The end of June and beginning of July is ordination season. Not only do we celebrate with those who are the new revs. ordained as Deacons and Priests, but we also commemorate the significant milestone ordination is. Facebook these past few weeks has been full of younger faces, newly ironed surplus,’ with family and assorted bishops.
Although some have denounced Facebook ordination anniversary posts, our ordination day is probably amongst the most important in our lives, and we forget that newly minted deacon and priest, and those hands laid on us at our peril. Our own flourishing stems from that call of God on our lives, the affirmation of family and friends and the whole church in our calling and the joy and hope we found then in Jesus Christ.
Called by God, despite the frailty, the failings, and the disappointments of the church, to be the people God wants us to be, in the places to which he has sent us.
And ordination services are reminders of what it is all really about. We do well, once, or twice a year on retreat or a quiet day, spending time reflecting on the ordinal. To set aside the expectations placed upon us or we place upon ourselves, the seeming demands for results, the frustrations about congregational giving, or words that keep us awake at night like growth, and strategy, and share. So that stripped back to basics, we re-understand what we are actually called to be and do:
Deacons are called as heralds of Christ’s kingdom. They are to proclaim the gospel in word and deed, as agents of God’s purposes of love. They are to serve the community in which they are set, searching out the poor and weak, the sick and lonely and those who are oppressed and powerless, reaching into the forgotten corners of the world, that the love of God may be made visible. Watchful for the signs of God’s presence, as he reveals his kingdom among us.
Priests are called to be servants and shepherds they are to proclaim the word of the Lord and to watch for the signs of God’s new creation, to search for his children in the wilderness of this world’s temptations, and to guide them through its confusions.
With all God’s people, they are to tell the story of God’s love.
It is in a way a summary of the gospel reading we have just heard. And we do well to remember that this is not an activist charter, it is a call also to serve, to watch, to search and to love. And I am sure if I asked each of you where fulfilment has come from over the years since, I expect you would say in doing just that, and the bits I have left out, encouraging the gifts of others, baptising, preparing for confirmation, teaching and proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ, anointing the sick, bestowing blessing at times of joy like marriage and thanksgiving, and comfort to those who mourn.
And just to encourage us even more to simply be and do, I did a quick word check and the word ‘Grow’ only appears four times in the ordinal, it’s interesting that we are not called as deacons and priests at our ordination to grow the church, that’s God’s prerogative, but we are called to grow in holiness and grace ourselves, into the fullness of Christ and his likeness.
As Matthew’s Gospel reminds us it is all about faith and risk, about doing what Jesus did.
The first mention of the twelve disciples in our gospel reading seems rather abrupt however Matthew provides their names and pairs them, reflecting perhaps the Markan tradition that they were sent out two by two. Twelve followers symbolising the twelve tribes of Israel.
Their mission, like for most of us was close to home, doing what Jesus did and reflecting the immediate call of the post-Easter church to begin where they were. The two imperatives were to preach and to heal. Proclamation of the good news of the kingdom must be supported by signs of the kingdom, the emphasis being not on spectacular displays but on a deep concern for God’s hurting people. The message must be made believable through concrete displays of God’s caring. It is about neighbourliness as much as conversion.
Now, I don’t know what you make of the Joseph story, our Old Testament reading for today. That well known tale immortalised forever in those words of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. You know the kind of thing:
"So, back in Canaan the future looked rough Jacob's family were finding it tough
So they finally decided to go, Off to Egypt to see brother Jo!"
Whatever we think, the attraction of this story is great and it’s not surprising it became a successful musical. It has everything – pride, jealousy, crime, cover up, seduction, lies and truth telling, deceit, desperation, and in the end remorse, reconciliation, and restoration, what’s not to like.
And in many ways, it reflects our own lives and the lives of those in our churches, the before and after of becoming a Christian, the returning again and again to God for forgiveness, and it demands of us a ministry too of reconciliation and restoration.
I have just finished reading the book ‘Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever’ by 30-year-old Lamorna Ash, about a new generation’s search for religion.
It’s a fascinating read, and reflective of the evidence that at this current time so many people, mostly young people are searching for meaning and wrestling with life’s questions in an era of individualism and dwindling community spaces and why some are finding it in Christianity. She begins the book as an investigator of faith and goes on a search to find others also exploring.
During the course of the book Lamorna goes on a Christianity Explored Course, she visits Iona, she spends time with YWAM, she goes on retreat to St Beuno’s, visits the shrine of Mother Julian, Lamorna worships with Roman Catholics at Walsingham, lives with those who have a totally inclusive faith and spends much time regularly attending quaker meetings. She is not without critique of those experiences especially where the church has gone wrong and failed, however in every context and with every experience she discovers young people who have found their place.
People who have wrestled with life and God as Jacob and the Angel did so, and who like Jacob’s sons found that most of life’s pleasures lead to hunger until that God shaped hole gets filled.
Matt who runs the Waffle House in Lyme Regis commented only the other week that the loneliest people now are not the elderly, but those aged between 16 and 24.
Priests are called to search for his children in the wilderness of this world’s temptations, and to guide them through its confusions.
So, our flourishing is based on a calling to enable others to flourish. What is happening today in our land, appears not to be due to complex strategies, but to the Holy Spirit bringing contentment to discontented souls, through the work of the church in all its many facets. This is about high churches and low churches, and all the others in between; it’s about places of prayer and encounter, places of discussion and open questions, places of hospitality and places of healing.
Which is why we need each other. It’s about every minister and every church, being a receptacle of God’s welcome, and a provider of God’s love. It’s about a sharing of resources, a rejoicing in difference and recognising one another as a child of God.
It is about faithfulness to our calling. Look how different Joseph’s brothers were who became those twelve tribes of Israel, how different the disciples were from one another.
For Lamorna herself she landed at St Luke’s, West Holloway in October 2023 at an early morning communion with 4 people in attendance the week after the vicar had left, it was at that church in January 2024 that she prayed for the first time, there she found her place and she has been there ever since. As she writes there is a wanting the church not to give up, a plea to us to go on as the disciples did offering the welcoming peace of Christ.
‘What scintilla of faith is there in your blood work, the heart that moves you? If they never enter a church, how will the next generation discover what it might do for them? And more personally she writes ‘I think I might need the ritual of Sunday worship to discover the courage to become the version of myself I would like to be.’
That is enabling human flourishing; less about certainty and more about honesty, less about arriving and more about exploring; less about judgement and more about grace.
Becoming the version of myself I would like to be. That version of ourselves God has called today, tomorrow, to be his disciple, so as we are sent out today, having received food for our journey, the Word of God and the sustaining body and blood of Christ, be content, be affirmed, be faithful, be courageous, go on reaching out into the forgotten corners of the world.
Making Jesus known so all may flourish and grow, as agents of God’s purposes of love.
Amen