Death and Life: The Apostolic Vocation

Death and Life: The Apostolic Vocation

 

by the Reverend Fleming Rutledge

 

A Sermon for the Institution of

 

The Reverend Ross M. Wright

 

as Rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Richmond, Virginia

 

 

The Third Thursday of Advent, December 17, 2009

 

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So death is at work in us, but life in you. (II Corinthians 4:12)

 

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Ross Wright first crossed my path when he was 22 years old. He was a marvelously gifted youth leader. To this day, more than 30 years later, I see Ross in my mind’s eye, playing the guitar and leading a group of kids in the most raucous, crazy songs that you could imagine. Those were great days back in the 70s. The teenagers of Christ Church in Rye, New York, adored Ross. Our youth ministry together included staying up all night, getting thrown into the lake, chasing kids through the woods and across the roofs, inventing endless relay races and treasure hunts and preposterous games to keep them busy and out of trouble. It was a joyful ministry.

 

I can’t resist telling you that the most important influence of my own high-school days were the youth conferences right here in this Diocese of Southern Virginia where I grew up. In particular, I remember and honor the steady, calm, affirming presence of the Reverend William Hutchinson who was rector here at the Church of the Good Shepherd in the 1950s. “Mr. Hutchinson,” as we called him, faithfully served as a leader at the diocesan youth conferences for many years. He led who-knows-how-many small-group discussions. He was a model of a Christian leader in my life and, I’m sure, the lives of many others. It is marvelous to recall how such acts of witness can carry forward through the years.

 

Well, it’s been a long time since Ross led a gang of 15-year-olds in singing “Apples and Bananas.” Like St. Paul, “When he became a man, he put away childish things” (I  Cor. 3:11). So tonight is a time to think together about what it means to be the mature people of God at the Church of the Good Shepherd.

 

At the institution of an ordained leader, the biblical readings can go in one of two main directions. The two directions are complimentary, but they’re different. Over the years, the emphasis in the American church has shifted from one to the other. The most familiar image of the ministry in the churches today is the pastoral one, summed up by the image of the Good Shepherd.[1] In tonight’s Gospel reading from John, our Lord says to Peter, feed my sheep. Many Episcopalians today are content with a good pastor—one who visits the sick, comforts the bereaved, looks out for the needy, cares for the flock. If he does that, the congregation will love him even if his preaching puts them to sleep.

 

In the Bible, though, there’s more than one way to feed the sheep. The reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians suggests another theme—which, again, is not contradictory—the two go together. However, it’s this second motif which, nowadays, tends to get overlooked. If the first image of ordained ministry is pastoral, the second one is apostolic. As we say in the Nicene Creed, the church is “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.”

 

So what does that mean? Here’s a clue. When Ross was a youth leader back in the 70s, he didn’t just play silly games and sing crazy songs. Our youth ministry wasn’t entirely made up of confiscating contraband and making runs to the emergency room. It wasn’t just community service, either—important though that is. It was first and foremost an apostolic ministry. Every time the kids got together for fun and fellowship, there was also Bible study. There was prayer. There was concentrated teaching about the Christian faith. In the theological language of the church, that youth ministry was a ministry of the Word of God.

 

So Ross Wright is a pastor—yes—but not only a pastor. His lifelong commitment has been to the apostolic ministry of the Word. It’s important not to conflate the two types of ministry as though they were the same. In the book of Acts, we’re told how deacons were appointed to distribute food, so that the apostles would be free to preach and teach. The service of the deacons is not denigrated; it’s a high honor[2]—but as Acts explains, the division of labor made it possible for the apostles to “devote [themselves] to prayer and to the ministry of the Word” (the diakonía toû logou—Acts 6:1-6).

 

Now let’s turn to Paul’s letter to the congregation in Corinth.

 

What we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.

 

“What we preach”? First we must ask, who is this “we”? When Paul says “we” in this passage, he doesn’t mean “we Christians.” He means “we apostles.” He means himself and his missionary team. An apostle is a person commissioned to carry a message. Let’s pay attention to the words “commission” and “message.” Suppose someone came in tonight claiming to have a message sent directly from President Obama. We wouldn’t believe him, would we? Messages from the president of the United States don’t arrive like that. But Paul and the other apostles arrived in cities like Corinth and announced that they had a message directly from the risen Jesus Christ. And a great many people believed them, and then they passed the news along to the next generation, and then the next, and that’s why you are here tonight. That’s what it means to say that the church is apostolic. It rests not so much on the unbroken chain of hands as it does on the unshakeable foundation of the testimony of the apostles who were commissioned by God to deliver it.

 

I think we forget that. We’re so used to the idea that there are a lot of religions, and our religion is just one of them, that we don’t stop to reflect about how remarkable our faith actually is. The entire Jewish-Christian thing, the Old and New Testaments, the faith we celebrate tonight is based on one undergirding premise: God has spoken. And the way that he has spoken is through the prophets and the apostles. All the Hebrew prophets and all the Christian apostles speak from the same underlying claim: What we preach is not ourselves, but God.

