Sermons by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Dare to be bold servants
The Ordination of Liz Miller, Diane Zanetti, Hemchand Gossai
to the Sacred Order of Deacons
Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
May 31, 2003Jeremiah 1:4-9; 2 Cor 4:1-6; Luke 22:24-27
For thirty or forty years now we have been drowning in romantic twaddle - romantic, schizophrenic twaddle - about the ministry of deacons. We have encouraged people on the one hand to see diaconate as a "full and equal order," but in some dioceses they may not dress as clergy, and in some they may not vote with the clergy at convention, and they may not serve as lay delegates either, so they are the one group of the baptized without franchise in those dioceses[1]. On a more pervasive level there still lives among the presbyterate the impulse to patronize and belittle deacons with tired old jokes about who should pour the sherry. Out of our own anxiety about things like power, we have confused being a servant with being servile.
People of color perhaps know best what this is like in America. In my youth it was still common to speak of people of color who had service-oriented jobs as "boy" or "girl," and men could be directly addressed as "boy" when something was wanted--and nobody thought it was an odd thing to do. When in my adolescence black men started saying "Who you callin' boy?" that was a serious challenge to a historic and systematic belittling of human dignity.
In our first lesson, the Hebrew word that Jeremiah uses to avoid his call works the same way. It can mean a young male or it can mean a person of, well, diminished dignity. Whatever its meaning, and why not both, God's retort is brusque: "Jeremiah, I myself know you and want you, so think of yourself as a bullfrog not a cowering boy, and if I have given you a message, let's hear it you bellow it." So Jeremiah was a bullfrog, and served God by delivering words nobody wanted to hear in an unjust and faithless society, a suicidally unjust and faithless society. Prophecy cannot be bleated - it is not a sport for those who think of themselves as "boy" or "girl."
Deacons are to interpret the world for the church - they are to say the sometimes uncomfortable words that get us, lay people, bishops, presbyters, to attend to the suffering, evil, and injustice of the world with the tools of the gospel of Christ, so perhaps we need to look at the Gospel passage for a moment.
Jesus tells those who follow him, and that would be us, not to seek grandeur, self-glorification, or status, but to understand that whoever and whatever you are, to use that to serve. Then he gives an example: the Messiah himself was there for the sake of others - he didn't stop being who he was, he didn't walk about with downcast eyes and a servile shuffle - he looked the world in the eye and served it as the incarnate Son of God. How did he serve it? He had the courage to befriend those who were at the very edges of society no matter if that were because of choices they made or because of circumstances imposed on them. He had the audacity to announce God's pardon, healing, and acceptance of people whom the folks who were indeed decent, hard-working, and sincere found it OK to think of as under God's wrath. He treated women as equals and one time was even nice to children.
:-)
Servanthood here means overturning the system, calling people who did in fact love God to widen their perception of God's reign and what it means. Servanthood here means giving outcast and downtrodden people new hope and dignity. You can't do that if you are a nebbish, Uriah Heep in a cassock.
In the model of servanthood as Jesus practiced it, is there anything in there about withholding power from others? No. There is a severe caution about self-glorification, but to do the ministry of servanthood Jesus did one needs a strong inner sense of one's power as a person, one's dynamic presence - things not reinforced by others' need to withhold power or position. I am extraordinarily depressed by the need felt by some in the church to withhold power from the ones most able to speak for the oppressed. It is so like us to worry about the power rather than the equity. The "balance of power" is usually what God wants changed if you're reading the same Bible I am.
Enough of that. The church discovered it needed people to bear this symbol and ministry very early. And let's not kid ourselves: the issue that brought it up was justice, not waitressing. Already by Acts 5, the church discovered that even the community of the elect could be unjust, so seven were chosen to make sure that in the church, fair was in fact fair. Are we entirely sure that we don't need people of relentless fairness keeping that kind of watch today?
This ministry of making sure that people got what they needed regardless of who they were grew in both business and respect, and in Rome the church fed and cared for thousands of people under the supervision of their deacons. In fact, in the first millennium, bishops were routinely chosen from among the deacons of Rome, not the presbyters. The first known use of "your holiness" as a term of veneration was not applied to the Pope, but applied by Leo the Great to . his deacons. What would it mean at Trinity, Bethlehem, if they started calling the one who runs their soup kitchen, "Your Holiness?" Think about, Liz - or better, think about it, Fr. Nick, Mo. Laura, and the many of you who come here from Trinity today. Do you recognize the essential holiness of the commitment and work you see day by day in your kitchen?
