2 Lent

 

March 5, 2023

 

Genesis 12:1-4a; John 3.1-7

 

+ Yesterday your Rector and your Deacon were off doing their duty to the Diocese.

 

We were both at All Saints in Valley City at the Commission on Ministry meeting.

 

Now, I love being on COM.

 

As many of you know, I was Chair of COM many years ago.

 

And I have always been honored to serve on that Commission.

 

Why?

 

Because I have a passion for ministry.

 

I love talking about ministry, helping others with their vocation to ministry, building up ministry in this diocese.

 

Now, many people think the Commission on Ministry is only about issues such as approving people to go forward into the ordained ministries of the Diaconate and Priesthood.

 

And a lot of what we do is just that.

 

We discuss canons regarding ordination.

 

We interview people who might have a calling to be ordained ministers.

 

But…as Deacon John can testify, I regularly—and by regularly, I mean almost every meeting—make a point of reminding the COM that it is not our job to ordain everyone who comes before the COM.

 

I am very vocal about the fact that ministry is more than just ordained ministry.

 

Ministry is more than just Priests and Deacons and Bishops.

 

Ministry is also lay people, and lay leaders.

 

And our job on the COM is as much about lay ministry as it is about ordained ministry.

 

And I very regularly caution us from ordaining all of our lay leaders in this diocese which, in the past, seemed to have been the trend.

 

Each of you are doing ministry in your own ways as well.

 

But don’t take my word for it.

 

Let’s take a look at our trusty Catechism.

 

Let’s take out our Books of Common Prayer and let’s take a look way in the back.

 

We’re going to page 855

 

And there, under the section called “The Ministry,” we find this:

 

 

The Ministry

Q.	Who are the ministers of the Church?
A.	The ministers of the Church are lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons.
Q.	What is the ministry of the laity?
A.	The ministry of lay persons is to represent Christ and his Church; to bear witness to him wherever they may be; and, according to the gifts given them, to carry on Christ's work of reconciliation in the world; and to take their place in the life, worship, and governance of the Church.
	Then we get questions on the ministries of Bishops, Priests and Deacon.   Finally, we get his question:
Q.	What is the duty of all Christians?
A.	The duty of all Christians is to follow Christ; to come together week by week for corporate worship; and to work, pray, and give for the spread of the kingdom of God.

 

So, when we look long and hard at what ministry is,, we need to remember something.

 

Our ministry together is not just in what we do.

 

It is in who we are.

 

Our ministry is often a ministry of who we are.

 

Of our personalities.

 

Of bearing witness

 

Of representing Christ---by not only our words, but by our actions as well.

 

Of the person that God has created, even in our very brokenness.

 

It’s all bound up very tightly together.

 

And if each of us listens, if each of strains our spiritual ears and hearts toward God, we can hear that calling, deep in our hearts.

 

We can find that God is calling us to the ministry of our day-to-day lives, the ministry of the person God has formed us to be, the ministry to serve others in the way God sees fit.

 

In our reading from the Hebrew Bible this morning, we find a clear call from God to Abram.

 

“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to a land that I will show you.”

 

Essentially this is the call to all of us who are in ministry.

 

God calls to us wherever we may be and when that happens, we must heed that call.

 

We must step out from our comfortable places, and we must step out into our service to others even if that means going to those people in strange and alien places.

 

And sometimes when we step into those uncomfortable places, we are made all the more aware of our own brokenness—we become even more vulnerable.

 

But that’s just a simple fact in ministry: when God calls, God calls heedless of our brokenness.

 

In fact, God calls us knowing full well our brokenness.

 

And—and I hope this isn’t news to anyone here this morning—God uses our brokenness.

 

God can truly work through our brokenness and use our fractured selves in reaching out to other fractured people.

 

For too many people our brokenness divides us.

 

It separates us.

 

It isolates us.

 

It prevents us from moving forward in our lives and in ministries.

 

I see this all the time in the world and in the Church.

 

Yesterday at the Commission on Ministry, our meeting for a while turned into a much-needed therapy session.

 

We talked for a bit about our divisions in this Diocese—and why we have been divided.

 

We talked about the pain we have each endured in the past.

 

And, in the midst of it all, I did something I did not expect to do.

 

I apologized.

 

I apologized to those who I had not long ago thought were continuing to the divisions and pain by their silence, by what I believed to be their shunning.

 

I apologized when I realized that they had been hurt and humiliated and treated as less then who they are by past leadership.

 

This was an example to me of the damage our brokenness can do .

 

Our brokenness can truly become a kind of self-condemnation.

 

It becomes the open wound we must carry with us—allowed by us to stink and fester.

 

But when we can use our brokenness to reach out in love, when we allow God to use our brokenness, it is no longer a curse and a condemnation.

 

Our brokenness becomes a fruitful means for ministry.

 

It becomes a means for renewal and rebirth.

 

It becomes the basis for ministry—for reaching out and helping those who are broken and in need around us.

 

In our Gospel reading for today we get that all-too-familiar bit of scripture.

 

“For God so loved the world that [God] gave [God’s] only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”

 

How many times have heard this scripture bantered about?

 

We have heard that scripture so often in our lives, we almost don’t realize what it’s really saying.

 

I actually love preaching on this scripture.

 

I love to for one simple reason:

 

The message is so basic, so straightforward.

 

And it has gotten lost over time.

 

God so loved the world---

 

The world here is you.

 

The world here is me.

 

The world here is us.

 

God so loved us.

 

God loves us.

 

Plain and simple.  

 

How do we respond to that love?

 

We respond to it by following Jesus.  

 

And if we do, Jesus will lead us to eternal life, to the same eternal life he himself received from God.

 

Each of us is called.

 

Each of us has been issued a call from God to serve.

 

It might not have been a dramatic calling—an overwhelming sense of the Presence of God in our lives that motivates us to go and follow Jesus.

 

But each Sunday we receive the invitation.

 

Each time we gather at this altar to celebrate the Eucharist, we are, essentially, called to then go out, refreshed and renewed in our broken selves by this broken Body of Jesus, to serve the broken people of God.

 

We are called to go out and minister, not only by preaching and proclaiming with words, but by who we are, by our very lives and examples.

 

So, let us heed the call of God.

 

Let us do as Abram did in our reading from Genesis did today.

 

“Abram went, as the Lord told him…”

 

Let us, as well, go as God has told us.

 

Let us go knowing full well that heeding God’s call and doing what God calls us to do may mean leaving our country and our kindred and our house—in essence, everything we find comfortable and safe—and going to a foreign place—a place that may be frightening.

 

And going will be doubly frightening when we know we go as imperfect human beings—as people broken and vulnerable.

 

But let us also go, sure in our calling from God.

 

Let us go sure that God has blessed each of us, even in our brokenness.

 

Let us go knowing that God loves us, because we too love.

 

Let us go knowing that God will use the cracks and fractures within us, as always, for good.

 

And let us go knowing God will make us whole again in our eternal life.

 

God will make us a blessing to others and God will “bless those who bless us.”

 

What more can we possibly ask of the ministry God has called us to carry out?