 

I’ve known Ross Wright a very long time and I’ve been shoulder to shoulder with him for many years in many locations.[3] I’m here to bear witness to you tonight that whatever pastoral ministry Ross has among you, and whatever human deficiencies he may have, and whatever shape his preaching may take on a given Sunday, there is something that overrides everything else: it is not himself that he brings, but Jesus Christ as Lord and himself as Christ’s servant for your sake.

 

Now about those universal human deficiencies, Paul has something to say. “We have this treasure”—the gospel message—“in earthen vessels.” Every prophet and every apostle chosen by God to speak his Word has been an earthen vessel. Have you ever dropped a clay pot? It’s not like iron or steel. You can’t drop a piece of pottery without breaking it. It’s not like gold or silver either; it’s made of the most humble substance, clay—earth—dirt. Congregations that idolize or idealize their pastors are going to lose their faith. We ordained clergy are clay like you, breakable like you, mortal like you. But Paul says there is a reason for this. “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the surpassing, extraordinary, transcendent, immeasurable [the Greek word is hyperbole] power belongs not to us, but to God.” There is nothing in all the Christian Scripture more important than that for understanding how God speaks. Against all human reason, the divine and almighty God has chosen clay pots as his messengers in order to display the supreme power of his message. Without that, there is no Christian faith.

 

And so Paul goes on to describe the life of an apostolic messenger:

 

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

 

There is no apostolic ministry without suffering. In this particular passage Paul is not writing about suffering in general. He is writing about the way that the passion and death of Jesus is transmitted by his messengers through their own suffering for the sake of his people. If you see a preacher who looks as though he never suffers, beware. He isn’t carrying about the death of Jesus in his body.

 

Why should the Lord’s apostolic ministers carry the death of Jesus around in their own bodies? Paul tells us:

 

For while we [apostles] live we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

 

Isn’t this extraordinary? The death of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus are both manifested in the ministry of the messengers. The more apparent the suffering for the gospel, the more powerful the life given to the people.

 

Does that mean that the pastor should drag around in a mode of suffering all the time? Absolutely not. We didn’t plan riotous fun for those teenagers for no good reason. As the apostle Paul himself says, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). Rejoicing is at the core of our hope. The pastor does not go out looking for suffering, much less wallow in it. However, this world and its enmity toward the gospel being what it is, suffering will come soon enough. When it does come, Paul writes, when it does come, there is a reason, there is a purpose. Here it is:

 

So death is at work in us, but life in you.

 

Death is at work in us apostles, but the life of Christ himself is at work in you, the congregation.

 

When you have a pastor who loves God above all things, he will pay a price for it. It is not possible to be a preacher of the apostolic message and not suffer. But the price that the apostolically ordained minister of the gospel pays is the saving death of Christ. It is the death of Christ at work in the preaching of the gospel that brings the life of the resurrection to his people, food for his flock. In the Old and New Testaments from beginning to end, the Word of God is understood as food, as nourishment, as protein—as life-giving sustenance without which the church starves to death. In tonight’s Gospel reading, when the Lord says to Peter, “Feed my sheep,” the pastoral theme is certainly present, but the predominant idea is the feeding of the Word of God by the power of the One who is himself the living Word.

 

And for that, Peter will pay the ultimate price, as the evangelist tells us. Jesus shows him “by what death he was to glorify God.” And after this—after Jesus tells Peter he’s going to glorify God in his death—the Lord said to him, “Follow me” (John 21:19). In other words, the apostle knows ahead of time that he is to follow Christ into suffering and death, and that that is what he’s being called to do and to be. “Death is at work in us, but life in you.”

 

And so to you, beloved of God at the church of the Good Shepherd:

 

The apostolic ministry has lost standing in the Episcopal Church, even in Virginia where it used to be very highly valued. Here in this parish, however, you have responded to it, and that is a cause for great thanksgiving and great hope. There is no greater need in the church today than that of feeding the flock with the full, concrete, biblical, Trinitarian content of the gospel of Jesus Christ crucified and risen. Ross Wright has spent his entire life studying that full content. In your embrace of him to be your rector, you have an idea of what you are receiving, and that is therefore part of your calling also, your service also. That reception of the gospel translates into the good works that identify Christ’s life in the world. Christ’s life, not ours. The transcendent power belongs to God and not to you, to God and not to me, to God and not to Ross.

 

It will cost Ross a good deal to bring you this message week in and week out, as it costs every parish priest, but you will receive life from it. The transcendent power of God is defined by Paul in Romans as the power that raises the dead and calls into existence the things that do not yet exist (Romans :17). And as you receive that divine life, you will be moved, invigorated, and sustained by it. It will send you out to serve his needy, broken, suffering world—the world for which he poured out his life, the world for which he gave himself in surpassing love, for which he conquered death, and for which he came again in the fulness of his resurrection power to bear you up in all your trials and bring you into his everlasting kingdom.

 

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[Therefore, Ross,] may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Romans 15:13)