that the Church will be of some earthly use to God. This morning we heard lessens reminding us that God expects fruit from us, and is not satisfied with our gorgeously contemplating our singularity.
The reason the dismissal is said from the altar and not as an ethereal voice floating over people's backs is that what we experience at the altar is meant to drive us into the world eager to live out the mystery have encountered.
Which brings us to Isaiah. The first Isaiah was almost certainly a priest, and in the story of his call we see the beginning of a tension that has lived in Christianity since at least the Third Century: how does one combine priestly and prophetic ministry in one office?
It is a question worth asking, because it seems to be true that the corporate spirituality of a parish will not - cannot - exceed the spirituality of the leader. (It's getting late, just assume I've said that three times.)
Priests who devote themselves to the prophetic task often produce tediously self-righteous parishes. Priests who devote themselves largely to things "pastoral" often produce shockingly dependent and immature parishes. Unless and until we find a way to achieve wholeness in ourselves, parish life will be lopsided or somewhat schizophrenic. How do we integrate the prophet's urgings and the priest's comforting?
For Isaiah, the integrating moment was the experience of the red-hot coal held against his mouth. Lesson One: to be integrated, Isaiah had to shut up for a minute, and let something be burned away. Lesson Two: After the word of forgiveness had burnt its way into his awareness, he was in a position to say, "Here I am, send me." He had dramatically tasted both the judgment and the mercy of God.
God's mercy, God's justice, God's compassion, God's purifying fire, are one thing at the center of what we do as we serve the One who is both the Tiger and the Lamb. When we live into and live from that truth, there is a coherence in the many aspects of our work that validates itself-in time.
In time. There is a temptation in our system to ride into town, clean things up a bit, and ride out to a slightly larger town, and so on. That is not the shepherd - that is the other guy. I increasingly see that priests who do not stay committed to a parish for seven-to-ten years do not have much, if any, lasting effect on the parish (just as those who stay too long can smother new life).
The shepherd who cares for a flock particularly, not just with a vague commitment to something vaguely called "my ministry," knows to stick around long enough to have lasting effect. The worst word you can think about in the context of ordained ministry is that word "career."
Careers are for those priests who are deluded by the world, who don't even realize that they have sold out.
Commitment is for those who work. as did the Good Shepherd, with dirty hands and a slight odor of sheep dip.
Of the many blessings I wish for you, my new colleagues, chief among them is this: may you never in your ministry feel that you have arrived.
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