The Feast of St. Matthias
Ordination of Harvey Roberts to the Diaconate
Acts 1:15-26; Philippians 3:13-21; John 15:1, 6-16
The well-known saying goes that the
deacon is called to stand between the church and the world, with one foot in
each, opening one to the other. When I hear this description, I automatically picture
a towering figure with a stole flung rakishly across one shoulder. He is energetically
straddling the church threshold, where the wide red doors are thrown back like
Superman’s cape. This heroic figure blows the fresh air of change into the
stuffy building, and with a long determined arm directs the gaze of
parishioners out into a suffering world.
The reality of the diaconate, however,
seems much more nuanced, and certainly less visibly heroic than this figure. Did
you know that the origin of the word, diakonos,
or servant, comes from the Greek roots “through the dust, through the grit?”[1]
Indeed, my non-Episcopal friends often wonder about this gritty vocation. “You
mean, they don’t get paid for their time at all?” they exclaim. “Deacons really
choose to give up their weekends or their precious Golden Years to work with
the marginalized? They really might have to leave their parishes to go wherever the bishop sends them? And the
training process takes how long?!”
People gasp and shake their heads at such a countercultural undertaking.
In
this sense, the feast day of the apostle Matthias is an apt choice for a
diaconal ordination. Faithful Matthias, merely one of Jesus’ many early
followers, is mentioned only this one time in scripture. There is no word of
him before or after he is snatched out of obscurity by the prayerful casting of
lots. Unlike Peter or James or John, he is the invisible apostle, acting only
behind the scenes as Christ’s hands and feet. Rather than standing in
prominence, he works to build Christian community only as part of a team—a team
sent out into gritty, unknown corners of the earth to open pathways for God’s
love.
How
do we reconcile a humble call to trace love through the dust, to work quietly
in community with others, with the image of the lone deacon standing boldly and
publically in the doorway?
There’s
no denying that the diaconate is by nature a public calling. In a few minutes,
Bishop Terry will charge Harvey: “At all times, your life
and teaching are to show Christ’s people that in serving the helpless
they are serving Christ himself.” To live as a public example sounds like
a daunting thing. But listen to what Paul says in our lesson from Philippians.
He doesn’t shy away from setting himself as an example. “Brothers and sisters,
join in imitating me” he enjoins them. “Observe those who live according to the
example you have in us.” Mold your lives according to the way that my followers
and I do things, not the way of all those other ungodly folks.
That
might sound more than a bit arrogant, except that right before these words, Paul
has just written about his own suffering for the Gospel, about his own
paradoxical transformation from living for gain, to living for loss. He writes how
he yearns to become like Christ in his death, so that he might truly live. And
before that, Paul recites the beautiful hymn of kenosis, of Almighty God emptying himself in the form of a slave,
of God humbling himself unto a seemingly foolish death on the cross. Paul might
exhort us to imitate him, but it is an imitation of extreme humility that he is
calling for. Rowan Williams calls it mirroring God, “playing back,” in our own ways, God’s
“self-sharing, self-losing care and compassion.”[2] The good news is that we
are called not as perfect examples, but as broken examples, mirroring a broken
world, mirroring a God whose broken love makes all brokenness whole.
Yes,
when I think of you as a deacon in the doorway, Harvey, I think of that Kyrie
that you used to sing every Lent, the one that everyone at St Thomas calls,
“Harvey’s Kyrie.” I can see you at the church threshold in your alb and stole,
except you are sitting down on a folding chair, with your guitar across your
knees. A strange and urgent grittiness enters your usually melodic voice, as
your words and tone mirror all of the world’s pain, and your own, returning
again and again to that cry of Kyrie
Eleison, Lord Have Mercy, that anguished and prayerful cry of compassion that
summons us all to kneel together before our crucified Lord.
Diaconal
service, however, is not just about pain. In our epistle reading, Paul’s
witness is also strangely filled with joy. How can that be? Because Paul knows
that he lives in the middle of the story—in the middle of a story that ends in divine
victory and delight. He can be joyful, because he clings neither to the painful
past nor to the painful present. He puts his energy into “what lies ahead.”
“Hold fast,” “strain forward,” he advises. Paul sees the Christian as standing
in a crucial time, in between the struggle that we know, and the glory that is
coming.
We’ve
been talking a lot about persistence these days in the public square, but we
often forget to link it to joy. As we fight injustice and hold fast to what is
right, our Easter hope can season our persistence, flavoring it with the joy
that comes only from a life immersed in the story of God’s love in Christ.
“Abide in his love,” writes John, “that my joy may be in you, and that your joy
may be complete.”
As
I look at the work of the deacons in our diocese, at the places into which they
lead us in service, I admire their hold on hope, their persistence for the
good. In prisons, in protests, in hospitals, in hungry places, in desperate
homes, and on forsaken streets, they are somehow able to hold fast to Easter hope,
reflecting it around them in the form of Christian joy. They know how to look
beyond outward appearance and to read the human soul. They draw the joy out of
others, just as they know how to read and draw out their sorrow.
I
saw that gift recently in a Presbyterian deacon, too, a young woman with Downs’
syndrome who stood up to speak at the funeral of her friend. At this funeral,
as in all of her interactions, her “weakness” allowed her to identify and echo
both the sorrow of the grieving, and the joy of life-giving love. Her simple
words bubbled with strength, with joyful persistence, and with loving hope,
pulling all of us along with her to the in-breaking presence of “what lies
ahead.” Her congregation had appointed her deacon because of the strength of
her gift, that gift that the world sees as deficiency. You, too, Harvey, have
learned the hard lessons of persistence through suffering, and I have heard how
you can sing Easter Alleluia’s. Remember to lead us in those Alleluia’s as you
stand on the threshold.
Deacons
are going to be busy in the years ahead, I believe, busy leading us into a
compassionate love that the world so desperately needs. As struggling parishes
turn inward, as fearful peoples reject the Other, as nations look toward self-protection,
we need deacons on the threshold. We need deacons who can show us how to reach
out to care for one another as individuals and to care for a whole world made
up of equally beloved members of God’s family. We will need deacons who have
the persistence and the vision and the joy to show us how to mirror God’s love
for every human being, rejecting all of the exclusive tribalisms that threaten
God’s creation.
Right
before I was ordained to the transitional diaconate, I ran into one of my
dearest college advisors, a wise Episcopal priest now in his nineties. I proudly
announced to him that this little Presbyterian from my Sewanee days was finally
about to be ordained in the Episcopal Church. I was expecting hearty
congratulations. Instead, he took my hand and looked gravely into my eyes. “You
are courageous,” he said quietly, “to throw your lot in with the Church in
these difficult days…” adding quickly, “But you will be a blessing.” I was
confused and clueless. I didn’t yet know the courage that would be required.
Tonight,
Harvey, I say the same to you. We, your community of friends in Christ, have
seen your courage and your persistent devotion to God’s love for all people.
The threshold is a strange, privileged, and dangerous place to stand, but I
know that we will be blessed by your presence there.
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