Advent Lutheran Church

"Ordination of Janice Hawley"

            Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus.  Amen.

            Well, Janice, what a journey it’s been so far!  From Kansas to Iowa to Wyoming back to Iowa and back to Kansas – you’ve covered quite a bit of territory, geographically and spiritually, in the last four years.  All of the folks who have turned out for your ordination this afternoon have been partners on that journey, fellow travelers, if you will.  The proud people of Advent, a congregation that has nurtured you and acted as an incubator in your pastoral development; your seminary in Dubuque, which both challenged and encouraged you through three years of academics and represented here by some of your fellow clergy; faithful members of Trinity, your strong internship site in Laramie, where you developed even more fully as a minister. 

Also here this afternoon are some very eager people filled with high anticipation, the members of Hillside Community Lutheran Church in Spring Hill, a group that has been waiting, even as it has been active in Bible study, and fellowship and service activities – waiting for just the right pastor to lead them into the next phase of God’s future.  There’s an old saying that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.  In this case, the new congregation is ready; and Janice, you’ve appeared – you have been called by God to the ministry of Word and Sacrament, the wider Church has affirmed that call, and the people of Hillside Community have invited you to answer it as their leader.

            In a few moments we’ll hear more about the call of the ordained pastor: that she or he is to, among other things, preach and teach in accordance with the Scriptures, the creeds and the Lutheran Confessions; to feed and strengthen the Church with God’s Holy Word and Sacraments; to lead Christians by example in faithful service and holy living; to tend and protect the flock; to give faithful witness to Christ in the world.  Those expectations form the general call of pastoral ministry, but any call is, of course, lived out in a particular historical context.

            I don’t know who picked your class verse at Wartburg Seminary, but it’s a good one; it addresses well the current context for ministry.  It’s the first verse of Psalm 27, where David writes: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”  A quick look around creation shows that there’s plenty that can be feared these days, from a miserable job market at home and the fierce political posturing that it inspires to wars and conflicts in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.  When the debt crisis in Greece punctures 401(k)s in the United States, the average person on the street is finding out just how connected we really are.  Major changes are afoot in our world, at large and at home, and there is a growing sense that those changes are not under control.  Yes, there is plenty that can be feared.

            But the Scripture readings that are before us this afternoon promote an attitude of strength and confidence in the face of uncertainty.  The author of Psalm 56 – David again – sounds like a seminary student in the middle of finals week.  He’s oppressed on all sides, the outlook is bleak, woe is he! – but then he remembers that God is faithful, and that God is in his corner.  He is not afraid.

            And not only is there no substantive reason for fear, there is great reason for confidence because, as the prophet Isaiah reminds us, it’s not about us; it’s about God.  Yes, we are necessary – we who have been called to be God’s little talkers – but God’s Word itself is never aimless or wasted; it always accomplishes God’s purpose.  It’s like water that courses down from heaven, bringing life to thirsty ground so that the earth may itself produce life-giving food.  There is an image of life-giving water in the book of Ezekiel in which the prophet has a vision of a majestic river that flows with increasing depth, only this river does not bring death but life to plants and animals along the way, entering the stagnant sea and converting it to fresh water, a river that carries with it a promise: “… everything will live where the river goes.”

            Hold on to that promise, Janice; you’ll need it as a reminder from time to time as you settle into life as a pastor.  Your seminary prepared you well for many of the experiences that await you, but as your colleagues will affirm, no seminary can cover it all.  There is a Facebook page, in fact, titled “Things They Didn’t Teach Us In Seminary,” and it offers some interesting insights.  One newly ordained pastor said that he was trying to create a pastor’s emergency kit to give to some of his friends who were about to graduate from seminary.  He said, “I’ve thought of safety pins, matches, candle, pen, note cards, stain stick, paper clips, emery board, small scissors, pen knife … what else?”  One respondent suggested, “WD40 and duct tape.  And if nothing works, a bottle of wine.”

            And there are some experiences that are unique to female clergy.  One pastor shared this: “I went to get supplies once from the grocery store after a funeral.  I was still in my clergy collar.  A lady ran up to me and screamed at me for being dressed like a Catholic priest, said that I was going to hell, pretending to be a priest. When I said I was a Protestant minister, she replied ‘that’s even worse!’ and walked away.”

            Another wrote: “I did (my chaplaincy training) for a summer in the hospital, and I found the color of my clergy shirt changed the titles that people would greet me with. When I wore a black shirt, I was called Reverend. When it was a white one, I was called Sister. When I wore the pink one, there was just a ‘hello.’  But (in any case) half way through the visit, people would look at me and ask, ‘What ARE you?’”

            That question, “What ARE you?”, might have been the initial question on the mind of the Samaritan woman when she started her conversation with Jesus.  It’s a well-known story, and we just heard it again: Jesus sends his disciples on ahead as he stops at a well on the outskirts of a city of the Samaritans, a nationalist group related to, but also very distinct from, the Jews.  The history they share does not unite them but divides them, and has for generations.  The animosity between the two peoples centered on the claim by each that they were the true chosen people of God.  The division had gotten so deep that Samaritans and Jews did not speak to one another.  A faithful Jew would have simply avoided a Samaritan town.  But not on this day.  On this day, Jesus comes to the well near the city, sits down, and invites a conversation.  It’s a dance, really, in which the partners move ever closer. 

