Be with us, O Lord, for if you are with us, nothing else matters; and if you are not with us, nothing else matters. Amen.
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice!” On a day like today, following St. Paul’s advice has never been easier. As we gather to celebrate what God is doing in the Church through the ministries of Daisy, Chipper, and Liam, we are indeed rejoicing. Thanks be to God for each of you and the family, friends, and congregations that brought you to this day.
It’s an honor to be in this pulpit today. My ordination to the diaconate fifteen years ago was here at St. Paul’s, so it is a particular joy and blessing to have been invited to preach here. Thank you, Bishop Sam, Bishop Jennifer, and the Liturgical Commission of the Diocese, for the invitation.
I’m also particularly thankful to have been asked to preach because I am concluding my sixth year as a member of the Commission on Ministry in the Diocese, meaning that I have had the joy and honor of knowing these ordinands from the early days of their discernment process. Daisy, I have been inspired by your persistence, humility, and deep faith. Chipper, your perseverance, excitement for ministry, and unwavering trust in God have been a blessing to me. Liam, your growth, openness to the Spirit, and faithfulness are gifts for which I am thankful. The peoples of Holy Comforter, Christ Church, and Holy Innocents, as well as the wider Diocese, will be blessed by your ministries and I’m excited to see how you will serve as priests. It’s an honor to have you all in colleagues in ministry.
Liam, Daisy, and Chipper – “In all that you do, you are the nourish Christ’s people from the riches of his grace, and strengthen them to glorify God in this life and in the life to come.” In just a bit, the Bishop will charge you with that holy task in the Examination. In all you do, you are to nourish people in Christ’s grace and strengthen them to glorify God. Keep those words before you to remind you in the busy days, in the tough day, and in the joyful days as well – that is why the Church has ordained us to the sacred order of priest, we need people to nourish us in grace and strengthen us for glory. I have the words of the Examination for both the Diaconate and Priesthood printed and framed on the wall in my office – you might find something similar to be helpful in keeping this charge at the center of your ministry.
From your time praying Morning and Evening Prayer, you know the line “for the means of grace and for the hope of glory.” Well, that’s what the Prayer Book tells us is the foundation of your ministry as priests. As you’ve already begun to learn, ministry is full of blessings and challenges, lament and joy. Whatever you encounter in ministry, the grace and glory of Jesus will be enough. One of the gifts of our tradition is this charge that reminds us of what we are to be about – proclaiming grace and strengthening for glory.
Grace is what we heard about in the reading from Isaiah, who finds himself in the throne room of God. Isaiah hadn’t done anything to deserve himself an invitation there. By his own admission, he’s a man of unclean lips from among a people of unclean lips, yet he sees what no human eye has ever seen – the glory of the LORD on the throne of majesty. Isaiah is there because God wants him there. That’s a reminder to us all – regardless of what titles we have. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations we didn’t ask to be put in and for which we feel woefully unprepared. But we’re there because God put us there. Maybe you wonder why you’re in that classroom, board room, court room. Well, it just might be because God Almighty wants you there. And if God has put you there, then you deserve to be there.
The Grace goes even deeper. One of the seraphim takes a live coal from the altar and touched Isaiah’s mouth declaring “Your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” Now, to our soon-to-be-priests, at the Absolution, making the sign of the cross is sufficient, no need to for hot coals. If you all remember nothing else in this sermon, hold onto this: your guilt has been put away and your sin is blotted out. That’s the message of Grace and that’s the Gospel. There is absolutely nothing that stands between you and the love of God. Deserving isn’t a word in the Christian vocabulary. Whatever doubts you carry, whatever mistakes you’ve made, whatever quirks you have, whatever things that you wish were different about you – God loves you. There is nothing any of us need to do in order to ever earn God’s love or be worthy of dignity. Each of us are deeply loved and cherished by the God of love who made all things. And God doesn’t make mistakes.
And because God loves us unconditionally and without reservation, it means that we can’t ever lose our belovedness, because it was never up to us to earn. When Jesus died on the Cross, he said, “It is finished,” meaning there is nothing that stands between us and God. As St. Paul puts it so clearly in Romans, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Pronouncing this Good News is one of the things that priests are to do in all of ministry, to nourish Christ’s people from the richness of his grace. You are to remind people that their sins are forgiven not because they’ve done anything to deserve it, but because God is so merciful and gracious as to forgive us even before we ask for, just as Isaiah didn’t do anything to earn his forgiveness. Sure, he admitted that he was unclean – but he hadn’t asked God to do anything about it, he didn’t promise to clean up his act, he didn’t embark on a journey of self-improvement first.
