All Saints’ Chapel, May 8 1999
First, let me wish you a happy feast of Blessed Julian of Norwich. Barbara and I were privileged last year to be at the international Julian festival at St. Julian’s Church in Norwich. It is an even greater privilege to be here, at the service for awarding St. Luke’s Alumni crosses to the penultimate class of the twentieth century. There, theologians just can’t resist the temptation to be right when they get the chance, even about small things.
I. Despite the excellent lessons chosen for this service, to which we shall return briefly later, the real text for this sermon is from that best known of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnets from the Portuguese.” “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
A. This has been an easy class to love. You are justly proud of the fact you have not allowed yourselves to become factionalized over the ideologies which tear at the fabric of the Church’s common life, nor by the currents of competitive personalities which sometimes fragment the common life of the School. You have been active in our common life together and in the larger community. You have studied hard and that labor has born significant fruit. Your spirit and dedication have contributed mightily to the school’s growing eminence, even popularity. On the whole, you are pretty good lot.
B. It would even be easy to get sentimental. Teachers are supposed to avoid that, but if any among us can see one of the classic Mr. Chips movies and not get a little teary, well, God help them. But just as a good parent loves each child the best, so it is a teacher’s privilege, calling, and job to love each class the best. So we won’t get too sentimental today, or, at least, not more than usual on this occasion.
C. To work, then. Being a good scholastic theologian, I wish to divide the text: How have we loved you, how do we love you, and how shall we love you? And then further subdivide it — under each of those major questions, how are we, my colleagues and I, involved, what did Jesus do, and finally, what might that mean for the ministries you are about to undertake — the reason you have been here.
II. How have we loved you?
A. How have we loved you? For better or worse, by means of the curriculum, primarily. In the end, that is more important than any casual social contact, any friendships which may have formed between teacher and student, staff and student, any feeling of affection, however appropriate. In the end, love is not so much a feeling as it is a theological virtue at the service of what we hope is a transfigured will. That is, love in this sense is finally chesed, steadfast love within the boundaries of a covenant to which we are called to be faithful. That is as true between spouse and spouse, friend and friend, parent and child, as it is teacher and student. We, faculty and staff, have loved you best and with our best by all the structures and means through which we have sought to do our part to prepare you for the ministries you will undertake, even when those means have seemed hard, to us or to you. Loving you this way has been our job as well as our joy,
B. Jesus administered a curriculum to his disciples, as well. They did, after all, call him Rabbi, teacher. This curriculum was cast in many forms — story, parable, prophecy, sermon, journey, and, lest we forget, old fashioned scholastic debate with other rabbis. The lessons were hard, and the students –aka disciples –mostly didn’t get it until later, after the journey had gotten really hard for a time. But we might remember that God’s very nature as love was manifested in person as Word, as curriculum.
C. The Church has a curriculum, too, of scripture, daily office, liturgy, sermon, catechesis, prayer, prophecy, hard service, a curriculum to build up the Body of Christ and all its members into the communion of saints. What I want to suggest is that the main job of the ministries you will all be undertaking, lay, ordained, spousal, familial, is to administer that curriculum. That is something given, something objective, and has less to do with being popular or friends with our congregations than we might think. It is also a major warning against all the temptations in ministry of any kind, including parish or academic, to indulge in the cult of personality, namely our own. It is Jesus Christ whom we proclaim, and him crucified, risen, and glorified, not ourselves except as your servants. It is God’s curriculum for making saints we are to administer, not our own agenda or even that of our congregations — a boat many contemporary “mission statements” seem to miss.
D. Today’s lessons do drive home this point that it is not our ministry — yours and mine– which is at stake, but God’s curriculum. Eldad and Medad were there to remind the other new elders of this. Paul uses the opportunity of the set up conflict with Appollos to make the point. Jesus reminds us that we always enter into the labor of others, reaping what they have sown.
Does this mean you, your personality, gifts and talents are beside the point? Could that be good news on a day such as this? Well, yes. There will be days, and worse, nights, beloved, when you will face challenges in the ministry, ordained or lay, which will require you to reach through the fog of discouragement and exhaustion, to the innermost well of your deepest resources. And there, you will find ——– Nothing. Nada. That’s when you either quit, sell out, or learn to depend on God and become a real priest. Then there are those other times, not quite so grim but all the more embarrassing, when God indulges in God’s frequent habit of making more spectacular use of your weakness, woundedness, foolishness, and even sheer idiocy than of your marvelous strengths, gifts, and talents.
