Trinity III
Fr Marc
Readings: CW Proper 9: 2 Kings 5: 1-14;
Galatians 6: [1-6] 7-16;
Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20 Psalms 30; 66 1-8.
“You who have received the Spirit should restore [others] in a Spirit of gentleness.”/Ye which are spiritual, restore men in a spirit of meekness.” (Gal. 6:1)
May I speak in the name of the Son, to the glory of the Father, in the power of the Holy Spirit. AMEN
“How does it feel?” This question has been posed to me so much in the last week following my ordination to the diaconate last weekend, as it will doubtless have been posed to my colleagues throughout the diocese.
And it is an entirely logical question given the magnanimous nature of the sacramental ministry in which we now share. Yet simultaneously, the utter mysteriousness of this same sacrament – at once an outward and visible sign and an inward and an inward spiritual grace we can never comprehend – renders the question pretty inadequate. Of course, one can resoundingly answer, “It’s wonderful, amazing, a gift.”
I remarked to another newly-ordained friend that, “I feel like I’m in the middle of something incomprehensible happening to another person.”
And it’s perfectly true. As far as it is possible to understand, what happened last Saturday to myself and 12 others was an utterly spiritual movement ordained by the Holy ghost – the Spirit of Godself – at the ministration of the bishop, his human overseer. Logically therefore, it feels – it is – amazing, life-changing, a completely wonderful and sheer gift. But logic alone here is misapplied; it is inadequate; it renders seemingly legitimate questions and answers of thought and feeling insufficient for the Christian task of apostolicity to which each of us – baptised, ordained or not - is uniquely called.
If what happened to me last Saturday is teaching me anything – if it is to be of any purpose at all to the parish of St Margaret or anywhere else - then ‘I’ must get out of the way, lest I tread upon or trip up the Spirit who is at work in ‘us’ in this place, and who was working out the good and patient purposes of God long before our moment of conception.
I must get out of the way, when my body – often slow to catch up with the impulses of my brain - is annoying me and sometimes confusing others; my fellow deacons moving (often very speedily) in their wheelchairs, must get out of the way too. Their visible disabilities, my invisible one and the hang-ups, foibles; the hopes, fears, fragilities failures and successes of all us are constituents of a greater, spiritual work “begotten [in Jesus],” as the creed reminds us, “of the Father before all worlds.” This divine work does not need us; it never needed us; yet the Father co-opts us to share in it as he forms us, each wonderfully different, out of the dust that we gather and scatter every day to be co-heirs with His Christ and God’s own adopted children.
We have different abilities and disabilities, different bodies and capacities to understand and to act. But in the power of the Christ, through whom we have received the Spirit, we are all released into a new state of being in which all things become possible, because they are transformed by the extraordinary life and hope of a wise and faithful creator who knows what He is doing. What we think and how it feels, therefore, matters little. As St Teresa of Calcutta said, “do it anyway.” It is not about you and them; it never was, but in the final analysis, it is about you and God. God who calls, God who equips the called and the God whose Spirit baptises and sends in order that heaven may be opened and love made visible “in limbs and eyes not his”.
It is this agency – not ours, rather the Spirit’s who lives within us – which empowers us not only to be sent out in the manner of the seventy in today’s gospel, but moreover to shake off the dust of our feet, our frailty, uncertainty and perceived inadequacy as a testimony that may sanctify and transfigure the lives of all with whom we have to do. We who are dust – and called and commissioned as such – simply need to get out of the way, that the Spirit, the breath of God, may breathe life and peace and hope where it is most needed. Thus is the way opened and the infinitude of God made possible; thus is the Kingdom of God brought near.
As I learn what it is to truly be deacon (diakonos) in the Church of God, I do so alongside all of us would you help me get out of the way, especially of myself, that together as diakonoi, (as servants), we make abundant space for the Spirit who dwells amongst and within us, shaking off every day the dust of our feet as a testimony to all.
I and you who have received the Spirit are also sent out today by that Spirit in the love and power of the Father. May he grant us all the grace to step aside, come out of the way and learn over again: not us, but Christ. Christ in us, not in me alone. Christ to restore each person and all things. Christ who is not in the flesh, but risen and ascended in the Spirit, that we also may ascend and impart healing as his new hands and feet; Christ the hope of glory And Christ, the revelation of the Father’s Kingdom come near, breaking in, playing in 10,000 places: the triune gospel alive and present with us, and through us, to the end of the age. AMEN