August 18, 2006

Preachment

A Celebration of New Ministry
for the Revd Lisa Hunt
and for the Parish of St Stephen, Houston, TX
on the Feast of the Transfiguration 2006

Being here at St Stephen’s is a kind of homecoming for me. Nearly fifty years ago, two of my children started their education in your parish day school while I was chaplain at Rice and the Medical Center. Vicki and Rector Claxton Monro became our dear friends. I am a native Texan, a teasipper, a member of the founding class of 1954 at ETSS, a deacon and a priest at the hands of Mike Quin and John Hines. I am a guest here at the grace of Don Wimberly, another Bishop of Texas who stands in this grand tradition. Thank you, Bishop.

There’s a story about a distinguished-looking elderly gentleman standing at a street corner when an attractive young woman took him by the arm. “Young lady,” he said, “are you trying to pick me up?” “No sir,” she answered, “I’m just trying to keep you from falling down.”

Lisa Hunt has been steadying me for over two decades since she came charging into my office one day to start her field-ed training for Vanderbilt Divinity School. She had two questions. Did she want to become an Episcopalian? And did she want to become a priest? Well, here she is. Most recently, she has kept me standing as priest associate at St Ann, Nashville, and by graciously inviting me to be here sharing this exciting new ministry with her and with my fellow communicants from St Ann, and with you all. Thank you.
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We couldn’t find a better biblical and liturgical beginning for our time together than the story of the Transfiguration [Lk 9.28-36]. It is one of the rarest events in the gospels. I think it more than a passing delight and to our considerable benefit that our celebration of this new ministry of rector and parish coincides on this day. For this story is a parable of the church. Just so as Peter, James, and John, we latter-day disciples often seem to want and prefer high and holy places. We want especially to find one away from the incessant, mind-numbing controversy, and we wonder why we can’t just make one here with our Lord and keep it that way. Celebrate now. Pay later.

[It is interesting that our lectionary planners for some reason omit from Luke’s accounting of the Transfiguration that the next day, when Jesus and the disciples came down from the mountain, they were confronted by a family whose child was being consumed by a daemon.]

But meanwhile, back at the mountain, there is always the Voice, surely the Voice of God, telling how pleased he is, indeed, with his son. [Think James Earl Jones reminding us that “this is CNN.” And think, if you will, Maya Angelou] It is good to hear God smile like this. God smiled before at Jesus’ baptism, and here, once again, that same Voice, “This is my Son, my Chosen.”

But this time, there is more. Much has transpired since that fate-filled baptism. The Voice seems to have gained an impatient tone. “This is my Son, my Chosen,” yes. But then, I imagine a dramatic pause before we hear — “Listen to him.” It is enough to recharge his drowsy disciples. May it be enough, as well, to energize all of us on our Way to becoming God’s church.

We’re gathered here to celebrate a new ministry. In one way, of course, it is not new at all. This parish has “been there and done that” for decades. You have an impressive record of servant leadership in church and community most recently brought into focus with your outstanding rector Helen Havens.

As well, my colleague Lisa Hunt has a couple of challenging decades on her resumé. She’s a well-seasoned priest, pastor, and preacher. She has led a parish once close to becoming moribund and once practically blown away by a tornado into becoming a parish caught up by another Holy Wind to become a source of nourishing service to its neighborhood, a source of singular and essential leadership for its diocese. In her wake, there continues a most impressive and informed leadership of wardens, vestry, and congregation. At St Ann, the message is unswervingly clear that absolutely all are welcome. Those who need to be loved can be loved until they can come to love themselves — and then love others. Every day, it proves that if you build it, they will come.

A brief note about Lisa’s preaching: As she started her sermon one Sunday, a third-grader was overheard in a stage whisper to her mother when she said, “This is my favorite part of the service.” And then on another Sunday when the gospel was about Jesus exorcising a daemon. Lisa had assumed Jesus’ role for a moment. You could almost feel her shaking the possessed man as she shouted, “Come out! And shut up!!” A stunned silence followed. And then there came a child’s voice… “Uh oh!” But there is at least one caveat: She can be an altogether unnerving prophet for those of us of all ages, especially when her Isaiah DNA kicks in.

When two histories, two vocations such as this parish and this new rector are brought together by the obviously prayerful discernment that has so moved them both, a critical mass of explosive dimensions stands ready to unleash spiritual energy. It is good that you both, parish and new rector, have wisely followed Yogi Berra’s counsel. When you came to this fork in your road, you took it. New ministry, indeed! Let us joyfully, even foolishly celebrate!

