Ordination of Deacons |
“In those days the word of the Lord was rare.”
There are times like that and this is one of them.
There is spiritual turbulence but don’t let’s exaggerate. Even people who say they believe in God theoretically are content to live as if he did not exist. For many God is missing and not missed.
But the Holy Spirit never leaves herself without witnesses and in every generation there are those who are called out of themselves into a life of faith.
In the New Testament the word for church is ecclesia. The root meaning of the word is “called out”. The church is the community of people who have been called out of themselves by Jesus Christ, called out of a preoccupation with self preservation into a life of faith.
Faith does not mean having a lot of interesting ideas in our minds about God. It does mean living god-ward with intention and energy, with guts if you like.
That is why the opposite to faith is not doubt. Often our doubts are gifts intended to liberate us from infantile attitudes. The opposite to faith is in the language of our community – “sin”. In modern English “sin” seems to be something restricted to what used to be called quaintly “sins of the flesh” but in the Christian understanding “sin” stands for life turned in upon the self and divorced from God.
Genuine faith begins with a call from beyond ourselves always personal and using many different channels. Abraham, Abraham – leave your household gods and set out on your journey. Samuel, Samuel. Mary, Mary. Erin, Pete, Maily, Stu, Anne, Viv, Graham, Ed and all those who have been named in this service. Today we praise and thank God for his call and for the glorious fact that they have said “Speak for your servant is listening”.
The call is not restricted of course to those who are called to serve Jesus as one of his deacons. All genuine faith springs from a call from beyond ourselves. Everyone in this Cathedral should consider the nature of their own calling.
I once said that in a church in Stepney and someone’s mobile phone went off.
The call is not to stay where and how we are. The life of faith – living god-ward with intention and energy demands, as our second lesson said, the willingness to be transformed in body, mind and spirit. But we are called to transformation not in the spirit of an adolescent pumping up his own spiritual biceps in a private quest for fitness but for the sake of the whole community of faith and through us for the sake of the Kingdom of God.
The thermostat in modern church life is set too much to comfort; to what one of today’s deacons called a “love in inside the church building”.
That is indeed part of the story but there is also challenge and the campaign to pray down the Kingdom of God into present reality. Our personal transformation is the starting point for the transformation of the whole world into something more human and Christ-like.
The test of an effective church is not how many came. We can celebrate the fact that never less than 630,000 Christians assemble for worship in Greater London, this great world-in-a-city every week, in more than 4,000 churches. At Easter there were even more. If we were a political party you would never hear the last of it.
But the real test is not how many came or even how many are here this afternoon but how many lives are being transformed.
Is the way of life opened up by Jesus Christ something of long ago and far away or is it happening now and here in our town and in the lives of those who have had the courage to stand up in public and say that they will follow him?
All this is most powerfully expressed in our gospel reading. Jesus says that we shall be judged not by whether our book learning and theoretical theology is correct but by whether our theology is transforming.
Let me dwell on two things which Jesus says. First “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat”.
We have enough food in this world to feed everybody but we don’t have the compassion or the will. A church that is so captivated by its private love-ins that it does not see the relevance of campaigning for the Millennium Development Goals for the sake of Jesus Christ has missed the point of the life of faith. Thank God for the work of this Cathedral and many other churches in the Diocese who support our African link - ALMA.
Then “I was in prison and you came to visit me”. We were all very shocked when the prison population of England and Wales topped 80,000. Only recently working for a charity which tries in very practical ways to help ex offenders, I was told that there are 45,000, mostly young people, on the books of the Probation Service for Greater London – many of them at great risk of re-offending. Thank God for Alpha in prisons and the many other Christian projects that not only visit those in prison but support prisoners when they are released.
The whole church and not just our deacons will be judged - yes by how well we care for one another but much more we shall be judged by our response to the question - are we up for transforming ourselves, this great city and the whole world into something more human and Christ-like?
Jesus Christ teaches that if we hear the call; if we respond “Speak for your servant is listening”; if we are called out of ourselves and beyond ourselves in love and service for others then we shall find ourselves and be given the gift of fullness of life. This is a joyful service of self offering. If we live god-ward with intention and energy and lose ourselves in Him then God will lead us into our deepest and truest self.
Ernest Shackleton the Antarctic explorer put an advertisement in the paper in 1913. Volunteers “wanted for a hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.” 5,000 applied for 26 places.
Well not even service in the Kensington Area is as tough as that and we are not all asked to go to the Antarctic. But I am not cynical about our church and these newest deacons. Some of the best in our generation are put off because the Church seems to have so little godly ambition and to demand so little of the followers of Christ.
Today I rejoice that the authentic call of Jesus Christ has brought us together to renew with these deacons our commitment to the way that leads to transformation and life in all its fullness. We have not chosen a life restricted to a love in with people like us: We have not chosen the way that is chronically risk averse: We thank him for his call to serve him and find our true selves by spending our lives for his sake and the sake of the gospel. And we pray to God that with ever greater reality throughout the years he will give us the spiritual eyes and ears to receive his call and that he will deepen our Yes.
