Deacons

 

May I speak in the name of the living God, Father, Son & Holy Spirit.

 

We have gathered in this beautiful Cathedral Church, with our different understandings and experiences of the Christian faith to witness and to celebrate the fact that someone you know and love is being ordained deacon. If the person you have come to support is at one level, the focus of the service, you are the guests of honour, because without you, he or she would not be here.  And they will continue to need you for the next stage of their life and ministry, as they have needed you for the previous however many years.

 

Some of the most important words in this service are not said by the Bishop or the candidates, but by you - friends, colleagues, families and parishioners of those being ordained.  In a few moments, the Bishop will ask you whether it is your will that they should be ordained, and then, whether you will uphold and pray for them in their ministry. What does that mean to you? 

 

Your responses of "it is" and "we will" are vital, we can not continue and Bishop Kenneth wont let us continue, without them.  

 

Your support is needed as these men and women say "yes" to God, as they are given the authority and the blessing of the Holy Spirit, through the laying on of the Bishop’s hands and prayer, to exercise their ministry as a deacon, a servant, within and on behalf of the Church of God.

Your will and wish for them to be ordained is important, whether you are a regular church goer or not, because the Church of England is a community-based church. It is not a "members only" church.  It does not have a long and detailed application form, where you have to assent to all kinds of complicated doctrines before you can come in; there is no determined official trying to look important, while you wait in a queue.  It is a church firmly rooted in a place, whose mission is to love everyone there, regardless of race, creed, faith or status.  It is a church which wrestles too with the dilemmas of each generation be they – stem cell research, environmental issues, the validity of military intervention, or the shaping of communities.   

 

All this speaks to us of a God whose very nature is inclusive and whose language is love.

 

A deacon stands at the margins, at the point of intersection where the love of God meets the needs and aspirations of the world.  They are to listen to God through prayer and study, and listen and learn from the world around them. 

 

Christianity has at its heart, the God who became human in Jesus Christ.  The God who so loved the world, that he sent his Son to walk the dusty roads of Palestine, so that all people would know, that God understands from the inside, the joys and frustrations, sorrows and dilemmas of human life. Jesus did not shut himself off from the world, but engaged with it. He spoke with every kind of person, from the greatest to the least.  He listened to them, talked with them, understood who they were and where they were coming from. He spent time with people socially, even when this provoked criticism. So don’t stop debating with these new deacons, challenging them, and asking the unanswerable questions.  The church needs the questions and insights of the world to help shape its faith response.  Continue to provide love, friendship, food and the odd bottle of gin!

 

I am aware of just how much I have learnt about God and the Christian faith from the people in the parishes in which I have lived and worked, and from my family and friends, Christians and non Christians alike. 

 

I have been with people who bear heavier burdens than I have been asked to carry and bear them more gracefully. I have met people earnestly seeking things I have stopped seeking, and been encouraged to renew my efforts. I have listened to people whose faith is much more vibrant than my own.   I have been shown the meaning of thankfulness and the mystery of how faith, hope and love can win over unbelief, selfishness and despair. Some, in sharing their lives and experiences have helped me feel better about my own weaknesses. Others have stimulated me to think more deeply, to find more adequate approaches to important human questions and needs. Some have sent me to my knees in prayer, keenly aware of my need of help from beyond myself. Others have encouraged me when the road has been hard, and taught me the wonder of God's economy, that a fragile earthen vessel like myself can be of help.

 

People's endurance has spoken of hope. Their ability to celebrate despite hardship and setback, has spoken of joy. People's generosity has spoken of God's open-handedness. People's care and friendship has spoken to me of God's love.

 

Ministry, like love, is mutual, it is about giving and receiving, minister and people together, interdependent, but with different roles and responsibilities.

 

My hope and prayer is that you will encourage and uphold these new deacons in ways, you can not as yet imagine, by your reflections, experiences, questions, listening and by your company. We can all be sustained by the infinite mercy and grace of God, but God is also very practical.  God uses human beings to express his love and care in a tangible way. You all are God's instruments in this.

 

The promises and declarations, which the new deacons make today, are solemn and binding - words said in a moment, but which God claims and honours over a lifetime.

In this service, your words "It is" are for this moment. 

Your words "We will" are for the future.

These are also solemn responses, with a resonance for the new deacons as they begin their ministry.

 

God invites each one of us to share with Him, the task of upholding and encouraging these people in the vocation entrusted to them.  Do you, the people of God, accept this invitation?

 

 

Priests

 

May I speak in the name of the living God, F, S & HS

 

Regularly travelling backwards and forwards on the IOW ferry, I often hear snatches of conversation of my fellow passengers.  A couple of weeks ago, I overheard two women talking about the tragic disappearance of Madeleine McCann.  “I just hope that mother is haunted for the rest of her life, it is wicked what she has done” said a very smart and respectable looking woman to her companion.  What I found most chilling, was not the judgement or condemnation, the lack of mercy or forgiveness, but the desire that the heavy burden of guilt would never ever be lifted. 

