Sermon preached by The Reverend Dr. Harold T. Lewis

SERMON PREACHED BY THE REVEREND DR HAROLD T. LEWIS,RECTOR CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA AT THE ORDINATION TO THE PRIESTHOOD OF WILLIAM FREDERICK FEUS IN THE CHURCH OF SAINT GEORGE BY-THE-RIVER, RUMSFORD, NEW JERSEY SATURDAY 18 DECEMBER 2004


"Equip God's people for work in his service, to the building up of the Body of Christ." (Eph. 4:12)

It is for me a great pleasure and privilege to worship with you this morning, as we gather to set apart and ordain our well-beloved brother in Christ, William Frederick Feus, as a priest in Christ's holy catholic church. I bring to you the affectionate greetings of the people of Calvary Church, Pittsburgh, who have fond memories of Bill who spent a summer in our midst two years ago, learning the ropes of ministry, throwing himself into community outreach, and subjecting himself to the advice and counsel, the prodding and encouragement, and sometimes even the rantings and ravings of the rector. We like to think that Bill left Calvary a different person than when he arrived. We knocked him into shape, and taught him a few things about ministry he couldn't have learned at General Seminary in a hundred years. So as you at St. George's benefit from Bill's priestly ministrations, we at Calvary are happy to take almost all the credit!

I have lost count, but I think I have preached nearly thirty ordination sermons in the course of my ministry. And while each one has been personally crafted for the ordinand du jour, they have had certain common themes. But as I began to think about what I would say today, it occurred to me that I could ill afford the luxury of dusting off an old sermon, and inserting "Bill" instead of "John" or "Mary," for the church into which Bill is being ordained today is quite different from the church for which I was ordained 33 years ago, and even different from the church into which Calvary's curate was ordained three years ago! In 1988, John Booty, historiographer of the Episcopal Church, wrote a book called The Episcopal Church in Crisis. He could write that book again today, and if he did, he would probably observe that the crisis of a quarter century ago was tame by comparison! Long gone, my friends, are the days when the greatest divisions in the church were along churchmanship lines, and the most serious camps were those of the low and lazy, the broad and hazy, and my party, the high and crazy. We have lived to experience a church in which Christians see polarization as the order of the day, and have no compunction about calling each other apostates and heretics, revisionists and traditionalists, orthodox and unorthodox, all the while hurling these epithets with what we used to call gay abandon.

But we take no small comfort in the fact that despite what the Prayer Book calls the "changes and chances of this mortal life," our Lord Jesus Christ is, as the Epistle to the Hebrews reminds us, "the same, yesterday, today and forever." And we take no small comfort in the fact that Holy Scripture continues to speak to us, and is still for us a compass and guide as we navigate through rough and often uncharted seas. Listen to the words of the Blessed Apostle in this morning's epistle: And these were his gifts: some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip God's people for work in his service, to the building up of the body of Christ.

Paul is suggesting that these are mutually exclusive categories, that some do this and some to that --- that some preach, some teach, and some prophesy. But I would like to suggest that today, the priest worth his or her salt must be all of the above.

First, Bill must be an apostle. My Greek is rusty, but I seem to remember that apostle, first and foremost, means a person who is sent. This is very important. To be sent reminds us that we are doing somebody else's bidding. We are, as St. Paul describes us elsewhere, "ambassadors for Christ." To be sent also reminds us that we have first been called. We often balk when we are called. When the curate in my parish suggested to me at age 14 that I might want to be a priest, I laughed in his face. I told him I wasn't cut out for "that type of thing." He said, "Harold, God doesn't choose the worthy, he makes worthy those whom he chooses." I said to myself, "Not a bad line!" But I was later to learn that I was in good company. Jeremiah claimed he was too young; Amos tried to bow out by saying he didn't have the right pedigree; and Isaiah, in today's lesson, pleaded that he was a man of unclean lips. But after God cleansed Isaiah's lips, Isaiah could say, "Here I am, send me" --- that is, "Take me and use me as you will." So many people entering the ministry today get it all backwards, and they translate the Hebrew instead as "Here I am, and this is where I am willing to go," as they carve out little boutique ministries for themselves designed more for their own self-fulfillment and -aggrandizement than for the building up of the Body of Christ ---- but that, perhaps, is another sermon.

