Sermon for the Ordination of Deacons

I once came across a book in a library which convinced me that there are clerical fashions that are as changeable in their own way as the width of flares on trousers. It was called “Advice for young clergy” and it was published in 1870 by the Bishop of Limerick. It was a best seller in the Church of Ireland until oh, at least 1871. It was full of lots of practical advice, such as this, about pastoral visits  “You may dismount your horse at any time, but do not stable it until invited” and this, about preaching, “ Failing all else, always be possessed of one sound commentary on the Epistle to the Romans”.  But there are three things, he suggests, that young clergy should cultivate above all.  The first is a very good hat, for dignity, the second is a melodious voice, so you do not cause offense to your congregation, and the third is gout, so you’ll never be without an anxious expression.

Dignity, inoffensiveness, and anxiety. Far be it from me to doubt the wisdom of bishops, even dead Irish ones, but Meg and Katrina, as you’re ordained to the diaconate today, I’d like to suggest there are very good reasons not to strive for any of these virtues.

The first virtue to avoid is dignity. The days are long gone, thank God, when there was any kind of inherent status in the office of a deacon or a priest, or certainly any that a good hat would help you with. The English word ‘minister’ comes from a root which means small and insignificant. We are, quite literally, mini people in the scheme of things, and smallness and weakness is our stock in trade. The word that St Paul uses most often for a deacon means a servant, or an attendant, and it’s very closely associated with the word that means dusty from running. A deacon should be a person who is so anxious to wait upon God that they run to do God’s will, and they get sweaty and covered in filth in the process.

Another word that St Paul uses for minister, though very rarely, means a slave, a rower on a galley, out of sight in the dark in the second tier of rowers down. A galley slave works away unseen and unseeing, toiling away together in time with all the other slaves on the ship. They trust that all their efforts will take people to a new land, even if they don’t get to see it for themselves. That's the incredible privilege of our ministry. Our role is to take people by our service, by prayer, by word and sacrament to another place. There’s very little room left for dignity if we’re doing that properly.

The second virtue the book recommends is inoffensiveness Now, I’m not suggesting you go out of your way to insult people – just beware of the terrible oppressive vice of Christian niceness. God preserve us from cardboard cut-out clergy who smile slightly too much to be convincing, and are just a little more dull and two dimensional than the rest of the world. There is a suspicion in the culture we’re a part of that once you are ordained you immediately turn into Rowan Atkinson in Four Weddings and a funeral. There’s a strangely consistent picture of clergy painted in TV and film. They are usually rather kindly, permanently baffled and experts in odd and unworldly things like badgers or Greek pots. I have forgotten most of Dick Emery’s characters, but not the Vicar with his huge teeth and vast threatening smile. These are not the kind of people you want to get stuck next to in a long haul flight.

And it affects our mission. If we are to be authentic ministers of the Gospel, we have to be people who become more richly ourselves by experiencing the extravagant ordinariness of God’s grace. There is a natural, unfussy, unselfconscious kind of holiness which allows us to become ourselves and to appreciate each other more fully. It allows us to see what we might not otherwise see of the sheer rich variety of God’s creation, because we know that at some level are all inexorably the same. When the Church absorbs this atmosphere of rich holiness, we can find in our neighbours and ourselves just a hint more quirkiness and individuality than we might otherwise be aware of.  

The last virtue that we should avoid is a kind of pained anxiety to do the right thing.  Many of us labour under the illusion that ministry is one of the helping professions. We imagine that the church is sustained by the services it provides or the amount of fellowship and good feeling in the congregation, and somehow our job is to struggle to maintain it. If there is no sense of purpose other than meeting people’s needs, there is no possible way to limit what people demand of you in ministry, those demands become voracious and all-consuming. Ministry is trivialised when it becomes solely about the meeting of needs.

Sometimes the solution that is suggested is that clergy should develop more self-esteem, learn to say no, demand a day off – in brief, to become as self-centred as the rest of the culture around us. We live in a society which tends to respond to lack of meaning by telling people they will feel better if they more fully develop their egos, and sometimes that leaks over into the church as well. It might be temporarily satisfying, but ultimately its careful self-preservation is not what we’re about. The church is much more than an economy of self-fulfillment.

The acid test for our entire ministry is the church at worship. In our worship, we retell and are held accountable to the story of what God is doing with us in Christ. All our ministry can be evaluated by liturgical criteria: How well does what we’re doing enable people to be with God?  Ministers of the Gospel who determine to speak to truth, to reprove, to correct, to witness, to interpret, to remember and retell God’s story – can expect to be lonely occasionally. But it’s a loneliness of  unshowy faithfulness rather than a loneliness produced by being overly accessible.

So what, in the end is ministry about? A few verses after the end of this evening’s Gospel reading, Pilate asks a question that can shape the whole direction of our ministry for us, if only we will allow it. The scene is the most dramatic political confrontation in scripture. Pilate has interrogated Jesus; he will go on to declare him innocent three times, but to satisfy the relentless baying mob, he will have him flogged and put to death anyway .  But before he does Pilate asks a single, incriminating question. “What is truth?” he muses but he dare not stay still long enough to hear the answer.

Our basic vocation as Christians – of which our vocation as clergy is only ever an addition and a refinement – is to bear witness to the truth. It is as simple as that. Our job is to give evidence for God, to make God believable in how we live and how we die. We give thanks that God in Christ has made himself credible; credible in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus; credible in the lives of those in whom Jesus has come alive. And we give thanks for Meg and Katrina who are offering themselves for this terrible, relentless, joyful, privileged, overwhelming ministry.

In the name of Christ. Amen.