No Small Thing
The Ordination Sermon for Robert Wright Lee, IV
First Baptist Church, West Jefferson NC
Matthew 9.35-38
Easter IV
I wanted to believe that I was special and that’s why Rob asked me
to preach today. In reality, though, I think he just asked the
Episcopalian in hopes that the sermon would be short.
It is an honor to be with you today and to share this day with you. In
some ways, I bring you greetings from Rob's future -- from the faculty, staff,
administration and student body of Duke Divinity School. We are very much
looking forward to his joining our community this summer. And I promise you one
thing, we will do our level best not to screw up the great education and
formation that you have given him here.
I am confident that the God who has begun a good work in Rob through you
will complete it for the day of Jesus Christ.
It is no small thing that we do today.
It is no small thing for us, as a gathered community, to honor the call
of God and the way that the Spirit has nurtured a person to respond that
calling in faith.
It is no small thing to set a person a part from but within a community
for Christian service. It is no small thing to pray the Spirit to consecrate
our brother for Christian ministry through Word and Sacrament and Service. It
is no small thing. It is actually quite an extraordinary thing that we do
today.
When I was a child, one of my ministers would say that every baptism
was a sign that God had not given up on the world, that God is utterly
dedicated to restoring the world one-person-at-a-time if God had to.
Today, we could say the same thing. An ordination to the Christian
ministry is a sign that God has not given up on the world, that God’s love is
unrelenting and undaunted, that God yearns for the prophetic word to go forth
that light will overwhelm darkness, that hope will conquer hate, that justice
will defeat oppression, that love will swallow up fear, and that life will
overcome death itself. In the wonder of this afternoon, in word and
act, we proclaim as loudly as we can that God is not done with us. By
our collective presence here today, we bear witness to the fact that God has
stirred our brother Rob to announce to the world that God has not forgotten or
forsaken us but instead has redeemed it and is restoring it still. It is
no small thing that we do today.
Rob, it is no small thing that you do today.
Today marks a change for you. It signals a Spirit-led shift in you.
We celebrate that with you.
But if today doesn't scare you a bit, you're naive, my friend.
And having known you for almost a decade, I have never experienced you
as naive.
I imagine that you are a bit scared today,
in the way that Moses was scared before the burning bush,
in the way that Isaiah was overwhelmed by an angelic vision,
in the way that Jeremiah protested, "but I'm just a boy,"
in the way that Esther took a deep breath when Mordecai said, “perhaps,
it is for such a time as this."
It is no small thing to be called and consecrated to the service of God.
From this moment forth, you are accountable to God in a new way;
you are accountable to the Gospel message and to the tradition and
witness of the Church in a new way;
you are accountable to this community and to each of us here in a new
way.
And perhaps most importantly, you are accountable to a broken-hearted
world in a new way after today.
It is no small thing that we and you do today.
We need to acknowledge the courage it takes to answer the call of God,
especially at this time in the church’s history.
Frankly, Rob is beginning ordained ministry at a precarious time.
Trust in clergy and in the church is at its lowest point since pollsters
started asking questions. According to the most authoritative studies,
people living in the developed world, that’s people mainly in Europe and
the US, have more trust in government institutions than they have in religious
institutions. It's staggering to imagine that! It’s bewildering to me to
imagine that in many places in this country people have deeper
faith in what’s going on in Raleigh or Washington than they
do in the work and goodwill of the church. But the reality is that those
outside these walls actually believe that they know what’s going in Raleigh and
Washington better than they know what’s going on within these walls.
Even here in the Bible belt, most churches are smaller today
than they were two decades ago and more financially at risk. And when
the church gets leaner, sadly, it often gets meaner, too.
Meanwhile, in the popular media, Christians are regularly depicted as hateful
and hypocritical. The next generation has been watching and is wondering,
"who needs the Church, I can be spiritual on my own!"
This is a precarious time to begin ordained life.
Perhaps we should have read the passage in which Jesus says “I send
you out like sheep to the slaughter” instead!
In some ways, we can argue that the Church has earned our precarious
place.
The world has known too much cursing by Christians -- not cursing in the
sense of “cussing" -- but cursing in the sense that the Church has spent
far too much time proclaiming what it thinks God hates and not nearly enough
time proclaiming what it knows God loves. We have been swift to curse and slow
to bless.
The loudest “Christian” voices have spent far too much time declaring
the anger of God and not nearly enough time professing the passion and
compassions of Christ.
We have spent too much time calling people to meager morality and hardly
any time inviting people into true discipleship. We have strained the gnat and
swallowed the camel.
This is a precarious time to answer God’s call to begin ordained life.
And yet, Rob, it is also the perfect time for you to begin this new part
of your life.
The poet Galway Kinnell writes that “sometimes is necessary to reteach a
thing its loveliness,” that sometimes it is necessary to remind someone of
their God-given beauty in order for them to flourish again.
Rob, this will be your work. Across your lifetime in ministry, you must
reteach the church its loveliness. You will have to remind us that the
Church is the community of Christ’s compassion. And that we are all emissaries
and ambassadors of that compassion in the world.
See, somewhere along the way, we took the wrong message from our
afternoon Gospel. We came to believe that the point of the church was to name
all the ways that the crowds of this world were like sheep without a shepherd,
to identify all the ways that people were helpless, confused and
harassed. We looked and saw all that was in the world that railed against
the will and wonder of God. And we announced it. We thought that was
the point. To announce all the ways that the world is not yet the Kingdom,
which gave us a lot to say. We came to believe that the meaning of ministry
was to proclaim judgment rather than mercy.
I am well aware that it is usually the kiss of death for a sermon to
say, “now the Greek here says…,” but the Greek here says that, when Jesus saw
the world, when Jesus looked at the crowds, he splagchnizomai-ed
on them. That’s the Greek word for “to have compassion.” It literally
means to be churned in the guts. This is the depth and source of compassion —
it’s from the bowels; it moves from within. Compassion is to be turned inside
out for the other. Anything less is simply not compassion. This is
the depth of God’s love in Christ. This is the love for the world that Jesus
embodies. He splagchnizomai-ed on them.
And, we as the church are called to be the community of splagchnizomai. Rob, your ministry will be to reteach the
church the loveliness of its compassion.
Rob, you must lead us. You must remind us. You must show us how to be
who we are. You’ve had good teachers who have shown you what this
compassion looks like. You’ve had congregations and communities, friends
and family, mentors and ministers who have taught you this compassion. And
now you must show it to the world. You must embody it so that we might
embody it.
Because that compassion is the hope of the future.
It is no small thing that we do today.
Amen.
