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Ordination of Deacons

 

June 19, 2010

 

St. Paul's Cathedral, San Diego

The Rev. Daniel Rondeau, preacher

 

Called to serve: Luke 22:24-27

Jesus said, “I am among you as one who serves. Luke 22:27

 

Believe me when I tell you how grateful I am to be here. A year ago I was in a Unit called The Barlow at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys. I was a quadriplegic, I was on a ventilator, I was being fed through a tube in my stomach, but at least I was alert and healing. I could dream and hope that one day I would again be able to preach. And by the invitation of Andy and Joe, and by God’s grace, here I am.

 

Believe me when I tell you that I don’t deserve to be here, nor do you Andy, nor you Joe, nor do any of us deserve to be here. Not one of us has merited, not one of us has earned his or her way into relationship with God and a place at this table. Truth be told, not one of us deserves to be here.

Believe me, too, when I tell you the Good News that all of us, especially you Joe, and you Andy, all of us need to be here. That we are here at all is a result of God’s abundant love and amazing grace. It is a truth we have come to accept over millennia and in our own life experiences: God gives us what we need, not what we deserve.

 

We need men and women to hear God’s call to ordained ministry. We need those men and women, called by God, to respond, “Here am I, Lord, send me.” We need to celebrate what God is doing in your life, Andy, and in your life, Joe. We need to celebrate what God is doing in our diocese and our church. Today we witness your ordination and sing God’s praises—the God who gives us what we need.

 

God gives us what we need, not what we deserve.

 

We need men like you to be like Jeremiah: men able to hear the voice and call of God in their hearts; men able to respond to God’s call no matter the outward circumstances; men who trust God to sustain them day in and day out in good times and bad.

 

We need to welcome you as fellow travelers whose hearts, like ours, are set on “the pilgrims’ way” (to use the Psalmists words). We need to know as you come among us as deacons that you will

 

God gives us what we need, not what we deserve.

 

We need you to come among us proclaiming not yourselves (though there is plenty about which you can boast); rather we need you, like the Apostle Paul, to proclaim Jesus Christ. And, based on your study of the Word of God, we need you to accept the truth of Jesus as he spoke and acted: “I am among you as one who serves.”

 

We need you, by “word and example to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ.” And inasmuch as you live into the grace of your ordination and we live into our commitment to support you in your ministry, we will discover anew, that God does indeed give us what we need.

 

We need your ministry as a deacon to be exemplary in serving others. The word, “serve” in its various forms occurs 14 times in this ceremony. We need your ministry as a deacon, a ministry that begins in this ordination ceremony, to be an outward and visible sign to us of that inward and invisible grace making it possible to live a life of service. All of us promise in our Baptismal Covenant “to seek and serve Christ in others, loving our neighbor as ourselves.” So it is that we come to need men like you to show us the way.

We believe God gives us what we need in you.

 

May I add, that I pray that you will become like an unnamed shipwrecked missionary living among us. Here is the rest of that story and the inspiration for my prayer.

 

Our unnamed missionary lost his boat and all his belongings in a storm. Half dead from exposure to the elements and the wreck of his vessel, he washed up on the shore of a barely charted island. He was taken in by the villagers and nursed back to health. He lived with them for the next twenty years.

During that time, he confessed no faith. He sang no hymns; he preached no sermons. He neither read from nor taught any Scripture. He made no personal faith claim.

 

But when the villagers became ill, he attended to them, sometimes long into the night. When the people were hungry, he shared what he had with them. When they were lonely, he was available to talk. When a villager was dying, he kept vigil, and after the death he would comfort the bereaved. There was no human condition among the villagers with which he could not and did not identify. He treated everyone as equals and was accepted as such himself.

After twenty years had passed, other missionaries came from the sea to the village and began talking to the people about a man named Jesus. After hearing the stories about Jesus, the villagers grew excited and insisted that he had lived among them for the past twenty years. "Come,” they said, “we will introduce you to the man about whom you have been speaking.”

The missionaries were led to a hut, and there they found, of course, their long-lost, fellow missionary who had been given up for dead. We need you to be like that shipwrecked missionary.

 

Which is to say that while your diligent study is expected and vital, and while your words may inspire us and teach us, challenge us, and delight us, your actions will speak far louder. Your words will need your loving service in order to gain our attention while speaking to our hearts, while proclaiming Jesus Christ and opening the Good News to all. We need you to serve in the manner that Jesus served, by doing, not just talking.

 

Called to Serve

You are called to serve as Jesus served. Let me finish with two short reflections on call and service. The needs of the world are great. The challenges facing us today and in the rest of this century are complex. It is easy to be overwhelmed by these large and complex issues and wonder about the effectiveness of our own response. Being overwhelmed, it is easy to do nothing at all.

 

To this, I share the wisdom of Henri Nouwen, “we are not called to save the world,” he says, “[we are not called to] solve all problems, and help all people. … each of us has our own unique call, in our fam­ilies, in our work, [in our church], in our world. We have to keep asking God to help us see clearly what our call is and to give us the strength to live out that call with trust. Then we will discover that our faithfulness to a small task is the most healing response to the illnesses of our time.”

 

Clearly, we affirm today, that you are called to serve. We need you to keep asking God to refine that call and give you the strength to answer and serve as you live out that call. I believe with Fredrick Buechner that, “The place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.”

 

On your pilgrims’ way, keep asking God to lead you more and more to that place.

 

Helping, Fixing, Serving

Rachel Naomi Remen is a physician and author who serves those who are chronically ill or dying. As you consider God’s call to serve others consider her wisdom gained over years of experience in serving those who will not be cured medically, to those who are dying and know they are dying, to those who can give her nothing except their weakness, their words and their own wisdom as they prepare to die. She reflects on three words you will hear a lot as you come among us as deacons: helping, fixing, and serving.

 

She starts with a question. “In recent years the question how can I help? has become meaningful to many people. But perhaps there is a deeper question we might consider. Perhaps the real question is not how can I help? but how can I serve?”

 

 “Helping,” she says, “is based on inequality; it is not a relationship between equals. When you help you use your own strength to help those of lesser strength.” The one who helps, she argues, approaches the other as someone who is weaker, or needier, than the helper. It is quite possible, whether intended or not, to create a dependent situation: the strong helper always being ready to help the weak and helpless other. Remen points out, correctly, that “[Serving] is a relationship between equals.” Think of our shipwrecked missionary who so nearly followed Jesus that in his service, his equals, his brothers and sisters, were able to discover Jesus.

 

Remen continues by saying that serving is also different from fixing. “When I fix a person,” she says, “I perceive them as broken, and their brokenness requires me to act. When I fix I do not see the wholeness in the other person or trust the integrity of the life in them.” Think of Jesus in his ministry of service; he didn’t fix anyone. He approached everyone in the dignity of their wholeness as a child of God. The response to him was uneven, but his approach was constant even in the face of ridicule or rejection. May your approach to others be as one who serves.

 

Remen sums up her thoughts, “If helping is an experience of strength, fixing is an experience of mastery and expertise. [Serving], on the other hand, is an experience of mystery, surrender and awe. … [The one who serves] knows that he or she is being used and has a willingness to be used in the service of something greater …. Service rests on the basic premise that the nature of life is sacred, that life is a holy mystery …. Fundamentally, helping, fixing and [serving] are ways of seeing life. When you help you see life as weak, when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. … Over time, fixing and helping are draining, depleting. Over time we burn out. Service is renewing. When we serve, our work itself will sustain us."


Believing that God gives us what we need—servant leaders—we rejoice,

 

We now stand ready to continue our support of you and your ministry by our presence and prayers.