On these occasions, be glad you are an Anglican with a curriculum as Prayer Book, or a Lutheran or Methodist or Presbyterian who has learned to use the equivalent resources from their bodies; rejoice and be glad that you and your personality and your agenda, even your faith, are not the curriculum, but God has provided one, and you are only its servant [On further reflection, I would suggest scripture is the curriculum, The Book of Common Prayer is the Anglican lesson plans for administering it.] That job is sometimes manageable. And even in happier times, remember that your love for the people in your cure and care will not be measured by how emotionally close you get to them, but by how well you have preached, taught, celebrated and counseled them in the Gospel and the Catholic faith, through that doctrine, discipline, and worship to which you shall promise to be obedient.
III. How do we love you?
As you’ve probably guessed, that was the main serious point, so we can relax a bit more with the next two.
A. How do we love you today? Mostly, by letting you go, by letting you be, to use Macquarrie’s phrase for God’s creation-love. We let you go, let you be, not just so we can make room in our hearts and halls for the next crop, but precisely because at this point love means letting go. To cling to you, to keep you in any way dependent upon us as means of alleviating our grief at your going, would not be love. We let go, and wish you well. The crosses you receive today are not, after all, from us, but from the alumni association which you now join, as fellow senior members of the University, the ones who shall re-present her in the world.
B. We have some sense of just how hard it must have been for Jesus to let go of his friends and students, and even more, to allow them henceforth to re-present him and the reign of God in the world. Those lovable louts who had never really gotten it, those clowns who had deserted him at the hard place, those faithful women who had stood by in impotence. It must have been very hard. But let go he did, ascending to the right hand of the Father/Mother to make constant intercession for them and for us their successors, taking up again the ancient role of the Word/Wisdom in God’s great act of letting be, now forever changed by human flesh.
C. I do think learning to let go and let be is a major key to resolving the pinch-points in the current total ministry fad. I don’t believe total ministry means getting rid of ordained ministry, being anti-clerical, or cutting off snippets of diaconal, presbyteral, or episcopal office or function and passing it out to laity. I really believe all that does is distract folks from their own mission and ministry, which is primarily in the world, not in the sacristy. But we do, as pastors, in counseling, spiritual direction, administration and programming, and most especially at funerals, need to learn to let God’s people go and be, and not to keep them dependent on or controlled by us, who are there to serve them.
IV. Well, then, how shall we love you?
A. Joan Baez came to grips with this in the song she wrote for her son, Gabriel, in that wonderful line, “Can I wave as you go by?”
1. We hope you will come and visit, of course, but please don’t move in again.
2. We will be proud of you, so please keep in touch — write us letters about our grandchildren in Christ.
3. We will do our best to support you in this changed relationship by keeping up the rituals of home, and by offering tempting continuing education and alumni gatherings and STR. But there will be riches beyond ours for your support, too. Take advantage of them as well.
4. We will need you. One of the biggest thrills of my life was when my recently graduated from college and newly employed son made it clear this time he was taking me to dinner. I rejoice that my confessor, my spiritual director, and now my parish priest are all former students.
That’s partly arrogant of course — since we turn out the finest priests in the church, to whom else should I turn?
B. At the end, Jesus turned us over to one another for the love and care we had previously known from him; he also turned us over to “another advocate,” another Paraclete. And he entrusted us with the great commission for furthering the reign of God.
C. Again, for you the issue will be in the ministry of the laity. Can you be glad when they exceed you in holiness and faith and effectiveness ? Can you really empower them, let them go, let them be, let them fly? Can you delight in their accomplishments, and rejoice in your spiritual grandchildren, without trying to raise them yourself? God make it so.
V. So, with bereft and yet full heart, I say to you beloved, go — get out of here, get a life. Go be what God, and in our poor way we, have loved you to be. Keep in touch, but not too much. Come visit, but not too often. Tell us the stories of our spiritual grandchildren so we can be even more proud, but don’t drop them off permanently. Be there to minister us when we need you.
My final instruction as one of your teachers, then, is what every priest ought to say at the end of the rite of reconciliation:
Go — get out of here. Fare forward, voyagers.
Abide — live — in peace — shalom.
And of your charity, pray for me, a sinner.
