If
sacraments don’t change things, there is no point in doing them.
All
sacraments change relationships.
Since our
identity is grounded in relationships,
sacraments change our identity.
They do not
obliterate our old identity and replace
it
with a new one.
The bread
and wine do not cease to be bread and wine
when they become the body and blood
of Christ.
But sacraments
shift our identity in important ways.
Figuring out
what difference ordination makes takes a lifetime.
It is not a
matter of going to the ecclesiastical trade school,
learning the craft, and then just
doing it.
Ordination
is the beginning of a lifelong path of discovery.
So what I
offer Abigail today is not instruction on how to be a priest,
but rather a few pointers on how to
walk the path of discovery.
I want to
address three axioms about priesthood
you have heard and will hear again.
Axiom number
one: trust your gut.
Don’t do
that. Never trust your gut.
Your gut is
a metaphor for the mirror neurons in the amygdala
of your brain.
It is
reactive, unreflective, and undifferentiated.
If you think
you are trusting your gut,
you are likely trusting somebody
else’s gut,
-- most likely the gut of the most
proficient button pusher
in the room
who is most likely the least healthy
person in the room.
Never trust
your gut. Think, Reflect. Pray.
And above
all, consult wise calm people outside the situation.
Ask advice
but do not necessarily follow it.
85% of the
advice you get will be wrong.
Clergy
living with their own repressed hostilities
will urge you to do what they are
rightly afraid to do
because it would in fact
be suicidal.
But the
advice will be sufficiently contradictory
to move you into a neutral balanced place
where you can access your own heart wisdom
instead
of your reactive gut.
Bishop
Barker of Nebraska recently said his guide to ministry came
from Louise Penny’s fictional detective hero,
Chief Inspector Armand Gamasch.
His
principles are:
Know that you do not know.
Ask for help.
And apologize.//
Those
principles will keep you alive when trusting your gut
will get you killed.
Axiom two: build
bridges.
This one is
actually true.
That’s what
you do liturgically.
You say
prayers to God on behalf of the people.
You
pronounce absolution and blessing to the people,
on behalf of God.
That is the
vertical bridge you build in the liturgy.
The rest of
the time, you are to build horizontal bridges
among people.
To do that
bridge building, which is the heart of your vocation,
you must first connect with people
yourself --
not just in
the hospital room, not just at the hour of death,
not just in the time of crisis --
but day in,
day out,
in the ordinary moments that make up our lives.
you
must connect.
You do not
have to be a glad-handing social butterfly,
but you must speak to people, and while
you speak to them,
you must look at them, look with
interest as if they matter.
Look them in
the eye, not trying to think of something wise to say,
but just to see them.
Look with
interest and care. Cultivate curiosity.
See your
people – deeply and often.
But you must
not stop there.
You are a
midwife of their relationships.
You are the
matchmaker.
You have to
tell the people about each other, and
-- using as little force as possible
but
as much force as necessary --
get them in the same room together
and lock the door,
so
that if they do not kill each other,
they will work something out.
We live in a
time of profound alienation and loneliness.
While social
media connect us more widely and more often,
we have less and less of the organic
human interaction
without witch our souls shrivel.
That organic
human interaction is the lived experience of Holy Communion.
Without it
our Sunday rituals are a sham.
So it falls
to you to invite, to cajole, to entice people
into relationship.
And you cannot
do that with a flyer.
You cannot
do that with an email to distribution list
or a Facebook initiation.
You cannot
do it with an announcement at church.
You have to,
at a minimum, call someone up on the telephone
and speak words to them.
Better, you have
to speak to them in person.
You have to
take people to lunch.
You have to
invite them to coffee, tea, sherry, beer,
or whatever they drink..
Read Daniel
Goleman’s book Social Intelligence 3 times,
and practice building neural
bridges.
Then use
those neural bridges for the sake of the gospel.
Axiom three:
just be yourself.
True, you
must be yourself.
But you
cannot just be yourself.
You were
already yourself before you were ordained.
Priesthood demands
that you become more than yourself.
The cross
you will put after your name is also a plus
-- Abigail plus the attributes of a priest.
Do not leave
yourself behind.
Do not
become someone other than yourself.
Be yourself,
but not just yourself.
Be a blessed version of
yourself,
Be yourself as priest.
You have to
do that, not to puff yourself up,
but because the people need it,
they need your authentic self
spiritually amplified.
Last week I
heard a survivor of the 1995 bombing
of the Murrah federal building in
Oklahoma City
tell her story.
It was a
story of physical injury, severe PTSD, then depression,
despair and the loss of her faith.
The bomb
blew apart her moral universe.
She ceased
to believe in meaning, goodness, hope, and happiness.
That is a dangerous
state of mind.
Out of
natural concern, her family sent her to a priest.
The priest
listened to her.
You have
been trained in that. I know. I was with you.
The priest
was present with her. You have been trained in that too.
But she
needed more than you learned in CPE.
When she
told the priest she had lost her faith.
he said, “That’s ok. Just keep going to church.
Keep
praying even when it feels like you’re
talking to the wall.
You don’t’
have to have faith right now.
I have
enough faith for both of us.
Someday, in
two years, five years, 20 years,
your faith will come back.
Until then,
I’ve got it covered.”
She has her
faith back.
She got it
back in due course
while her priest believed on her
behalf.
Abigail,
faith is a choice, not a feeling, not a mood.
It’s a
choice.
Most of us
choose for or against faith
based on what works better for us.
By your vows
you make that choice not for yourself
but rather for the sake of all the
people who need you to believe,
to trust, to hope, and pray
precisely because they
cannot.
As a priest,
you are not better than anyone else.
You are no
more righteous, no more holy.
But you have
taken on special obligations, a special dharma,
a special way of being in the world,
not for your own satisfaction or even sanctification,
but for the sanctification
of the plebs sancta dei, the holy people of
God.
So let me
summarize:
Don’t’ trust
your gut.
Think, pray,
and consult, consult, consult.
Build
bridges.
Bridges to God. Bridges
from person to person.
The Kingdome of God is
build or torn down
in the relational
space among the people.
Be yourself
but be more than yourself.
Be the personal,
flesh and blood embodiment,
of the whole Church,
embodying her faith and her
discipline
because that’s what people need and
that’s your job.
May God
bless you in this ministry.
May God
bless you in this life.
It is a hard
life, a crazy making life,
but it is first and foremost a love life.
Love well
and you will live well. That much is guaranteed.
