Sermon preached at the Making of Deacons
St Columb’s Cathedral, Derry on 28th June, 2009

I’m delighted and honoured to have been asked to share in this service of ordination with you.  Thank you to Bishop Ken for inviting me - and of course I am really here as a member of the congregation at Holy Trinity, Dunfanaghy.  It’s been a particular pleasure to spend time in retreat with Mark and Judi as they prepare for this deacon ministry of love and service.

Things sit side by side in my life and I think about what links them.  On Friday back in Scotland, I shared in the funeral of one of our best loved clergy.  Randal died suddenly in the early years of a well-spent retirement.  In his inner contentment and love, he was an icon of ministry for many of us.

Several people described how Randal asked people to do things.  He knew people.  He chose well.  He would appear smiling and discuss what needed to be done.  It wasn’t delegation.  It was call.  No pleading or cajoling - no Mrs Doyle saying, ‘Ye will, ye will ..’ - no time to consult the diary - no opportunity to say, ‘I’m honoured that you should think of me but ..  The conversation would reach a point at which Randal would simply say, ‘So David .. ‘  And that was it.  And because the love between Randal and his people was all mixed up with the love of God, people sort of realised that they had been called, they had responded and they were glad.

So in a few moments, Bishop Ken will put all sorts of complicated questions to Judi and Mark.  But what he is really saying in the name of the God who loves them and calls them is, ‘So Mark … ‘ and ‘So Judi’  And as they hear that call, they have already answered it long since.

The second thing which strikes me is this.  This service comes at the start of a new chapter of ministry and service for Mark and Judi.  It is a moment of calling, commitment, blessing.  It is wonderfully affirming.  This moment is for Mark and Judi - and also for those whose love has supported and encouraged them - and for all sorts of other people - perhaps work colleagues and friends who admire the commitment which Mark and Judi are making and want to be part of it too.  And at the end of life, Friday’s funeral was a wonderful thanksgiving for a rich and faithful ministry.  It’s just the bit in between which seems so difficult.

Why is that?  Because the society in which the priest, deacon or minister received automatic respect is long gone.  We meet a dismissive shrug .. or draw towards ourselves the hurts and anger of people who don’t know why they are angry with us …  even as they say religion is gutless and irrelevant.  And that happens because the gospel is not gutless.  It challenges us all - particularly those who minister.
In our time together, Mark, Judi and I have explored what the scripture readings say to us.  We looked at the awestruck humility of Isaiah - talented and committed people do not always find humility easy.  We looked at Paul’s challenge to be ‘not conformed to this world but transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may discern’  We saw that as the challenge to the kind of lively and engaged spirituality which will help the spiritual searchers of our age to discern meaning in God and the world.  And we felt the force of ‘We want you to do for us whatever we want’.  It’s the desire to enlist God in our service .. to cherry pick the gospel .. to offer the part for the whole .. to create small, sectarian Gods.  Yes ministry is difficult and personally challenging.  We can become as Rowan Williams said, ‘an unreliable friend’ - never content to be enlisted by person or cause.

As Mark and Judi enter this ‘in between’ period, we gather around them with our love and our prayers, seeking for them the inner strength and the wisdom to do God’s work in challenging times.  We pray that they may know the joy which comes to those who hear the call, ‘So Judi, So Mark’ and know that they have answered with their whole heart.

Archbishop Michael Ramsay’s Ordination Prayer

Lord, take my heart and break it:
break it not in the way I would like,
but in the way you know to be best.
And, because it is you who break it,
I will not be afraid,
for in your hands all is safe
and I am safe.

Lord take my heart and give to it your joy,
not in the ways I like,
but in the ways you know are best,
that your joy may be fulfilled in me.
So, dear Lord, I am ready to be your deacon,
ready to be your priest

I’m always glad to be involved in a Pre-Ordination Retreat and the Ordination Service. It’s a very ‘back to basics’ moment - very much in touch with Michael Ramsay’s ‘Christian Priest Today’ and all of that.

So we ended up in the rather magnificent Thornhill Centre, just outside Derry.  Quietness, food and comfort - and Sister Perpetua lent me her broadband connection.  The Ordination Service left me wondering - as I always do - about what it is that draws people in support of those being ordained.  All sorts of people, just wanting to be there and to give encouragement.  I haven’t got the hang of the Wordpress upgrade [don't start me] so I’ll put the sermon in the body text of a separate post.