But wait, there's more. The last definition for "apostle" in my dictionary is "someone who initiates or advocates a great reform." Every parish, every Christian community, no matter how old it is, is a fertile mission field. Even dyed-in-the-wool Episcopalians --- perhaps we could even say, especially dyed-in-the-wool Episcopalians --- need to be led in the great reform of their lives and of our church. The harvest, as today's Gospel reminds us, truly is plentiful, and the workers --- especially workers of caliber --- are woefully few and far between.

Next, Bill, in the exercise of his priestly ministry, must be a prophet. Now a prophet, contrary to common belief, is not someone who looks into a crystal ball to tell the future, but one who interprets the signs of the time for God's people. The prophet's mantra is found on the lips of Ezekiel: "Whether they hear or refuse to hear, they will know that a prophet has been among them." In other words, it is the prophet's role to confront the people with the truth, and to let the chips fall where they may. Too many clergy in our church are afraid to confront, lest they offend; are afraid to challenge, lest they hurt somebody's feelings ---- with the result that the Episcopal Church has for too long been a "non-prophet organization" made up of clergy whose patron saint is Amaziah, the court sycophant in the book of Amos, who told the faithful what they wanted to hear and not what they needed to hear.

Bill must also be an evangelist. One of the great mysteries of the ages is how one segment of the church's population, who happen to be theologically and politically to the right of center, seems to have claimed the word "evangelical" for their exclusive use. Such persons believe they have the corner on the market of salvation, because their interpretation, and only their interpretation of the Gospel is acceptable unto God. It is our hope that Bill will be an evangelist in the true sense of the word, and will be instrumental in sharing the good news of salvation with those with whom he comes into contact. The essence of that Gospel message is not difficult to find. Jesus summarized it in his first sermon, when he quoted the prophet Isaiah: "The Lord has anointed me to announce good news to the poor, to proclaim release for prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind; to let the broken victims go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." The late Walter Dennis, bishop suffragan of New York, in his farewell sermon, declared that that has always been the Gospel, and will always be the Gospel --- when every committee and commission has met and rendered its report, when every cursillista has made his or her cursillo, when every theological axe has been ground! Being an evangelist means not hanging around the sacristy waiting for "customers," but taking the Gospel to the least, the lost and the last in society, those on the other side of the opaque stained glass windows that all too often serve to separate us from the world outside. Being an evangelist means not defining outreach as "keeping others out of our reach." Being an evangelist means making it clear that the church is not a spiritual ghetto, a small cult of believers who believe that they have a direct pipeline to the Almighty, but rather a large tent able to hold all who claim Jesus as Lord. Being an evangelist means convincing the world that the church is not a hotel for saints, but a hospital for sinners.

You at St. George's have doubtless experienced Bill as a pastor. His work as a pastor will be at the heart of his ministry. "Pastor" is a perfectly good Latin word meaning shepherd, and it is a wonder that the concept of shepherd and flock --- a man leading a herd of dumb animals --- is still popular at a time when we hold up the ministry of the laity. One seminary professor has suggested that we abandon the notion of shepherd, and instead refer to the clergy as sheepdogs, as a reminder that both priest and people are animals on the same level, and reserve the title shepherd for Jesus Christ, the bishop and shepherd of our souls. But it is often in the role of shepherd or sheepdog that the clergy are ultimately assessed. When as a young priest I went to a parish in Washington, D.C., Bishop Richard Martin, my mentor and former rector, told me: "You can double the budget, you can make the parish machinery hum, you can build a new building, but unless you are there when your people need you, all that you do is for naught." As pastor, the priest has the high privilege of entering parishioners' lives at their most intimate moments --- birth, marriage, sickness and death, and is able to exercise a ministry of presence.

