Sermons

Sermon preached by The Reverend Canon Michael Barlowe

Preached by The Reverend Canon Michael Barlowe on Silver Jubilee of his Ordination to the Sacred Priesthood (Sunday, December 14, 2008)

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light”
John 1: 6-8a

In the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

There are many things I recall – with great clarity – about December 14, 1983. I remember the arrival of my mother, aunt, and sister, and her unexpected – but appreciated – ordination gift of an electric can-opener. I remember Paul Burrows (who – though he had a full head of hair – was as handsome as he is now) – I remember Paul resplendent in the historic Anglican Communion Cope, loaned by General Seminary for the occasion, and bearing the prototype of the now-familiar Anglican Compass Rose. I remember my friend and mentor, Father Fred Hill, arriving with a retinue of men dressed in black – one in a moiré silk – and disembarking from a black limousine, dispatched to deepest darkest suburban New Jersey from the civilization of Manhattan. I remember the spirit-charged anticipation, the electricity of the liturgy, Palestrina energetically sung by a choir of men and boys, Nashdom incense invading a protestant stronghold, and George Phelps Mellick Belshaw, by divine providence Bishop of the Church and acting for Bishop Paul Moore and the people of the Diocese of New York. I remember, and cherish, all these things. But perhaps most of all, I remember the mud.

You see, it had been raining for what seemed like 40 days and 40 nights, and the backyard of the curate’s house – my house – was connected to the church property by a quarter-acre of mud. And, as is the nature of mud, it seemed to get in and on everything: Mud miring the mechanism of the electric can-opener, tarnishing the golden threads of the Anglican Communion Cope, soiling the silk of Father Hill’s protégé, dirtying the limousine’s carpet, and, predictably, creating material for endless jokes about muddy backyards being New Jersey spas.

At the time, I found the mud pretty depressing, a spoiler to what I wanted to be a perfect day. But as I have recalled that day, in anticipation of my silver jubilee, I have realized that “mud” could be a rather salutary consideration on the day of a priest’s ordination. After all, Mud, it may be reasonably argued, is the stuff out of which God created heaven and earth, you and me. Mud was also a vehicle for Jesus’ ministry, as in the healing of the man born blind. And I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to imagine that the dust of our mortality, epitomized in the burial office’s evocative “dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” mixes with the water of baptism, and becomes transformed by God into eternal life. Mud: a sign of creation, of sacramental healing, of resurrection – and perhaps a good symbol for priesthood as well.

It’s certain that 25 years ago I wouldn’t have considered mud such an appropriate simile. Then, the priesthood seemed to me a rarified state: a pure, sacral, ontological shift that separated and ordered me from among the people of God into a discrete, disciplined, even holy caste.

Well, I was only 27 years old...

And that, of course, was before the reality of what was to happen to me: before some church leaders tried to get rid of me for opening the parish to the largely-poor, largely African-American community that surrounded our church; before I was picketed by Fred Phelps and his family on a grey day in Des Moines, for the audacity of being myself; and before discovering that becoming a priest meant that one’s clothes, work habits, friends, vacation plans, and choices from the menu are often fodder for public discourse.

And that, of course, was before I ever held a child in my arms, and poured water over her, making her a part of the Body of Christ; before I found words from some internal well of grace that surprised me, even while they comforted the man whose life-long partner had just died an untimely death; and before discovering that the privilege of celebrating the holy Eucharist continually infuses me with the passion of Christ and in the passion Christ has for his people.

In the mud of my backyard, my naïve desire for the perfect ordination as antecedent to the perfect priesthood began to die, and to be reborn into something real and lasting: the muddy, messy but altogether wonderful life to which God has called me, and through which God has blessed me for twenty-five years. And throughout those twenty-five years, I have discovered that – far from being handicaps – the imperfections of life, and the human imperfections particularized in me, have often been the vehicle through which God has most effectively used me.

For as any priest eventually discovers, being in touch with our humanity is the essential asset in the priestly work of the Lord. Much about our work as priests is so awe-inspiring, so intimate, and, yes, so holy, that our only-too-human characteristics give us a needed perspective, the grounding we need to be faithful ministers of Word and Sacrament.

For as high a calling as the priesthood is, we are nothing but God’s servants, dependent on God for any authority we may have. And the only real authority we have is the power that comes from the One who called us. To paraphrase the epigram with which I began this sermon: We come as witnesses to testify to the Light, so that all might believe. But we ourselves are not the light.

That’s not to say that priests are not tempted to think of ourselves in other ways. Many people expect their priests to be perfect, and it is easy to begin believing that since we know we aren’t perfect, we are failures. Or, even worse, it can be tempting to ignore our imperfections, to begin believing we are perfect, and so to commit that most priestly of sins, the confusion of our human minds with the mind of God. Because priests often operate in that nexus of the sacred and profane, we can become disoriented, and begin grasping for human power instead of the power of the Cross.

Priests are not perfect, nor divine, nor powerful. We are human beings, called by God to a particular vocation, touched by God to minister with authority, wounded by God to be the healer and priest of God’s people. Priests are human. That may sound like an excuse for our failures. But I believe that it is also our gift, for it is really the only thing we can offer to God; our human strengths and weaknesses, our talents and attempts, our accomplishments and our failures are all we have to give to the Lord. And if we give ourselves to God, God gives back to us humanity transformed by divine grace.

And that self-giving, I believe, is what lies at the heart of the priesthood. For the center of the priesthood is the sacrifice of the mass, the remembrance, the anamnesis, of the sacrifice of Christ, the perfect offering of One life that is given back by God for the salvation of the world. This identification alone makes the priesthood a high calling, indeed. But it is also a most humbling one. For in a very real sense, a priest is called to give his life for God’s people, a living sacrifice set apart to display Jesus Christ, to enable God’s people for ministry, and to involve the Church in the salvation of the world through her Lord.

Perhaps one of the reasons I love the season of Advent is that, in a sense, Advent is the most priestly of seasons. For, just as Advent is about preparation, and particularly for the celebration of the Incarnation, a priest’s ministry is always about that same preparation: to prepare God’s people and the world for the experience of the Incarnate Christ, through the cure of souls in the heights and depths of life; through blessing the profane and absolving the sinful by recalling holiness and wholeness; and most particularly, through offering bread and wine in the sacrifice of the mass. For it is in offering that sacrifice, that we and all God’s people are mystically joined to the incarnate Word.

Catholics believe that holy orders are not just a good thing for the church; we believe they are part of the essence of the Church, part of the essential life and ministry we are called to live until Christ comes again. So, this Advent, I ask your prayers for the priests of the Church, with all our foibles, all our shortcomings, and in all our humanity. We need your prayers, for after all, Priests are not the light, but we bear witness to the light, even in the depths of the mud. And for such undeserved blessings, so abundantly given me over twenty-five years, I say, Deo gratias. Amen.