Usually, one of the things we find remarkable in this story of the Samaritan woman is the fact that she’s been married five times.  The classic explanation for this is simply that she is not very good at marriage, or that she is grossly immoral.  But scholars have recently pointed out that the Samaritans practiced Levirite marriage, a practice that was designed to safeguard the identity of a particular ethnic group or clan, and prohibited marriage to outsiders.  Here’s how it worked: If the husband died, his next of kin would be duty-bound to take in his widow and marry her; if he died, his brother would have to do the same. 

That may well be what happened in this case.  The woman’s husband died, and his next of kin married her, and the same thing happened to him, then to the third husband, and the fourth and the fifth.  The sixth kinsman, probably for fear of his life, refused to marry her, thereby creating a moral stain on her that she was powerless to remove. 

No woman in ancient society wanted to be married five times.  This woman did not go to her life coach and say, “I’d like to work out a plan for five husbands, please.”  No; she did not pick five husbands; she was given to five different men.  We can imagine the hopeful anticipation that might have filled her heart every time she went to the altar: “This next one – this is the one; this is the one who I’m really supposed to be with; this is the one who will help me make sense of my life.”

This is the hope that Jesus addresses when he moves closer and initiates the next exchange.  Remember how it goes?  He says, “Go, call your husband, and come back.”  And she says, “I have no husband,” and Jesus responds, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.”  And she comes back with this remarkable reply, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.”  Interesting, isn’t it?  Jesus gets close to touching her pain, and she backs off. 

She continues to edge away when she starts the next exchange.  “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you (Jews) say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem,” at the temple.  As Jesus gets close to her with the “living water” that has the power to heal, she changes the subject.  He says, “Do you realize the thirstiness of your own soul; you’ve been alienated and isolated from your own people by the relentlessness of your search and you keep hoping that this next thing is going to put it all together for you and it never does and you’re filled with all this hurt and longing,” and she responds with, “Gee, where do you think we should we go to church?”  Notice what she’s doing?   She’s trying to create a distraction by nurturing an old argument about religious orthodoxy that has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation Jesus is trying to have with her.

In the Church, how many of the arguments that we have with each other are really distractions that we nurture in order to avoid an argument that God has with us, such as, for example, our refusal to care adequately for the poor?  We could come up with other examples.  Jesus doesn’t say one word about homosexuality, but that doesn’t stop us; we love talking about it and so we use it as a weapon in our own version of ethnic cleansing; use it to break churches, split denominations, and vilify each other.  The term “doctrinal purity” never crossed Jesus’ lips, but we use it as a weapon of mass destruction.  We don’t engage in unguarded reflection with each other about God’s view of the war in Iraq or God’s view of the war in Afghanistan or whether God might think that our involvement in the war on Libya constitutes “hostilities.”  Instead, we usually pick safer topics, like our political beliefs, shaped by our own personal priorities.

I can think of little that is more alien to our contemporary mindset than the idea that there is another set of priorities operating in the world, priorities that are very different from our own – the priorities of this God whose thoughts are not our thoughts and whose ways are not our ways.  But God alone is alpha and omega; it is God’s priorities that finally will prevail. And if you want the ultimate proof of this, there is really only one place to go.  You look no further than the cross of Jesus Christ.  It was there, in the impossible beauty of that cross, that God accomplished God’s priority for redemption for all of creation and for each member of creation.

That is the essential word that forms the living water that seeks to flow through our ministries; and it will help, Janice, to keep that word close as you begin your work at Hillside Community.   Because as your colleagues will tell you, there are many events and activities and duties that are waiting to compete for your attention and your energy in the weeks and years to come.  Your colleagues will tell you that the pastor’s days are filled with committee meetings and phone calls and staff meetings and emails and council meetings and administrative reports and you sometimes wonder if anything is really getting accomplished, and so you decide to bust out of that routine and go be a pastor and visit sick people and so you drive across town to the hospital, fight the traffic, squeeze into a parking spot, dash through the rain into the hospital to visit this parishioner, only to find out that she has just been discharged.

You go through the various counseling sessions that you have, talking with couples who come to see you because they can’t stand their jobs but they can’t afford to leave them because they need those jobs to support a lifestyle which, actually, they don’t much like either.  And the irony of that is lost on them, but not on you.

You go through funerals where you have to, in a way, divide your heart because you’re fighting back your own grief in order to lead the congregation.  And the people in the pews don’t realize that the person in the pulpit also has a broken heart.  But you have to get them through this: you’re the pastor; you promised them that you would have a word to speak into the silence that fills everyone’s soul.

You get through weddings where you are fighting back … the photographer.  But we are grateful for wedding photographers.  We are grateful for them because without wedding photographers, pastors would not have nearly the colorful internal vocabulary that we do have.

Yes, and in the midst of all of the daily tasks of ordained ministry, the living water seeks to flow.  I recently heard someone declare that water is a sacrament just waiting to happen; all it needs is the human touch to turn it loose.  So, Janice; turn it loose.  Turn it loose as you visit the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, work for justice, practice forgiveness; and, more important, as you teach the people of Hillside Community to do the same.  Turn it loose as you preach the Gospel that has the power to save.

Remember the promise: “Everything will live where the river goes.”  The unexpected blessing in all of this, of course, is that you can’t deal with the living water without getting soaked yourself.  So as you water the garden and Hillside Community flourishes, you might occasionally run into someone who says, “Aw, pastor, you’re all wet!”  And you can say, “You bet I am – so come closer: it’s a blessing that I’m here to share!”  Amen.