Meanwhile I met one of the Derry clergy who had spent a summer placement with us in the parish - it must be about 15 years back.  He was still laughing at a searing pastoral encounter which he had in Seagoe.  I have no recollection of it.  It probably passed almost unnoticed in the ongoing soap opera of parish life.  He claims it went as follows.

He went to visit a family who lived in middle of a row of terraced cottages.  No access to the back garden other than through the house.  He knocked at the door.  No answer.  The window flew open and a voice asked in tones of thunder, ‘Are you from the Executive?’  [Glossary - Northern Ireland Housing Executive - pronounced as a staccato series of mangled vowels from the nether regions of the tonsils]  ‘No, I’m not’   ‘If you’re from the Executive you can’t come in because my back passage is all blocked up.’

We laid Randal to rest today in a beautiful little cemetery just up Glen Clova above his home.

These are the words I used:

Randal’s sudden death has been a great shock to all of us.  Valerie - I hope that you, Paul, Mark and Nick feel around you the warmth and the love of the family of the church which you and Randal have served so well.  I hope that you understand - what you know already - how special Randal was to all of us and how greatly admired and loved he was by his fellow clergy.

Randal slipped away.  It was somehow typical of him and his spirituality, the closeness of earth and heaven, no great void between them - more a thin veil - the finest gauze - of separation.  In my father’s house are many rooms.  If it were not so I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you.  Not just in his parting either.  When you met Randal - warm, contented and at the deepest level happy - you knew that you were being invited to come closer to the God he loved, served and trusted - a God of warmth, compassion and humour.

I shall always remember coming up to meet Randal not so long ago.  As with many of the best pastoral encounters, I arrived to talk about one thing but ended up talking about something else.  ‘Randal,’ I said.  ‘Some things are not altogether easy’  And Randal said ‘Aha’.  Which meant ‘Tell me some more.’  So in case he hadn’t got the point, I told him some more.  And he said, ‘Aha’ - which meant this time, ‘Might there be just a little bit of personal obsession in what you are telling me?’  So I told him some more and he said ‘Aha’ a few more times and strangely it all seemed to get itself rather more into balance.  I knew myself loved, cared for, ministered to and healed.

There’s mystery in that.  It’s called priesthood.  And Randal lived a classic picture of priesthood.  ‘Quid es tu, sacerdos? - What are you, O priest?’  ‘Nihil et omnia’ - nothing and all things.  Nothing of self and everything of God.  Our thanksgivings today are for that kind of priest.  People knew - people who found the unbearable bearable because Randal was around; people who somehow felt more rooted and together - better able to live with sadness and anger - because prayerful and faithful Randal was around.  To be with Randal in church was to be with somebody who was absorbed in the holy and invited you to enter the same place.  And that is priesthood.

And now he is in the place prepared.  He is where Jesus is.  Randal lives in its fullness the resurrection gospel of hope and triumph which he proclaimed in life and ministry.  He is with Jesus our great high priest from whom all priesthood comes.

What but he standeth at no earthly altar
Clothed in white vestments on that golden floor
Where love is perfect and no step can falter
God’s priest for evermore.

Impossible to be in Ireland these days without being aware of the severity of the economic crisis.  Poppy says simply that the problems of the Celtic Tiger are nothing to do with her.  She finds Blogstead Na Mara a congenial place.  Staff are always on hand.  She retreats under a duvet on an upper bunk - from where she can display a certain ‘hauteur’.  When visited there, she simply extends one paw and stretches the claws.

Meanwhile I just restrained myself from testing my belief that, whereas in Scotland one may listen to other people’s random conversations, in Ireland one simply joins in.  Man in front of me at the check-out in Dunnes Stores in Letterkenny.  Three sets of child’s canvas shoes [gutties or runners in the vernacular here] at 3 euro each in different colours.  Lengthy explanation about his child who insists on wearing odd shoes …

We’re mourning the loss of Randal MacAlister this week following his sudden death on Friday.

Clergy are notorious for being a bit hard on one another. But we all loved Randal. He served as Dean of our diocese until his retirement in 2006. He was quite literally getting into the stride of a well-spent retirement - hill-walking, Gaelic speaking, fiddle-playing - yet still willing to say ‘yes’ when called on for some ministry. Randal and Valerie were working hard on their beautiful house in Dykehead at the bottom of Glen Clova.

