June 3, 2016, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral
Back then we had a full year transitional diaconate. I
served at St. Peter’s in Greenville with the vocational deacon Steve
McDonald. One of the problems with a long diaconate is that people get
impatient with your not being able to do priestly things.
This one time I grew impatient myself and said, “I can’t do
that, I’m just a deacon.”
Well Steve McDonald didn’t appreciate that, and what made things
worse was that someone started making T-shirts that said “I’m just a deacon." Steve and I wore them with pride.
Yep, that pretty much set the tone for my whole career, one
long humorous lesson in humility, the first in a long line of T-shirts that are
best forgotten, but worn with pride.
Steve had a thing about serving the poor, I did too, so we
hit it off really well. He had me working with the homeless on my days off,
re-meeting old friends it turns out, from elementary through high school, whose
lives had been one long rocky road.
One thing I have noticed is that there are always reasons
not to be present with the poor. We have our reasons and logic that
at the end of the day always explain away clergy being present to the
poor.
I don’t have much advice about ordained ministry, but I
think the first little bit of my not much advice is to beware of flawed
logic that justifies deacons not knowing the names and faces of the poor, and
the poor not knowing the names and faces of the clergy who belong to them.
I think the second bit of flawed logic is that the
transitional diaconate is only transitional. I don’t think we lose the
diaconate when we are ordained priests. The vision for ordained ministry is greater than the false
logic of necessity that all too often has very good reasons for forsaking the
personal presence of clergy being with and for the poor. I think this
happens because our vision from ministry usually revolves around institutional
maintenance, rather than a vision that comes from somewhere else, or rather
someone else.
And that brings us to what George H.W. Bush called “the
vision thing."
“Write the vision” from Habakkuk or “without a vision the
people perish” from Proverbs, these are about visions of God being present in
the world, but they are often relegated to institutional shopping lists,
visionless visions that are quickly forsaken and forgotten. It is so easy
to become cynical about the vision thing. But the vision thing is for real, a vision of God present
and active in the world, it is the only thing that can rescue us from reducing
faith to mere institutional and ideological shopping lists.
Why do we so often take God out of the vision thing - Or the fullness of the vision of God that is Jesus, the wisdom and the word of
God incarnate, the fullness that brings life back to our myopic humanity?
I’ve been spending time with St. Irenaeus over the past
several years. Usually he is attributed as saying that “the glory of God
is a human being fully alive." As cool as that is, his intention is
something else. It was actually about the vision thing. What Irenaeus intended goes more like this, “The Glory of
God is the living man, Jesus, and the life of humanity is beholding that vision
of God.”
It was the climax of Irenaeus’ case for God being made known
in many ways that sustain life, but especially in Jesus. The Gnostics didn’t appreciate God being so mixed up with
things and so super-generously known in the messiness of life. That is
why the heretics left the Church, they weren’t kicked out, they left because
the Church was too messy, not spiritual enough, not pure enough, while
Irenaeus on the other hand found the glory of God in all the imperfection and
messiness of the humanity of the Church. God’s glory is messy.
The vision of God’s glory vivifies (a really cool word that
Irenaeus liked to use) humanity and all creation. My last little bit of
not much advice is to always seek the vision of that particular and messy
glory, don’t let it be relegated, deleted or reasoned away. There will
always be new ideas, processes and techniques but they only work if they are
filled with the vision of the humanity of Jesus who is God’s glory and life
itself.
Be filled with that vision of God, the glory that is among
us as one who serves, whose greatness is on a cross, that image, that icon of
God.
Be fully alive with that vision of messy glory, may your
eyes be filled, may your eyes grow wider and wider with beholding.
Maybe someone will put it on a T-shirt?
