This is
a rare and precious service we do today.
We
restore our brother Steven to the holy order of priesthood.
It is a
healing and a homecoming.
It is a
setting things right,
which is the real meaning of “righteous action” in the
Bible.
But
what we are doing here isn’t just about Steven.
It’s
about all of us and our way of being the Diocese of Nevada.
All of
the clergy here will be renewing vows to day.
So I
want to speak to every one, but especially to the clergy.
We have
a huge mission before us,
ushering the Kingdom of God into a
broken, bleeding world.
There
are refugees from Syria, mass incarceration,
the school-to-prison pipeline, an
epidemic of gun violence,
racial animosities, Islamophobia.
It is
our mission to shine the light of Christ
into
that darkness of broken families, the addiction, the despair
and cynicism eating away at the souls
of our people.
As
blessed Francis prayed,
“Where there is hatred, let me sow
love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.”
I don’t
know about the world you live in.
But the
world where I live needs some of that.
At one
of our clergy meetings recently,
one of our folks told us about someone
who had
checked out our Church and not come
back.
The
clergy person didn’t blame them.
She
said sadly, “What do we have to offer?”//
Those
words have been echoing in my head for weeks.
“What
do we have to offer?”
We have
Jesus.
We have
the Savior of the world.
We have
the love of God in human form.
I don’t
just mean the historical Jesus.
I don’t
just mean Jesus in heaven
with his sentimental picture on a
prayer card.
I mean
the living breathing body of Christ,
the fellowship of faith
that lifts up the fallen,
forgives the guilty,
and tells the shamed what they are
truly worth.
They
are worth the blood of Jesus, shed to pay their price.
I mean
the Church -- the bodily, fleshly, human
Church,
-- the Body of Christ who lives and breathes today
to heal the broken hearts
of the very people the historic Jesus
died to save.
We have
something to offer alright.
When we
forget what we have to offer,
forget what we are here to do,
we begin fretting, fussing, and fighting
over getting our
way,
as
if we were the secular world.
But we
are not the secular world.
We are
-- God as my witness -- the Body of Christ.
Friends,
we’ve got a life-and-death mission.
But
there is one and only one way we can carry it out
-- together.
Being
the Body of Christ requires us to lay down
our own agendas to serve together.
Sometimes
we fail at that mission.
We fail
when Nevada leads the nation
in women killed in domestic violence
when our
high school graduation rate is 47th in the nation;
when our
suicide rate is double the national average.
We fail
in our mission most often
because we are stuck in old conflicts.
I once
served a Church that, decades before I got there,
had a fight over whether to buy an
organ.
During
my 14-year tenure, whatever issue came up,
the congregation would divide up right
along
the old party lines of pro-organ versus anti-organ.
The
last I heard, some of them were still divided over
whether or not they
should have bought
that little
electro-pneumatic organ back in the early 80s.
They
are not unusual. They are the norm.
In
Nevada as much as anywhere, we cling to our old conflicts.
So with
whatever authority may be vested in me
by apostolic succession running from
St. John the Evangelist to Theodore of
Tarsus
to Wes Frensdorff,
as their voice today, I say unto you:
For the love of God,
get over it!
We’ve
got real work to do.
To do
this work that God has given us to do,
we need leadership.
We need
lay leadership and, yes, we need clergy leadership.
These
two kinds of leadership do not conflict.
They do
not compete.
They
support each other and grow each other.
So
clergy, in the name of God, dare to lead.
But
lead the right way.
I’m
just going to say one thing about the
right way.
No
matter how good a priest is,
somebody is going to hate that priest.
No
matter how bad a priest is,
somebody is going to love them.
In 1st
Corinthians 3, they had divided up over
who liked which apostle.
Paul
called that division a work of the flesh.
He said
the same thing in Galatians 5.
The
power of sin divides God’s people
over their liking or disliking clergy
as they might like or dislike political candidates.
It discredits
the Church in the eyes of the world
and drives from our midst the people
who so desperately need the Peace of
God.
We
cannot – absolutely cannot –
be an Instrument of God’s peace
while we are fighting with each other.
doesn’t mean squat.
Don’t
get distracted by it.
Your
job is to knit the people to each other
regardless of whether they are for you or against you.
Your job
is to bring people together,
not just at the altar but over coffee,
and in the various ministries of the
laity
both inside and outside the
church.
The
measure of your success
isn’t what the people say about you.
it’s how they feel about each other.
it’s how they feel about each other.
Christianity
liberates people from the bondage to sin
and the prison of self by inviting them into relationship.
It’s relationship
in Christ with flesh and blood people
that truly sets us free.
Look at soldiers who take
the most heroic risks in battle.
When
interviewed, it turns out that the soldiers
who put their lives at extraordinary
risk
didn’t do it for love of country, flag,
or a political
principle.
They
did it for their fellow soldiers,
real people whom they had come to love.
Your
job is to knit the people into that kind of network,
so that they love each other enough
to forget their own agendas, even their
own lives.
When
that happens, this thing we do at the altar on Sunday
becomes real.
Let us
pray,
“Almighty God, you gave your servant
Theodore of Tarsus
grace and wisdom to establish unity
where there had been division,
order where there had been chaos:
Create in your
Church, by the operation of your Holy Spirit, such godly union and concord that
it may proclaim
both by word and
example,
the gospel of the
Prince of Peace,
who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God forever and
ever. Amen.