 

Judgment belongs ultimately to God, but the exercising of justice, forgiveness and reconciliation belongs to God and to us.  Judgment is a frightening concept, but I like the late Basil Hume’s definition that “judgment is whispering into the ear of a loving God, the story of my life as I have never been able to tell it” (Hume: To be a Pilgrim 1984)

 

In this evening’s service the words reconciliation and forgiveness appear repeatedly in both the readings and in the charge to those who are to be ordained priest.  Priests are to offer God’s forgiveness to all who seek it; they entrusted with Christ’s ministry of reconciliation; of helping people to break the cycles of hatred, revenge and condemnation; to help lift the burdens of guilt and suffering which we lay upon ourselves and one another.  

 

It strikes me that there is an increasing need for forgiveness and reconciliation today:

·        People continue to die in conflicts fuelled by revenge, bigotry and fundamentalism, sponsored and orchestrated by states, religions and groups. 

·        We live in an increasingly adversarial and litigious culture “if you get it wrong, I’ll sue you”, and with an adversarial judicial system, an adversarial parliamentary and electoral system and a media which flourishes on conflict. 

 

We know in our heads (and I suspect too in our hearts) that revenge and retaliation do not lead to the resolution of conflict, ultimate reconciliation and peace.  There can be no true peace without justice, historic injustices that remain unresolved are the cause of much conflict and current terrorist activity, and provide the seedbed for the fanatics of the future.  All of us suffer as the result of our failures to forgive, to be reconciled and to love.

 

To offer reconciliation and forgiveness means to listen to the pain and the anger of those who feel aggrieved and to seek a new and different way forward.   It was Archbishop Desmond Tutu, writing about the work of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, who coined the phrase “There is no future without forgiveness”.  He understood that reconciliation is a ‘process which involves not only practical action, but also imagination’.  Forgiveness and reconciliation ‘dare us to imagine a better future, one which is based on the possibility that injury will not be the word which forecloses the future’. (Battle: Practicing Reconciliation in a Violent World: 2005)

 

The template and model for how we could behave differently has been before us for thousands of years, expressed in one way or another in the sacred texts of all the world’s great religions.  In the Bible the recurring theme of a God of love comes out, but the people, like us, could not grasp it.  They needed, again like us, a God created in their image, who is on their side, who could wreak vengeance on their enemies; but a God who is Love, who can only act as Love acts, who has no favourites, does not coerce, but who overflows with generosity and forgiveness has always been very, very difficult for people to comprehend.

There is too the need for forgiveness of self: people seek councillors to talk over their problems and worries; the advice columns of our newspapers and magazines bear witness to the need for confession and direction; we all know the meaning of guilt and judgment - the look in the eyes when we hurt someone we love, the cruel but clever remark that we instantly regret, the missed opportunity, the self recrimination which disables us, the bitterness which hardens our hearts.  We need places of honesty where we can be most truly ourselves and let go of all that binds and burdens us.  Secular agencies talk of importance of naming aloud what is wrong before healing can begin.  

 

The church has known for centuries that ‘confession is good for the soul’, but it is the forgiveness which makes the difference.  But in the church we offer more than just a listening ear.

 

I recall a woman who rang one day to say that her mother was dying in the local hospice and would I go and see her even though she wasn’t a church person.  When I arrived, the mother told me that she had already been reconciled with her estranged son, but there were still things on her mind which she felt guilty about, which she wanted to sort out before she died and could I help her.  She talked, I listened, we talked and then I said the words of God’s forgiveness.  As I left she had a glass of whiskey in her hand and was asking to be taken outside for a cigarette.  Her daughter rang 2 days later, to say that her mother had died peacefully in her sleep that same evening.  She herself had started the process of reconciliation, but it was the words of forgiveness which released her.

 

Priests are to offer mercy and forgiveness to individuals; they are to help lift burdens from peoples’ shoulders; and seek to bring reconciliation in situations of conflict, in both local and global contexts.  In the words of St Paul, they are to be ambassadors for Christ, to point to another way of living and being, of grace and forgiveness.  An ambassador is a good image, for ambassadors live in a foreign land, speak a different language, often have a different way of life – the Christian faith is contrary to much of today’s value system. 

 

Forgiveness and reconciliation are so often viewed as weakness.  Three years ago a young man walked into our church in Winchester one Sunday morning, he was slightly hung over, a senior manager at IBM on the fast track to mega bucks, but who was looking for a different philosophy to live by.  Within a year he was baptised and confirmed, and he said to me one day “You know Caroline, people think Christianity is for wimps, forgiveness is really hard to live out, it is so much easier to hate”.  It reminded me of the words of G K Chesterton “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and not tried.”

 

Priests are called to embody the forgiveness and reconciliation they preach.  The church, at its best, offers a place where burdens can be put down, guilt released and reconciliation and forgiveness offered.  That is part of what these men and women are being set aside to do tonight.  It is no easy task; they will only do it through the grace of God and in the knowledge that they too are sinners in need of God’s forgiveness.  They are to do it with God’s heart; a heart which never wants to condemn anyone, whatever they have done, whatever situation they find themselves in, to a lifetime’s burden of guilt.