Ordination to the Priesthood-- Sarah Moses

Sarah Moses ordination to the priesthood May 2, 2015 When I was about to be ordained, I was given this stole. It belonged to my paternal grandfather, a United Methodist elder who died before I went to seminary. This was the last stole the family had left of Pop’s (having already given away all his vestments and library), and it was clearly in a state of disrepair. My grandmother and my aunt apologized as they gave it to me, saying they hoped it could be cleaned or restored so that I could wear it. And I put it in a box in the top of a closet and forgot about it, regretful that I didn’t have a better token of his long, faithful ministry to carry with me into my bright, shiny new one. That was 11 years ago. Today is the first time that I have ever worn my grandfather’s stole. What changed, you may wonder? I’ve been reading a book these past couple of weeks. It’s by Episcopal priest and scholar William Countryman and it’s called, Living on the Border of the Holy: Renewing the Priesthood of All. In this book, Countryman writes about the priesthood of all believers, including both the lay and the ordained in his consideration, and he writes about how all of us are called to live our lives “on the border of the holy.” I want to share with you a couple of paragraphs that Countryman has written. “What, then, is priestly ministry? It is the ministry that introduces us to arcane—hidden things, secrets. In one sense, priestly ministry is the most ordinary thing imaginable. All our lives, we are repeatedly in the position of finding, revealing, explaining, and teaching—or conversely, of being led, taught, and illuminated. Everyone is the priest of a mystery that someone else does not know: how to construct a budget, how to maneuver through the politics of the workplace, how to roast a turkey, how to win the affections of the boy or girl to whom one is attracted. The experience is so common that much of the time, we do not notice it at all. We are all constantly serving others as priests of mysteries known to us and not to them. And we are constantly being served by those who know what we do not. “Some human work is priestly in a very obvious way: teaching, parenting, mentoring, coaching, the performing arts, the arts of statecraft….Other tasks involve a voyage into the unknown in order to bring back news for priestly use. Prayer is like this…Scientific research….so is the work of creative artists and all serious thinkers. But even in the most daily of our daily routines, the process of priestly service never ceases…We are constantly standing alongside someone else, giving or receiving some new understanding of the world before us…To be human means to be engaged in priestly discourse—the unveiling of secrets.” When I think of my own priestly ministry, I think most about the times that the Holy has been revealed to me—through scripture, through prayer, through the sacraments, but also through my husband and children and through glimpses into the lives and stories of others, both inside and outside of the churches I have served. We are all called to this—the paying attention to, being open to the revelation of the Holy in our lives and then sharing that with others, teaching them. That is what we mean when we talk about the priesthood of all believers. That is what we are called to in and through our baptism. We, ordained priests, do this paying attention, being open to the Holy and then sharing and teaching about it in a very specific way, by 1. Doing this more publicly than most people and 2. In and through the sacraments. But none of us does this alone. We all do this priestly work in and through community, something that you, Sarah, have known and understood and experienced for a long time already. We see this in the gospel reading for today—where Jesus is commissioning and empowering his disciples in Matthew’s gospel to be sent out as laborers into God’s harvest. (I can’t help but think about the equivalent of this passage in Luke’s gospel, where Jesus sends out the 70 two by two. None of us is sent out alone. We all have companions on the way.) And that’s why I’m wearing this old, stained, and a little bit tattered stole of my grandfather’s today. It’s because of the way that, over the last 11 years, when I have most needed to hear it, my Dad has told me stories of Pop and his ministry—of the church that was so poor they had to pay him with turnip greens, of the time he testified in court and got the upper hand over the opposing attorney through his salty wit, times when he was successful and effective and thriving, and times when he was faithful, failing, and heartbroken. I wear this stole today in honor and memory and thanksgiving of other priests who have befriended me and taught me, and I wear this stole today in honor and memory and thanksgiving of the lay people who have shared with me and taught me about the holy in and through their lives. We all need to remember this, but you, especially, Sarah need to remember this, as you blaze the trail and help write the script for what it means to be a bi-vocational priest in this diocese and in this (slightly-tattered, old) church in a rapidly changing world. It may, at times be lonely work, and so I encourage you to remember: we are with you—sharing, teaching, learning, and receiving. Always.