I said recently to a saintly physician, "does it bother you to have me point out your holiness?" Because she is truly holy, she replied, "No, it gives me something to be thankful for." A key to not losing heart is knowing what it is you are giving your life to, and knowing that you are giving yourself to it, and being thankful that it is real. It is a very counter-cultural thing to let ourselves be as holy as we are. Deacons who go boldly about their ministry can teach us about the courage to be who we are.
Serving involves doing and being, but there is more. A couple of Sundays ago we heard about Philip, one of the Jerusalem Seven, who in addition to being in tiptop physical shape, was able to tell the Ethiopian treasurer what his faith was about in words so convincing that his testimony evoked immediate conversion. Stephen as well is remembered for his testimony, a testimony that cost his life. Serving involves speaking, speaking clearly and convincingly, and all three of our ordinands today have demonstrated this spring that they can do just that.
Diane and Hemchand practice ministries of counsel and teaching, ministries that require presence, presence, presence, and then require wisdom and words. Their ministry is about the interior transformation of minds and hearts, and combines boldness and gentleness to the same degree that Liz's ministry does. While for Liz, diaconate is her primary ministry, they are ordered deacons as part of their call to the presbyterate. This is a move that is increasingly questioned in the Church, whether priests should be first ordained deacons, and the General Convention will take it up this summer with that steadfastness and devotion we invest in all matters that don't actually involve evangelism or economic justice. I cannot do anything about that except to say that at least for now, the Church asks you two to recognize that the core of ordained ministry is in the commitment to serve precisely as boldly and assertively as Jesus served. Whether or not that will always mean that priests are to be deacons first I do not know, but for God's sake and your own, do not see what is given you today as something to be passed through and then transcended. Receive it as a trust, a trust that you will boldly hold before the world that which can transform it.
The epistle you three have chosen to be read today is bitter-sweet. The writer acknowledges that God is the giver of ministry, and then adds that because this is so, "we do not lose heart." Why would it occur to him to say that, adding the admission that the good news we proclaim may well be veiled, something that the world or the culture makes sound crazy or stupid or both? Even to the most faithful, true, and bold who take on the life of identified symbol-bearers of gospel community comes the occasional inclination to frustration and, let's be frank, even to despair. Most of what you are asked to do is designed to have a cumulative effect in the lives of individuals and in the life of the community. But I hear you say, "cumulative - shumulative!" All the things that shape us to want instant gratification, measurable success, and a strong bottom line - those things may lead us to sadness that some days, some weeks, some years, little appears to have been accomplished, breakthroughs coming far apart if at all. It is a fact that we are fighting a battle, and the harder and more creatively we work for what is creative and new and life-giving, the harder will be the resistance, the pushing back will be from the forces of evil and homeostasis - and those two things are not necessarily the same.
It is well to remember during the dry time, the frustrating time, the time of plodding through the desert, that God was not kidding Jeremiah along, and is not kidding you along. The process to get to this day has been, and I think I can speak without fear of contradiction, somewhat complicated. Everybody who should, and probably some who needn't, has had a voice in detecting whether God has called you. We gather here because of our belief that God has called you, and that God knows precisely who you are, who you have been, and who you will be, and wants to work with that for the good of the whole Church and the world.
Jesus' faithfulness, Jesus' bold compassion, Jesus' plain speaking of the truth, got him killed. It is the faithful, compassionate, truthful one whom God raised from the dead, illuminating forever the question of whether faithfulness, compassion, and truthfulness are worth it. Results we may not see in proportion to our dreams and ambitions - and maybe we will see them - but either way, we are part of something that moves from resurrection to resurrection, part of a process that is infinitely bigger than ourselves. By the grace of God you are what you are, and that grace must not be received in vain. Be bold, be powerful, be confident: dare to be deacons.
_____[1] It is a sophistry of the first order to equate presbyteral sharing in the "councils of the Church" to voting at diocesan conventions, which certainly lay people may do, or as excluding others.
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