Our society has a way of exhausting us and always asking for more and better. We are burdened with shoulds – we should drop a few pounds, we should give more to charity, we should spend less time on our phones, we should do this and we should do that. The shoulds never stop and they wear us down. They make us think that we’re not enough, and that’s where idols love to come in and have us serve them instead of God.
See, for Isaiah, the grace of God is what propelled him into serving. We are all able to serve God most fully when we are confident of our forgiveness and rely on God’s grace more than our abilities. Grace leads to humble service and ministry. This is what priests help us with – nourishing us in the assurance of God’s grace, reminding us that we don’t need to earn our forgiveness, we get to enjoy it.
And having been nourished in that grace, we are then strengthened to glorify God in all that we do. That’s what Isiah will do after he says, “Here am I; send me!” And this isn’t just about priests and people who are ordained. God is sending us all in mission to further the love of God. That’s what it means to glorify God, it’s to be like the woman that Jesus meets at the well in John. She receives the grace of Jesus and then declares, “Come and see a man who told the whole truth about me!” We glorify God when we further that message of grace by promoting the dignity of all whom God loves, which is everyone. We glorify God when we choose reconciliation over estrangement, when we give generously instead of reservedly, when we choose mercy over retribution, when we tell the truth even when it is uncomfortable and inconvenient. This is work for all of us, and our new priests will strengthen us to glorify God on the foundation of grace.
This ministry, as wonderful as it can be, challenges us all. In the letter that St. Paul wrote from prison to the Philippians, he tells us two things that root us in grace and glory. He writes, “Do not worry about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.” Pray. There’s simply no way to be a follower of Jesus in this world without prayer – without grounding ourselves in the grace and glory of God.
The author Andrew Root wrote in a book called The Pastor in a Secular Age that the primary job of the pastor is to teach people how to pray. Not only does he mean that the Church needs to teach its members the language of prayer, but more so that we need to inculcate a spirit of prayerfulness. We need to cultivate an expectation that God is with us, among us, and for us. Because when people pray in confidence that the God who created all things hears our prayers and intends to respond with the means of grace and for the hope of glory, look out. That’s a Church that will be alive in the power of the Spirit.
Today is the day on which the Church remembers the Spanish mystic and reformer of the 1500s, Juan de la Cruz, or St. John of the Cross. Two of our ordinands are serving as Hispanic Missioners for the Diocese, and so this feast day fits well. Juan de la Cruz is remembered for a lot of his writings, perhaps most notably “The Dark Night of the Soul,” but I want to share part of poem he wrote called “Llama de amor viva,” “Flame of Living Love”:
¡Cuan manso y amoroso
recuerdas en mi seno
donde secramente solo moras;
de bien y gloria lleno,
cuan delicadamente me anamoras!
How gently and lovingly
you wake in my heart
where you secretly alone dwell,
full of goodness and glory,
how tenderly you enkindle me to love!
In prayer, we steep ourselves in this gentle and glorious love of God and are awakened to how God is moving in our hearts and lives. In drawing near to sacred fire of God, we are assured of God’s grace and are strengthened for the work of glorifying God in our lives. Prayer is when we draw near to that flame of living love and are enkindled to go and love.
The second thing that St. Paul says that prepares us for the blessings and demands of ministry is the Advent proclamation that “The Lord is near.” It’s the confidence that comes from prayer – trusting that God is with us and up to something good. Chipper, Liam, and Daisy, God will always be near in your ministry, and that makes all the difference. Because if God is with us, all shall be well. When our Good Shepherd is with us, even in the valley of the shadow of death, his light and truth will guide us by the means of grace and for hope of glory.
Indeed, this is a day to rejoice. First and foremost, because it a day that the Lord has made. Secondly, we rejoice for the amazing things that God is doing in the lives and ministries of Daisy, Liam, and Chipper. We pray in the full assurance that God will do through them greater things than we can ask for or imagine. And we rejoice for the Good and Gracious News that we are known, loved, and forgiven people who are sent into this world to share in the glorious things that God is doing. So, again, I will say, Rejoice!