Finally, Bill will have to assume the role of teacher. He will teach from the pulpit, where he will do well to remember the late Archbishop Coggan's formula for a good sermon: it should challenge the intellect, warm the heart, and motivate the will; and where he will have to relate the timeless message of the Gospel to the everyday experiences of his people, who yearn for answers, trying to make sense out of the challenges they face as the live, move, breathe and have their being on "this fragile earth, our island home." And today, as we are more and more aware of our belonging to a wider church, the priest will have to be knowledgeable about the changing nature of the Anglican Communion, the office and work of bishops, the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the authority of Scripture, and the meaning of canons, to name a few.

The rest of what I have to say is intended for the ordinand, but the rest of you may eavesdrop if you like. Bill, like Esther, you have come to the kingdom at such a time as this, a time when the Episcopal Church seems to be, as Mr. Stone's great hymn prophesied, "by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed." There seems to be a preoccupation on the part of church folk to declare who is in and who is out. This, of course, is nothing new. Different groups have been deemed to be out at various stages in the church's history --- such as members of racial minorities and women. Today persons of homosexual orientation are targeted. I stand before you today as a rector whose parish has been publicly threatened with expulsion from our diocese, because we had the temerity to disagree with the bishop and ask that the diocese adhere to the Constitution and Canons of this church. The church is going through a period in which it is anything but "business as usual," and for that reason we cannot rely on old paradigms to get us through. I am convinced that you are equal to the task, and offer the following for your consideration.

Bill, remember it's not all about you. You are standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before you, and you are paving the way for those who will follow you. When you put on a stole, you are two thousand years old. But wear that stole, nevertheless, like a loose garment. Cultivate relationships with a few happy heathen. Laugh a little.

Remember, too, that what you offer to the people with whom you come into contact is a gift, and that that gift might not always be accepted. When Jesus sent out his disciples, he told them that if they were not received in a town, to shake the dust off their feet, and go somewhere else. I shall always remember what a seasoned priest told me early in my ministry, as I took great delight in filling every line in my appointment book: "Harold, remember that when you die, there will be as many souls to save as there were on the day you were ordained." The Beatitude you will never find in the Bible but should follow nevertheless is "Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape."

In your flexibility, remember to embrace tradition, but eschew traditionalism. Tradition, central to the Anglican ethos, is, as the African theologian John Pobee reminds us, "something dynamic, a stream of how the churches, in light of Scripture, try to speak to the challenges of their world and time." Traditionalism, on the other hand, is the dangerous practice of veneration of one period in the church's history as normative and binding for all time.

Remember in the exercise of your ministry to reach out to those who are not committed to your charge. Archbishop William Temple reminded us that the church is the only organization that exists primarily for the benefit of those not its members. Remember that as you go abroad, whether you are "in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea," you are an ambassador for Christ and you represent the Christian community, as the bishop will soon admonish you, among the young and old, the strong and weak, the rich and poor.

Be true to your integrity. Remember that if you don't stand for something, you will most assuredly fall for anything. Don't ever allow yourself to be bought, subtly or not so subtly. Remember the sure-fire formula for making yourself ineffective as a leader. Speak with forked tongue. Say one thing to Group A, and something else to Group B. Curry the favor of each group by telling them what they want to hear; then pray that everybody will suffer from amnesia.

Don't forget that Kimberley, Sarah and Will are your support team, your ballast, the glue that keeps you together, your reality check. Do not ever let them become like the proverbial shoemaker's family who had no shoes. Love them, care for them, take time for them, and do not let them fall into the anomalous category of being sacrificed on the altar of your Christian ministry.

And finally, Bill, remember the high privilege accorded to as a priest in the church of God. That privilege is nowhere better described than in Cranmer's words in the old ordinal, and I leave you with those words: "Have always therefore printed in your remembrance how great a treasure is committed to your charge. For they are the sheep of Christ, which he bought with his death, and for whom he shed his blood. . . . Wherefore consider with yourselves the end of the Ministry toward the children of God, towards the Spouse and Body of Christ; and see that ye never cease your labour, your care and diligence, until ye have done all that lieth in you, according to your bounden duty, to bring all such as are or shall be committed to your charge, unto that agreement in the faith and knowledge of God, and to that ripeness and perfectness of age in Christ, that there be no place left among you, either for error in religion or for viciousness in life. "

And now, Bill, may God who has given you the will to do all these things, give you the grace and power to perform them, +In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.