And what sort of celebration might this be? Perhaps some foolishness for Christ might help turn us into this new journey. Here’s a quaint parable about just such a thing.

One of the older nuns in a community was suffering from chronic confusion and loss of memory. From time to time, she would wander through the convent emptying people’s mailboxes, striking up strange, but pleasant conversations, collecting items from sisters’ bedrooms and giving them to others.

The community sponsored a school. One day, one of the teachers was called to the phone and left her mid-term exams and grade book on a table in the community room. When she returned, they were gone. A frantic two-day search began, notes left on the bulletin board, pleas made on the public address system. Finally, somebody thought of the wandering collector. There, buried in her laundry, were the grade books and the tests, all studied and corrected. Everyone got an A.

Nowadays, they say, when sister wanders the halls, passersby bow inwardly to her. Through her seemingly foolish actions, wandering and reminding all by her presence not to fear the final judgment, they discovered a new sense of themselves, that there are, finally, no record books, and everyone makes an A. “There is no end to the birth of God,” wrote D H Lawrence.

Many of our Anglican colleagues around the world speak now of what they are convinced is the senseless direction our beloved Episcopal Church is taking in these days. Perhaps so. But also, perhaps Sister’s behavior suggests that what appears most senseless can often seem most meaningful of all. Life fills to overflowing with opportunities to make the senseless meaningful to an irrationally rational world. At a new time like this for priest and people, might we but grasp the moment and, as the voice at the Transfiguration said, Listen, listen to my Son and listen for what it might be about him that pleasures God so.

Sometimes we are senselessly poetic, and the world is charged with a moment of beauty. Sometimes we are senselessly tender, and hardened hearts begin to melt. Sometimes we are senselessly nonjudgmental, and we see through a glass darkly into the nature of life.

What if we became senselessly vulnerable and reduced the defense budget? Might the world know less fear? Can we ever recover from the generations of fear that were born in the horror of that other transfiguration at Hiroshima whose anniversary we keep on this very day, and that has enveloped the world ever since, first in that strangely named cold war and now in the continuing reign of terror that is its bad seed?

So what if we were senselessly forgiving and abolished the death penalty? Would our children then understand and have more respect for life? What if we were senselessly generous and created a new societal system that gave the poor a fighting chance? Might our own hearts be softened?

We are surrounded by the seemingly senseless. What can be more ludicrous than a church legislature called a General Convention that is so often only generally conventional, but yet in its finer moments struggles to become an instrument for grace and justice and to do so through the sometimes stifling stuffiness of canon law?

Bill Sanders, a former Bishop of Tennessee, said five years ago at a celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the ordination of women that it was the greatest thing the Episcopal Church did in the twentieth century. Perhaps, however, even now, it risks becoming almost commonplace, as this little story suggests. Our church’s chaplain at Vanderbilt University was having a what-do-you-want-to-do-when-you-grow-up talk with her young son. She asked, “Do you want to be a successful musician and composer like your dad?” “No,” he said. “Well, would you like to be a priest like your mom?” “No,” he said indignantly, “that’s woman’s work!”

It is no secret that this parish and this diocese have had an early and informing hand in setting a paradigm for “woman’s work” in our church. Rector Helen Havens was the first woman ordained priest in Texas, and my fellow ETSS graduate Archdeacon Dena Harrison is the first woman elected Suffragan Bishop for this diocese. These two women along with your new rector have demonstrated so clearly the wisdom of Bishop Sanders’s affirmation. Now, that momentum continues not only here, but as well a part of the same high-speed curve and inspiration that chose Katharine Jefferts Schori to lead the church into this challenging century shattering the church’s glass ceiling and no telling how many other such restraints in our society once and for all. We’d be remiss not to celebrate her new ministry together with ours in our hearts and prayers today.

For among all these senseless things are things that are worth happening, things like being a little more passionate for our pains, a little more alive, a little wiser, a little more beautiful, a little more open and understanding, in short, a little more human. And to remember with St Paul that, “God chose what to the world seems foolish to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are… ”

We are called to be challengers and servant leaders, out front with the mystics, the poets, the clowns, the so-called irrational and impractical people, and all those whose manner of life along with that of Jesus challenges the wider church. For only as we do so may we discover how much we are really all alike, acting out the divine comedy that involves us all. Surely this partakes of grace. And we are all there, are we not, along with our Lord, writing something in the sand. May God then say of us in our own transfigurations — These are my children in whom I am well pleased. Listen to them.

The Revd Lane Denson
Priest Associate
St Ann Church
Nashville, TN 37206
615.254.3534 pass@stannsnashville.org

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