There is arguably no better text to preach on at the making of deacons and the ordering of priests that the Gospel of the Feast of St Andrew. The call of Simon Peter, and his brother Andrew, and the subsequent call of James and John, sons of Zebedee provide a model for the call of all believers to the duty and joy of discipleship, and more especially for those whose vocation to the ordained ministry has been recognised and affirmed by the Church. St John's Gospel suggests that Andrew was the first to hear the urgent call of Jesus. He then went and fetched his brother Simon and said, 'We have found the Messiah.' So Andrew was both the first apostle to be called by Jesus, and the first of all Christian missionaries.
I want to spend a few minutes reflecting on the task of discipleship and ministry in the Church of the 21st century. Pre-eminently today we do this in the context of your ordination, but the task is not yours alone, nor just the task of the ordained ministry, but rather the task of every believer. Of course, I speak against a background. Much has been written and said about the challenges faced by the church in our post-modern, globalised world. I don't want to go unnecessarily over well-trodden ground. The latest publication by the NCLS, Why People Don't Go to Church offers a penetrating and helpful analysis of the problems faced by the contemporary Australian Church in reaching an increasingly distant constituency. I found this summary statement particularly relevant.
Australian society is in a period of rapid transition. Local communities are giving way to numerous networks of people in which electronic forms of communication perform an increasingly important role. Distant cultures are blending into a pluralistic world in which people are choosing from global options. Religious faith has become a choice rather than a heritage.The pressures experienced by our Church in the last quarter of the 20th century have caused us to radically rethink our structures and our strategies. The Church of today is a very different animal to the one I grew up in. One of the by-products of this period of adjustment has been the tension I wrote about in the current issue of Anglican News between structural re-alignment and the need to build robust and open local communities of faith. The budget of the Diocesan enterprise has never been greater, the breadth of our effort has never been more diverse. This does raise an important question. 'What is core business for us?' The size of the super-structure does not necessarily reflect the effectiveness of our proclamation of the Gospel. How well do we communicate the essentials of the faith in our diverse and fluid new structural reality? The NCLS Publication talks of this.
As new models of church life and ways of exploring faith and community are tried, many challenges arise. Many of the new models require little commitment from participants... Are the structures that people are currently creating going to last or are they interesting innovations which will soon disappear? Are the structures going to encourage people to commit themselves to participation in worship, learning and serving others, or will they only fulfil the interests of the participating individuals for as long as their interest can be maintained? Again, the question returns as to what is essential to the nature of church life, and what are the' negotiables', to be changed as cultural forms change.It is trite to observe that this is not an easy time to be in ministry. And there is danger for us, that we become defensive, and fossilised, holding on to some mythical 'golden age' when God was in his heaven and all was right in the world. The rise in modern times of religious conservatism, and fundamentalism in general seems to reflect this nostalgia. It is significant that 11 years have passed since the ordination of the first woman in the Australian Anglican Church. 5 of you being ordained today are women. Despite the dire predictions of the doomsayers, the fact is that the church has not fallen apart since women were ordained. Indeed I would argue that our church is infinitely richer and much stronger, precisely because of this innovation. On the scriptural test of Gamaliel, it seems that women in ministry are a good thing - a God-ordained thing.
This is not to argue that all change is necessarily a good thing. I do believe that the sort of theological liberalism evidenced for example by the Sea of Faith Movement, has proved itself to be a very hopeless dead end. It is a cruel stereotype reflected in a cartoon in the NCLS book of the couple looking up at the church sign. It reads, 'St Everybodys. Todays sermon, Right? Wrong? Whatever! All Welcome!' He says to her, 'Looks good!' She says, 'If you think so...'.
I want to offer you some signposts for the structure of the church and the place of ministry within it as you contemplate what God has in store for you in the office to which you have been called. I am indebted to our friend Thorwald Lorenzen for these insights, and commend the 1995 book Resurrection and Discipleship as well as the new book Resurrection Discipleship Justice, which is being launched by Bishop Pat Power at St Marks this Friday.
