Wednesday, June 8, 2016

The Vision Thing

a sermon by The Rev. Jack Hardaway, Rector, Grace Episcopal Church, Anderson, SC at the ordination to the transitional diaconate of Jimmy Hartley, Kristen Pitts and Jane-Allison Wiggin
June 3, 2016, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral


So twenty one years ago I sat right where you are and listened to Dr. Don Armentrout preach.  Actually, I don’t remember where I was sitting, or much about the sermon. I think it had something to do William Porcher Dubose and the Chalcedonian definition and a vision for ministry, I could be wrong about that.

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?

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