Dean Gary Hall's Sermon for the Detroit Ordinations - July 2, 2005
In the spring of 1978 my wife Kathy and I and our two cats drove here from Cambridge, Massachusetts so that I could begin my work on the staff of Christ Church Cranbrook. Kathy is from nearby Toledo, so she was pretty familiar with the Detroit metro area, but being a Californian I was not, and so in the early months of my work here I did a number of things to try to get to know my new community better.
One of the things I did was to learn something about the auto business. I asked a friend at Christ Church if he could get me a tour of a GM plant, and he obliged by arranging for me to visit the nearby plant in Pontiac. I was not really prepared for what I saw.
What made that plant unique is that they had what they called then a "mixed line". Whereas other car plants would produce only one run of one model at a time-all Mustangs, all Fleetwoods, all Pacers or Gremlins-the Pontiac plant produced cars on order and did them with seeming chaotic randomness: one would be a Bonneville, the next a Firebird, then a Le Mans, then a TransAm. Of all the world's wonders I have seen, this plant surely ranked at or near the top: to watch the multiple constituent parts make their way down the conveyor belt you would have thought that some sort of freakish hybrid car would result at the end-a convertible station wagon, a four-door sports car. But the miracle of that mixed line was this: one after another a different car emerged at the end of the process, and all the right parts came together. What you saw at the end was an array of very different looking vehicles all produced on the same assembly line within minutes of each other. I still can't figure out how they did it.
So that was what they called then a "mixed line". And that's in a sense what we have here today: though I would never compare the ordination process to an assembly line-at least not within a bishop's hearing-we stand in the presence of a mixed line of ordinands--five people are being ordained today, four priests, one deacon. This may well be the first mixed line ordination service in history. And, like the Pontiac assembly process, though it may look chaotic from a distance, in the end it will all turn out all right.
So here we are today, setting apart five people for ordained ministry in God's church. We are here, together, to consent to, to witness, to bless them in this moment. But before we proceed we have been asked to listen to some words of scripture. The powerful story of the call of Isaiah and his response-"Here am I, send me!"-reminds us that each one of these ordinands has gone through a complicated internal and external process of call and response. They and their families have worked and sacrificed much to get to this moment. What we are witnessing feels like the culmination of something, but it is more accurately the beginning of something. You all are being called and sent, really, in the service of Some One, and our New Testament readings help us see that a bit more clearly.
In Matthew's Gospel we hear of Jesus having compassion on the crowds because "they were harassed and helpless." Now I don't know if that phrase has the same resonance for you, but every time I hear it I almost wince in recognition. "Harassed and helpless" just about sums up the way people seem to feel at this point in the 21st century. I'm not talking so much about church people. I'm talking about all people. Certainly the pace of technology has made us all feel harassed. On vacation last week at the beach, I saw a man and a woman walking together dressed in sport clothes talking to other people on their cell phones. They were clearly married professionals, and they were just as clearly working on their vacations. I don't believe I have been to a church service in the past year when a cell phone hasn't somewhere gone off. We are all, like it or not, constantly barraged by electronic messages. Each day's edition of the New York Times contains more information than the average 17th century person took in in a lifetime. As you sit here in this cathedral e-mail and voice mail messages are piling up in your in boxes and there is nothing you can do about it.
The problem is not just one of information overload. The problems we all face in this culture are deeply spiritual. We can never get away from our work, and we are never really present to where we are when we are there. Like the married cell phone users at the beach, we are always on the job and never really here. When it comes to information technology, even the geekiest of us is harassed.
As if our technological alienation weren't enough we are also facing large social realities which exaggerate our sense of helplessness. Urban blight, suburban sprawl, environmental degradation, global AIDS, a nation without adequate education and social services and health insurance. Maybe we spend so much time with our e-mails and cell phones because we don't want to think about the larger problems that confront us. But it's getting harder and harder to live as thoughtful, sensitive people in a world increasingly characterized by economic, ecological, and political injustice. When I think about these social problems that are so much bigger than I am I feel helpless. And trying to live day to day in a large metropolitan area I certainly feel harassed.
Now most sermons have three points, but in the interest of brevity I will only make two. There are two things I want to challenge today's priests and deacon to take seriously in their own ministries as they go forth from this place in the service of God's response to a harassed and helpless human community.
The first has to do with that sense of harassment that all of us feel with the pace of modern life. As technologically savvy as the church has become, we are still primarily about flesh and blood connections. At the heart of our faith lies a belief that God is made incarnate in Jesus and in the whole human community. We worship by coming together weekly in the same room, and our ministries lie most traditionally in visitation and pastoral care. My first point is this: do not underestimate the power of that. In a world of virtual connection, the church offers the real thing. When people voluntarily come together to be with you week after week they are choosing to step out of that ongoing harassment to open themselves up to the wonders and mysteries of life in God's creation. The first challenge I hear in today's Gospel is this: remember that your ministries are about enabling and empowering that connection. No one comes to church anymore because they have to. They come to church because they have had an experience of something which we call God which they want to deepen and explore. The mere act of showing up in church these days is powerfully countercultural. Do not take that for granted. Respect the attention and experience and time of the people who come toward you. Your call is to be an agent of the deeper connection to God and each other that all of us seek in this crazy world.
That's the first challenge, and the second has to do with that sense of helplessness. The late Bishop Bayne once said about the church that Jesus founded a school for champions and we've turned it into a hospital for sick souls. What he meant, I think, was that the church is not primarily a society of victims. While we are all wounded and broken, the church is primarily a community of women and men and children who feel the world's pain and who give themselves, heroically, to assuage it. We are not a refuge from the world's problems. We are the bringers of health and justice and peace in response to those problems. The great temptation in these days of enhanced spirituality is to make the church a safe haven from the things which make us feel helpless. But an authentic Christian community cannot be a retreat from injustice and pain. An authentic Christian community engages the world and its pain and empowers baptized people to go out and meet that pain where it is. Your job as clergy is both to foster those human connections and to love your people into taking on the world. That is a tall order.
So the task you're setting out on this morning is big, but our passage from Ephesians reminds us just how much bigger than the task are the resources we've been given to do it. As finite, limited sheep ourselves we clergy can fall into the same pattern of feeling harassed and helpless as everyone else. And when that happens to you, as it will, I urge you to take out your Bible and read again today's words from the first chapter of Ephesians when your spirits flag:
I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe . . . -Ephesians 1.17-19
The problems and challenges which we human beings face together are enormous. But so are the resources we've been given with which to face them. The institutional life of the church can become so intense that we can forget what we all originally came here to do. So that is why Paul asks that we keep our eyes and hearts fixed on three things: fixed on the hope to which God has called us, fixed on the riches of our inheritance as bearers of this great tradition, fixed on the immeasurable greatness of God's power for those of us who believe. The church itself, and your lives and ministries, dedicated to the service of that hope. In living out that hope you are surrounded by a cloud oisf witnesses cheering you on. And you are sustained and nourished by God's power at the depth of the universe. If you keep that hope always before you, with resources like these how can you not succeed?
And so, my five friends: you are, like the Pontiac plant, a mixed line of human beings now being set apart for a diverse set of ministries in the service of God's liberating and transformative hope. As you go forth into a church and world overwhelmed with harassment and helplessness, you are called to be a shepherd to all us sheep. Always keep alive that life-changing hope that brought you here in the first place, and always keep the eyes of your heart enlightened to the gifts you have been given to help make that hope a reality for God's sinful and broken, yet precious and loved, world. May the glorious inheritance of the saints and the immeasurable power of God's greatness sustain and nourish you on this vital and liberating ministry to which you are now called. Amen