First. The church tunes in to the resurrection of the crucified Christ by being the church for others, in Bonhoeffer's words, and with others according to Moltmann. The real and present threat we are experiencing is that we trade away our calling to be church, and settle for the fools gold of the religious club, or the sect. Increasingly there is pressure to close out the world from the church; I suppose this is because the world is seen to be a threat. I wonder what this says about our confidence in God. Is God so fragile that a bit of modern secular culture is likely to cause mayhem to God's kingdom? I think not! The fundamental distinguishing mark of the church is that it is open to the outsider. We are called to be salt and light in a world, which stands in desperate need of a vision to enable self-transcendence. The image of the ship has often been used to describe the church. And like a ship the church is not made to anchor in safe harbour, but to fulfil its function on the stormy sea of life. We cannot shut up shop and pretend that we operate outside of our context. The risk of openness is a non-negotiable bottom line reality we have no choice but to engage with!
Second. A mission-oriented church takes seriously the reformation insight of the priesthood of all believers. This is not to argue, as some in our communion do, for a lack of functional particularity. The ordering of the church is an important part of preserving and fostering the missional activity of preaching the word and celebrating the sacraments. But this is a functional ordering, and not a hierarchical ordering. There is no place in the modern church for the prince bishop, and there is no place for the parish pope! The church must be a fellowship where the gifts of every member are identified, encouraged and enabled. We need to refocus our attention away from the clergy, and develop a robust theology of the laity. I suspect that we have tended in our endeavour to achieve this end to over-clericalise the laity rather that recognising that the relationship of the various members in the church is organic.
Third. The church must display in its mission the same concern and partiality for the disadvantaged as Jesus manifested in his own life. Lorenzen notes the constant temptation for the church to become functionalised to serve as the religious validation of the status quo. The separation of church and state is difficult for us when so much of our missional activity is radically dependent on the government of the day for funding. Not that I am arguing for isolationism, or against co-operative partnership with government. But I am arguing for caution. Governments are very ready to rely on a doctrine of the separation of church and state when it comes to a question of church criticism of policy or ideology. They seem much less ready to do so when state sponsored religious observance seems to accord with their own political priorities.
Fourth. If it is to fulfil its call to mission, the church must be open and willing to change. Of course, there is a tension for us in preserving and handing on what we have received, over against adapting to changes in our fast moving and pluralistic world. Too often we seem to err on the side of religious conservatism for its own sake. We tell ourselves that God is and always has been present in the church through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. But our actions too often give the lie to that assertion. This seems to me to be a fundamental question of faith. Either we believe that God is present in God's church, or we do not. Either we believe that the mission of the church is the mission of God in the world, to the world and for the world, or we do not. Either we take seriously Biblical models of decision making in the church, of which the Acts 15 description of the Council of Jerusalem seems to me to be the paradigm example, or we do not. For one or other minority group to threaten schism each time a change is contemplated with which they disagree seems to me to be a fundamental denial of the very Gospel we claim to uphold. The Marxist criticism of religion comes clearly into view at this point. Just whose vested interests are being protected, and whose recognition is being refused or diminished.
Fifth and finally. The leadership structures must reflect the christological identity of the church. This brings us neatly to the subject of this service. Ministry in the church must reflect the ministry of Christ. It is always servant ministry. Ordination is not about status, or hierarchy or power or privilege. Rather, it recognises that some people are called to study and live and speak the Word of God as it is centred in the crucified and risen Christ. The call to Holy Orders is a costly call. This should not surprise us. It cost Jesus his life. But if the cost is high, then the cost benefit is higher still. Out of our common humanity, God uses us to speak a word, to show a care, to make a difference. There can be no greater gift than this. But only if we allow ourselves to be vulnerable.
I read a poem by Monica Furlong at the St Marks Valedictory Service. I want to read it again. This seems to me to tell a great truth about the essential nature of the ministry to which you ordinands are being called, and which we are privileged to share.
A slum is where somebody else lives,
Help is what others need.
We all want to be priest, social worker, nurse,
The nun in the white habit giving out the soup -
To work from a position of power,
The power of being
That we are not the shuffler in the queue
Holding out his bowl.
- But there is only one way into the kingdom
To be found out in our poverty.
That is why the citizens are a job lot -
Unhappily married, the feckless mother of eight,
The harlot no longer young,
The lover of little girls, the sexually untameable,
The alcoholic, the violent, and those whose drink is despair.
Show me not, Lord, your rich men
With their proud boasts of poverty and celibacy
They are too much for me.
Hide me from those who want to help
And still have strength to do so.
Only those who get on with their lives
And think they have nothing to give
Are any use to me.
Let your bankrupts feed me.
Revd. John Parkes
Ainslie