Rosedale United Church

“Not Mine.  To Give.”                                                            October 18, 2009

sermon-oct1809-audio.mp3                                                 Rosedale United Church

(Acts 6: 1-7 , Mark 10:35-45)                                                 Doug Norris

 

 

Let me begin with a quick note, that next Sunday I will be carrying the greetings of the congregation to the ‘covenanting’ service for Rev Anne Hepburn.  Some of you will remember Anne – a member of this congregation who was ordained this past summer.  She is being formally welcomed to her pastoral charge at Dunsford, just north of Lindsay, and I’ll be preaching for that service, so I will take your greetings there, if I may…

 

This is a very important event for Anne, as was her ordination, and we will be serving Communion using the Communion plate and chalice we presented to her earlier this year,  when she was ordained.

 

James and John are hoping to be ordained.  In a way.  It’s one of the ways to read that verse we just heard from Mark’s gospel.

 

The contours of the story are not hard to follow.   James and John are the fishermen who Jesus called away to join him.  It’s in chapter 3.  The Scriptures love this notion that it is the unexpected ones who will be the leaders – the fisherman becomes the bishop, the shepherd becomes the king…

 

So James and John  travel all around with Jesus –  teaching and healing – up the coast to what is now Lebanon, across to the sea of Galilee, over the sea to the Greek towns, back through Galilee, down to the Dead Sea where they may well have stopped in to see the community at Qumran – as fellow ‘dissenting’ Jews perhaps they were permitted to look at some of the scrolls now on display here at the ROM – and now, in chapter 10 they have left the Judean desert and are on their way to Jerusalem, where they understand something big is going to happen. 

 

They have come to understand that Jesus is going to usher in a new age – overturn the powers of evil, and they want to call shotgun on the good seats, so they apply for ordination.  ‘Jesus’ they said ‘we would like you to do this one thing for us…’    ‘What would you like me to do for you? Jesus asked them.  ‘Grant us to sit, they said, one at your right hand and one at your left, in glory…”

 

Let me reveal to you a little known ritual that is part of the process of being ordained in the United Church.   You likely know most of the basics – you have to hold an undergraduate degree and then get a theological degree and while you are getting that degree the Church examines you for knowledge of our traditions and for suitable temperament and for psychological fitness and you take part in internships and then a very involved  final interview.  At the end of all of this there is a delightful ceremony, a worship service – usually in a hockey arena  – and you’re up on a platform and the presider asks you a few questions and you respond and then the presider places hands on your head and you are ordained.  This much you probably knew, or could surmise.  What you may not know about is the extra ritual when after you step off the platform –  out of sight of the proceedings and off the official record, a very experienced member of the Church grasps you by both shoulders, looks you square in the eye, and says ‘Repeat after me : I will not mess with the UCW.’.

 

Once you know that cardinal rule – you will be OK.

 

In almost every congregation, the United Church Women are the most powerful presence in the organisation.

 

It is very often this group that anchors a congregation.  That knows how things have been done.  That know the people of the congregation intimately.  They understand how decisions need to be made, and They alone know where the key to the freezer is hidden.  Every church I’ve ever been in has a big freezer, and it is always locked and the key is always hidden.   Always on a nail right behind the freezer.

 

Here are some things I have come to understand about the UCW. 

 

This is the most powerful group in the church.  And it doesn’t make sense.  None of the conventional markers of power apply.   The women in this group are not customarily in positions of power, they are often not working any more, and many never worked outside of the home.  I’ve checked the list, and few if any of these women become Clerk of Session or chair any of the major committees. 

 

Here’s what I see – they hold this power because they have earned a moral authority, and they have earned this moral authority not by virtue of book learning or theological skills – though these women are insightful and well read – they have earned this position through service.

 

Year in and year out, in quiet ways, with hospitality at the funerals and unwavering support for shelters and card by card keeping up our web of community especially among the ones who aren’t around much any more…

 

And it seems at first like this  could be an ethical category – another duty – you should serve people  –  it’s a bit of a bother but it should be done.  And we can carry that off for a while.  But among some people serving becomes something else, and I will describe it as a theological category.  By which I mean, to really serve for the long haul you have to come to believe that what you have – the gifts that reside in you, are not in fact yours – that you are simply a vessel for holiness and love that are passing through you to the world.  If we believe that we are responsible for our capacities, for our touch, for our insights, we will manage our gifts, control them – stay in charge. 

 

So the prayer we have sung is an alternative  – make me a channel of your peace…

 

I say this as an observer because I am still most of the time in the management mode – parceling out what I think I can spare – but I know it when I see it – when I see people who serve freely, and who let the gates open knowing that what they’ve got was not theirs to grasp in the first place, but just to let flow.   This is service, and the accumulated moral weight of such service is a power that looks unlike any other form of power.

 

This is what James and John had failed to understand when they applied for ordination.  They saw a move directly to a position of honour and authority – at the right hand and the left hand of the king Jesus was about to become – and this was clarified for them in their final interview, which took place a few moments after they applied.  Jesus said ‘I don’t think you understand what you are asking for.’  So he called the whole Presbytery together – the 12 – and he said – here’s how it is, so often, on Bay St and in Washington and in fact in most parts of the world : people act as bosses over other people.  Power comes from, well, power.

 

But it is not so among you.  Whoever wishes to become great among you must become your servant.  I have not come to be served, but to serve…  Not to own my life but to give it away…

 

And here is the nub of it. 

 

 Jesus said : It is not so among you.   There will always be a way things are done, and an alternative, and Jesus is perpetually calling us away, to a conversion of our capacities, to an alternative way.   It is like this, but it is not so among you…

 

 

Here is perhaps the fundamental question for the church in our day to understand.   In how we relate to the world, we will choose between doing the things the world does as well as anyone else can, or being different.

 

We are facing what might be the most dramatic generational shift we can remember in our church, and so we are puzzled, at the moment, for our future.  You will hear of

 

Our startlingly faithful UCW is aging and weakening – not in moral power but in numbers and in physical strength, and we are not sure who will next anchor our congregations.

 

We understand that we are the inheritors of a magnificent and world-altering message of hope and joy and peace – all the markers of the Shalom we seek – but we have lost sight of how to communicate this to the emerging generations, and we are trying to

 

So here is the quandary :  It might be best for us to be an attractive presence  – to fit in, to be cool, to excel at the world’s games.   By understanding the competition for attention, and to

 

Or it might be best for us to be an odd presence in the world, an unconventional alternative to all that the world excels at. 

 

This is not an invitation to dodge the world, (dodging the world or hiding from the world may be the worst theological error)  but precisely to go to it – but to go differently.

 

I don’t have the answer in hand today.  It is the work we are still doing.  And in this work we are informed, again today, by the witness of those who are serving among us.

 

And we are informed by the words of ordination from Jesus, to James and John and every last one of us  – a word about where to go and how to go :

 

Go to the world,  go as the ones I send…