Messages, Meditations, and Musings on the Life of Faith by Rev. Dr. Scott E. Olson, Interim Pastor, Christ Lutheran Church, Preston, MN

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

"Searching for Sunday: Holy Orders" - Sermon for Midweek Lent Service

Searching for Sunday: Holy Orders
Midweek Lenten Round Robin 2016
Grace, Mankato, MN
1 Corinthians 12.4-11; 1 Peter 2.9-10

You don’t get very far on the road to becoming a pastor before realizing you will be asked repeatedly, “Tell me your call story” and you will have ample opportunities to hone one. You’ll also learn that some peoples’ call stories are dramatic and others painful and there will be a temptation for you to do the same in yours. My call story is pretty tame, though others might disagree. It includes God speaking directly to me at an ordination service, saying, “You need to be doing this.” God also spoke through others at my father’s funeral when, after delivering a eulogy, they said I should be a pastor. God called me through closing some doors and opening others, and God called me through both the support and the resistance of various family members. Hopefully, though, somewhere along the way you’ll also realize that God calls all of the baptized to ministry.

In Searching for Sunday Rachel Held Evans begins the section on Holy Orders by talking about the importance of touch, the laying on of hands, as the ancient practice of commissioning for ministry. I remember talking about the importance of touch during my Clinical Pastoral Education experience where seminarians learn to provide pastoral care in a clinical setting such as a hospital or nursing home. We had to balance good hygienic practices with the residents’ obvious need for physical contact. And I still remember the weight of those hands on my head at my ordination, feeling the weight of the office that was bestowed on me.

I can’t help but think about touch and ministry when we lay hands on babies at baptism and on young people as the make affirmation of that same baptism during the rite of Confirmation. Furthermore, our denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, encourages us through its tag line, “God’s work, our hands.” Lastly, I encourage Confirmands to think about all of us being called to ministry when they write their Faith Statement Paper by asking them, “At this point in your life, what is God calling you to do and how will you serve God and neighbor through this vocation?” Evans notes, though, the dark side to this all: one way or another our hands will be used, but will it be to hurt or heal?

In her effort to find church, Evans talks about an attempt to build the kind of church she and other like her desired. Though it didn’t end well, she at least felt for the first time that she was an asset to the church instead of a liability. She also learned that ministry is not perfectly scripted and that it often occurs in our “epic failures.” She goes on to quote Ian Morgan Cron: “All ministry begins at the ragged edges of our own pain.”

As I thought about this quote, I thought about Kim and Mike. Mike was diagnosed with cancer when they were both approaching their 50s. Mike did all right for a while, but ultimately died. A few months later, Kim told me she knew God was going to use her for something though she didn’t know what. She told me how because of caring for Mike she was more aware of and sensitive to the difficulties of others and was better equipped to enter their suffering. Kim and I started a grief support group and led a couple of “Blue Christmas” worship services. But Kim also went back to school to earn a counseling degree and switched careers. Her ministry began at the “ragged edges of her pain.”

Evans notes that the greatest tragedy in the church is to think the difference between laity and clergy is bigger than it is, to miss the depth of our calling because we think ministry is something others do. Yet, in Romans Paul reminds us that God has given all of us gifts for ministry and in 1 Peter the writer calls us all members of a royal priesthood. As we know too well, ministry is not easy. It is one thing to pick up a hammer for Habitat or donate money to a worthy cause. But it’s quite another when are called to hard choices within our professional lives, to fudge the financials as an accountant, to overcharge a customer, or to cheat on a test. It is hard to sit with someone we don’t know and wouldn’t normally associate with.

But these are holy callings we have, as Barbara Brown Taylor notes: “To be a priest is to know that things are not as they should be and yet to care for them as the way they are.” Ultimately, Evans says, God calls each of us to a purpose both beneath and beyond natural ourselves. She uses the images of basin and towel from the biblical story where Jesus washes his disciples’ feet. In doing so, she poses some challenging questions, not the least of which is, as people who follow a guy whose three-year ministry was cut short by his crucifixion, who emptied himself, should we lead from weakness every bit as much as our strengths?

Where has God touched you and called you? Where in your daily life is God inviting you to serve God and neighbor? What are the ragged edges of your pain that may be using for ministry? What is your call story? Amen.

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