If there are balances to be found in the extraordinary way of life which is ministry, then Randal had worked them out. He was eirenic but he wasn’t soft. He radiated contentment and well-being but he gave himself unsparingly to ministry. He was holy but people found him accessible and they loved him.

He was extraordinarily kind and supportive to me, particularly when I was learning to acclimatise to a new situation. We had an extra bond. I knew where he came from in ministry. He had learnt his trade from Tom McGonigle, one of the great curate-trainers of the Church of Ireland, who used to say something like ‘149 curates and never a bad one - well maybe one’ Tom lived in retirement in my parish. I knew Tom and so, in a sense, I knew Randal.

Our thoughts and prayers are with Valerie and her family.

Enough of all this - time for a couple of days at Blogstead na Mara - in Donegal. Just time to prepare some material for an ordination retreat at the weekend - and a sermon. I had some stuff on ‘Five things I wish they had told me’ - but I can’t find it and can’t remember what the five were.

Poppy is recovering from long-haul travel and has retreated under a duvet on an upper bunk. She says it gives her a combination of height and warmth - both very important for cats. It’s like Fr Oliver Crilly’s wonderful description of cycling as offering a combination of solitariness and locomotion.

In case you were wondering about the state of the Irish economy, the Blogstead economic index is an authoritative measurement based solely on the asking price for the three new houses across the valley. Two years ago they were 615000 euro. Today they remain unsold at 275000 euro.

The din has faded a bit. But I thought I might share with you my favourite exchange from that crucible where church and media simmer together.

Journalist: I want to ask you about the Pope’s Encyclical

Primus: I haven’t read it

Journalist: He hasn’t published it yet

I am still waiting to use those two all-purpose/backed into a corner responses which I was taught in the US. Whatever the question, you say ‘Let me tell you what I am really passionate about’ or ‘Let me tell you a story …’

I rather like the ’straightforward handover’ style of transfer that we did on Saturday.  No big ‘do’ or anything like that.  Just pick up the diary and go .

So today was a meeting of Faith Group leaders with the First Minister and members of the Scottish Government.  You need to have a taste for that kind of meeting - but they were very generous with their time and genuine in their interest.  Tomorrow we have a meeting of our bishops with the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church.

Meanwhile I’m drowning in kind e mails, cards and Facebook messages.  I’ll get through them in time.  People have been asking how Poppy [the cat] views her new status.  I explained to her the elegant polity of the SEC which gives us a Primus and not an Archbishop.  She does elegant - so she grasped that.  She does Prima - maybe even Regina.  But she doesn’t get the ‘inter pares’ stuff.

The Anglican Communion’s first blogging primate doesn’t have much to say for himself today.  Thank-you to everyone for their kind messages and their prayers.  One has in these moments that rather delicious feeling of not being altogether in control of life.

So for now .. if you’ve arrived here, you’re probably already found some of the other stuff.  But just in case, the Scottish Episcopal Church’s website has pictures, a press release, the statement which I made to General Synod this morning and a podcast in which a Canadian and an Irishman talk about the mission and ministry of the SEC.

It seems a little inappropriate to say that a Eucharist was a tour de force. But if you wanted to get a feel of what the Scottish Episcopal Church is about, the opening service of our General Synod would be one place to look.  Last year’s service was a revelation, particularly in its use of music from around the world.  This was closer to home.  But there was  lots of music .. immediately singable by everybody .. space and grace … It was, as my colleague Grace used to say, ‘brisk with spaces.’ Congratulations to the Liturgy Committee and to Stuart Muir. I take a fairly simple view of these things. I think there is no hymn which is not improved by increasing its speed by 50%

For the rest, we were a quiescent lot. No questions on Minutes, Accounts, Budget or anything else for that matter. Tomorrow we are having a go at ‘The Mission of the SEC’ Surely everybody must have something to say about that!

It seems a little inappropriate to say that a Eucharist was a tour de force. But if you wanted to get a feel of what the Scottish Episcopal Church is about, the opening service of our General Synod would be one place to look. Lots of music .. immediately singable by everybody .. space and grace … It was, as my colleague Grace used to say, ‘brisk with spaces.’ Congratulations to the Liturgy Committee and to Stuart Muir. I take a fairly simple view of these things. I think there is no hymn which is not improved by increasing its speed by 50%

For the rest, we were a quiescent lot. No questions on Minutes, Accounts, Budget or anything else for that matter. Tomorrow we are having a go at ‘The Mission of the SEC’ Surely everybody must have something to say about that!