Diocesan Ordination 20061125

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Organ music from Holy Trinity Cathedral,
played by
Eugene Lavery,
Assistant Organist

The Diocesan Ordination Sermon 2006

25th Nov 2006
The Rt Rev’d Richard Randerson, Dean and Assistant Bishop of Auckland

Much has changed since I was ordained deacon 42 years ago in St Mary’s Cathedral when it was across the road. Photos from that time show serious-looking young men in black cassocks at St John’s College, and later at ordination in white albs and red stoles. They were supported not by wives and children but by their parents, and they were headed for 40 years of full-time parish ministry.

Then, as an examining chaplain, I conducted the retreat and preached at the annual ordination service in 1977. What was most significant about that event was that it was the first time women were ordained to the priesthood in this diocese, and we continue to rejoice at the richness this has brought to the Church’s ministry. Now today in a scene so different from the past we celebrate the diverse array of potential clergy – stipendiary and non-stipendiary, male and female; younger and older. Ministry has evolved to meet the needs of new situations, and we thank God for it.

But in every age the fundamentals of ministry remain the same. These last three days on retreat the 19 of us have considered those fundamentals, as set out in the Scriptures, the ordinal, the liturgy, and as worked out in our own lives and in the Church.

Calling: we read Isaiah 6 and reflected on Isaiah’s call – the vision, the sense of unworthiness, the forgiveness and the calling. Let’s note today that God’s call is not just to the ordained, but God speaks to each one of us as part of a royal priesthood by virtue of our baptism. Dag Hammarskjold, a previous General Secretary to the United Nations, spoke of his own calling in these words:

I don’t know who or what put the question. I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone, or Something, and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, has a goal.

So God’s call to each one of us provides us with meaning and purpose in living.

To the Ends of the Earth: From Isaiah 49 we hear the mandate to the prophet to be a light to the nations, that God’s salvation may reach to the end of the earth. J. Philip Newell, in his book on Celtic spirituality, Listening for the Heartbeat of God, laments the Church’s preoccupation with its own life. He writes:

Could the Church not redefine its boundaries? Instead of being shut off behind its four walls, upholding a spirituality that too often looks away from life, could it not transform itself into a kind of side chapel for the world? Our churches might then become places where we could more easily step into and out of daily life and be reminded that the real cathedral of God is the whole of creation.

In times of hardship: But ministry has its times of black despair. Isaiah records that he has laboured in vain, and exhausted himself for nothing (49.4). In many ways ministry was much easier 50 years ago when church-going was more of a tradition. The clergy had to be good at their jobs but at least you didn’t have to drum up the business like we do today. We often put in huge amounts of work for quite small results. We also live in an environment where public sentiment is often very anti-church. I have taken the Listener to task this week for its editorial noting the absence of religious figures from its annual list of New Zealand’s 50 Most Powerful People. Given the media’s penchant to deal with religion in categories of right-wing extremism, fundamentalist beliefs and Sunday School caricatures, I suggested this result is quite unsurprising.

And yet I sense a turning of the tide. There is a renewed interest in spirituality. And so St Paul’s words (2 Cor 4. 8-10) are entirely fitting:

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be visible in our bodies.

Servant Leadership: In today’s Gospel (Matthew 20.20-28), the mother of James and John comes asking Jesus if her two boys could sit one on his right hand, and the other on his left, when he comes into his kingdom. Jesus replies that while the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over their subjects, it will not be so among his followers: whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave. Monica Furlong writes:

I am clear what I want of the clergy. I want them to be people who by their own happiness and contentment challenge my ideas about status, success and money, and so teach me how to live independently of such drugs. I want them to be people who have faced loneliness and discovered how fruitful it is, and I want them to be people who have faced the problem of prayer. I want them to be people who can sit still without feeling guilty and from whom I can learn some kind of tranquillity.

And so today we are reminded, both lay and ordained, that God’s call to each of us is both unique and personal, and that God calls us to proclaim a Gospel designed to reach throughout the world around us. We are called to be strong in times of despair, and to serve in the manner of Jesus. We remember the words of Paul that because it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. We hold a treasure in clay jars so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us (2 Cor 4.1, 7). And we remember Jesus’ words that the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Matt. 20.28).

To those of you being ordained deacon or priest today, may God bless you in this new stage of a lifelong discipleship. And may we who continue in ministry, whether by virtue of baptism or ordination, be renewed today in our calling, that together with these, our brothers and sisters, we may take the good news of Jesus to the ends of the earth.