WHAT A JOB!
My brothers and sisters, I’ve only been here with you for a few months, but I do want to thank you for the remarkable warmth of your welcome and for your kindness in not pointing out my more glaring misjudgements. You’ve been generous to a fault. Whether you’ve gone so far as Mrs Cadwallader in Middlemarch I don’t know. She was the vicar’s wife, you remember, and despaired of her husband: ‘He will even speak well of the bishop,’ she said, ‘though I tell him it’s unnatural in a beneficed clergyman. But what can one do with a husband who attends so little to the decencies?’ Well, your decencies have been my delight. Thank you.
Recently The Sunday Times had a feature on the 100 Best Companies to Work For. Strangely the Church of England wasn’t top. But it was great to see as many as 96% of one company’s employees looking forward to going to work. Then I thought, ‘But that’s nothing; you should look at our figures for going to Deanery Synod!’
But in another sense we have not the Church as our employer, but God. We are office-holders, not employees. And I say unashamedly - I love working for God. If I knew a better way of working for him, of building the kingdom in a wounded world, I’d be there. But I don’t know a better place than the Church, so here I am – and gladly.
What a job! It depends how you say that of course – ‘what a job’. It could be said with some distress because it’s a tough job. We’re people under pressure – often short of time, short of money, short of rest, short of prayer and time for reflection. And in more recent years, short of social acceptance and understanding. People often don’t even grasp what we’re about or why we’re here, which can leave us feeling very exposed. You remember novelist Nick Hornby, he of Fever Pitch and High – Fidelity? In his novel ‘How to be good,’ which I’ve quoted before, he has the key figure, a GP called Katie, trying to cope with a husband who’s suddenly become good, and one morning she decides she’ll go to church. She says:
I don’t even know I’m going to say the words until they come out of my mouth, and when they do I feel slightly faint. Perhaps I was feeling faint already – it is Sunday morning, and I haven’t yet eaten. Perhaps if I’d had a bowl of cereal I would never have said anything. [But I did] ‘I’m going to church. Does anyone want to come.’
David and the children look at me with some interest, for some time. It’s as if, having said something eccentric, I might follow this up by doing something eccentric, like stripping naked or running amok with a kitchen knife. I am suddenly glad that it isn’t my job to convince people that going to church is a perfectly healthy leisure activity.’
But it is our job, and it’s not easy in this culture. It’s our way of anointing the Lord’s feet, as did the woman in today’s gospel. Grateful for so much, we do what we can for the Lord and his people. So - what a job! And what a great job! These are some of the reasons why I wouldn’t change Christian ministry for anything:
First, it takes our own deepest commitments, and makes a life out of them. How many people can say that? I can spend time praying and call it work! I long to worship God, and find that’s exactly what the Church wants me to do. I spend time reading theology (theoretically you understand!) and know it’s part of resourcing myself for ministry. I can go to wonderful meals sometimes and tell myself it’s all part of a ministry of presence. It’s like falling in love and then being told our life’s work is to enjoy being in love. Ordination takes our own deepest commitments and makes a life out of them.
Second, ordination lets us enter people’s lives at points of huge significance, and in that place dare to articulate the name of God. When I talk to curates who’ve been recently ordained, there often comes a point when I ask what they’re particularly enjoying and they say something like, ‘I know this sounds odd, but I really enjoy funerals.’ And I understand that completely. To be there, when there’s a real task of helping people tread that strange borderland of life and death, is a superb privilege. At a baptism, to help people celebrate a miracle, and to give shape to that inchoate sense of wonder and thankfulness – terrific! At a wedding to facilitate this beautiful new start – brilliant! These aren’t chores; these are enormous privileges. On a good day. (And on a bad day, OK, they’re chores. But not often!) It’s a way, again, of anointing the Lord’s feet - even though it’s our fifth funeral of the week. We’re being allowed into people’s lives at points of huge vulnerability, real holy ground, and there, carefully, we dare to articulate the name of God. Could we be doing anything more important?
Thirdly, ordination gives us a walk-on part in the greatest adventure on earth – the building, the birthing, the breaking in of the
And fourthly, ordination means we’re given responsibility for the Tent of Meeting. We hold open the door of heaven as we preside over worship. As God enters the Tent of Meeting from one end as it were, and the people of God enter from the other, we have the huge privilege of being there in the middle, and in a human sense, facilitating the meeting. Then we’re into word and sign and symbol and sacrament - as we’re reminded by the oils this morning. One of the greatest things we can do in life is lead people into both the eternal Word and the magisterial silence of God. So when we preach, choosing our words and ideas with the utmost care, we might remember the words of Thomas Carlyle who said, ‘Who, having been called to be a preacher, would stoop to be a king?’ Ordination gives us an awesome responsibility in the Tent of Meeting. For in worship particularly we’re anointing the feet of the Lord.
What a job! And completely impossible, blasphemous even to try, without our ministry being rooted in God, grounded in the rich soil of prayer. Outside that enchanted earth we’re vulnerable, at risk, prey to the gods of this world which blind our minds. When I go off the boil in ministry it’s sure to be something to do with me having wrestled that ministry away from God and taken it back into my own efforts and my own minimal competence. And that’s not good enough. It’s got to be all grace, all gift, all God. And prayer is the core of that ministry.
I‘ve met some people around the diocese who acknowledge they could lose heart if they’re not careful. And it’s folly to pretend we aren’t facing ‘interesting times’ as the Chinese put it. Sometimes it can look as if the church is in the latter stages of a game of chess, where the bishops are moving diagonally - and somewhat eccentrically - across the board, the knights – who chair the committees – are taking one step forwards and two steps sideways, the safe castles have all been taken (with freehold for the time being), the pawns are being moved around as necessary, and the King himself seems to be trapped and unable to move. How long, they say, before it’s check-mate?
Well the answer is - ‘never’. As Paul says:‘We are afflicted but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, struck down but not destroyed.’ And why? Because ‘the God who said let light shine out of darkness has shone in our hearts’ – never forget that. God has shone in our hearts, and called us to his service. Tomorrow we’ll stand by that battered cross in silence. On Sunday we’ll encounter the blistering power of the resurrection. We do not lose heart because it is by God’s mercy that we’re engaged in this ministry, by God’s grace that we anoint the feet of the Lord.
What a job! I wouldn’t change it for anything.
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