Saturday, June 25, 2011 (10:00 am) St. Philip’s In The Hills, Tucson, AZ

Ordination of a Priest: Gregory Alan Foraker Text: Isaiah 6:1-8; Karl Rahner

Take my lips and speak through them; take our minds and think with them; take our hearts and set them on fire. AMEN

In the midst of our lives, of our freedom and our struggles, we have to make a radical, absolute decision. And we never know when lightning will strike us out of the blue. It may be when we least expect to be asked whether we have the absolute faith and trust to say, “Yes”.

Sisters and brothers, we have come today, in the eloquent words of his theological and spiritual mentor, the German theologian Karl Rahner, to celebrate that Gregory Alan Foraker has said “Yes” to God’s call to ordination to the priesthood of the church. To make this radical, absolute decision to serve is the vocation not only of ordained priests, but of all of us, the whole people of God. It is the vocation that the church, when it is faithful, reflects on behalf of the whole creation, and which the ordained person, when s/he is faithful, reflects on behalf of the church.

Greg’s journey to this place and time has embodied Rahner’s words. He is all too familiar with lightning striking and responding with yet another “Yes” to God’s call, never fully knowing what might be next, never fully knowing what that decision would mean for his life and vocation, yet trusting that the One who calls would be ever present. Greg grew up in the Methodist tradition and was profoundly shaped by its attention to evangelism and interfaith relationships. Later, he said, “Yes,” to the deep, inner urging for formation and renewal in the mystical, spiritual, and liturgical aspects of the Roman Catholic Church. While completing priestly formation and training with the Paulists in Washington, DC, Greg wanted to be closer to his brother, Kevin, as he was dying in Phoenix. The closest outpost the Paulists had was St. Cyril’s Parish here in Tucson. Of course, Greg said, “Yes,” again, and headed west for an internship. Encouraged to visit St. Philip’s soon after he arrived, Greg did. After some months, he realized he was once more being called into a new place and a new ministry. Over months that drew into years, Greg struggled to make another radical decision – to pursue ordination in the Episcopal Church, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Greg stands before us today, prepared to say, “Yes,” again to a call that takes him into another place in his journey to serve God and God’s people. He has been formed and transformed by all of his rich experiences in the traditions to which he has been faithful, and they continue to influence the powerful ministry he has. Moreover, these experiences make him the wise, passionate, compassionate, loving, patient, and steadfast servant of God that he is today.

The real question before Greg and before all of us right now is the same question that has always been before us: “What now?” What comes next for all of us who dare to say “Yes” to God? How shall we serve the God who has chosen and called us? The book of the prophet Isaiah offers timely and poignant considerations. In the sixth chapter, the prophet is commissioned – chosen and called out by God. That prospective prophet comes up with a litany of excuses as to why he is not up to the task. God removes the excuses, and calls again, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” With absolute faith and trust beyond a shadow of a doubt, the chosen one responds, “Here am I; send me!” It is all very exciting and the new prophet is off and running. Most, if not all of us, can resonate with this experience in our own vocations.

If we fast-forward through Isaiah, we discover later a very different situation. Isaiah speaks for an unnamed servant of God who has hit a wall. Most, if not all of us, can resonate with this experience as well. Conviction and hope have faded. Confidence and success have yielded to lingering self-doubt and frustration. When we come upon this servant in the forty-ninth chapter of Isaiah, he is in deep despair. Nothing is working out for him. Everything he touches breaks. He knows that God has called him from his mother’s womb; he knows that he is God’s child, but that only intensifies his grief because he is convinced he has wasted his gifts. God has made his mouth like a sharp sword, but his words do not seem to be able to cut through anything. God has made him like a polished arrow, but he cannot seem to hit the target, let alone the mark. “I have labored in vain,” he says, “I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.”

This is God’s servant, God’s Chosen One, and whether the words are capitalized or not, they speak to all of us who are God’s servants in this world. Whether we like it or not, every one of us is a full-fledged deputy of God’s realm. Some of us are better at it than others and some of us do more harm than good, but none of us is excused. The moment we were baptized, we were set apart as God’s servants in this world, and the very fact that we are still hanging around means that we have not resigned yet.

Whether we are part of the church because we believe or because we want to believe, we know that God has the power to change our lives and that people expect us to be different somehow – kinder and more generous, wiser and more honest. All of you with church stickers on your cars know what I mean. No more pulling in front of people or parking in spaces reserved for the handicapped. No more tailgating or coasting through stop signs. You have to let the other person go first, and you had better wash your car while you are at it, because you do not want people thinking Christians are slobs.

You get the idea. You are God’s people, and God’s people are called to be extraordinary: extra thoughtful, extra friendly, extra involved. So you are. You do and do and do. You volunteer, you join, you serve, you listen, you give. You leave home early in the morning and come home late at night. You take on other people’s problems, you put them first, you invite them into your home. They try to take your coat and you give them your shirt as well.

You burn your candle at both ends, discovering that the reward for a job well done is not less work but more work, none of which stays done. You begin to wonder whether it is God you are serving or only your own ego. You snap at someone who does not deserve it and your bitterness surprises you. You start getting tired earlier and earlier in the day until finally one morning you cannot get out of bed at all. “I have labored in vain,” you say to the ceiling. “ I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.”

I expect that Isaiah’s servant was feeling something like that when he confessed his own failure to God. Expecting to be fired or at least retired and replaced by someone more equal to the task, he tells God that he has accomplished nothing, is nothing, deserves nothing, but God does not accept his resignation. God – whose ideas of success and failure have never coincided with our own – has a better idea. “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel,” God says. “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

Now that is divine logic for you. Fail at a large task and you are given a larger one. Produce hardly a spark in your own small corner of the world and you are promoted to light the whole planet. It is either a case of divine irony or else God knows something we servants do not know, namely, that our success does not depend on those who are chosen but on the one who chooses them, the Holy One of Israel, in whose hand the sharp sword cannot fail to dazzle, in whose bow the polished arrow cannot fail to find its mark.

The only way we can truly fail, apparently, is to remove ourselves from those hands, to let our own poor judgment make us quit our relationship with the Chooser, disqualifying ourselves from God’s service on the grounds that our efforts are not good enough, our skills are not fine enough, our scores are not high enough. Who do we think we are?

When our own ideas of success go bankrupt, when our own notions of servanthood are exhausted, only then is there room for God to give us a new vision of ourselves. For Isaiah’s servant, that vision was one of light – of epiphany – of being set on fire as God’s beacon in the world. He had thought it was enough for him to do his duty, to do the particular tasks God had set before him, tasks at which he labored and labored until he had no strength left. He came to the end of his rope. He admitted defeat, and that is when God had some room to negotiate.

“Stop doing a job,” God said. “Start being a light. Stop doing your duty. Start being mine. Stop worrying whether or not you have done a good job. Start leaving that up to me. You can’t see it the way I can. You just let your light shine and let me take care of the rest. I chose you and I’ve got good taste. I made you and I can be trusted.”

That is not an authorized translation, mind you, but what if? What if the real test of our success as God’s servants is not what we do but how we do it? What if the real measure of our extraordinariness as God’s people is not our thoughtfulness or our friendliness or our busyness but our spark? What if the real sign of our witness to the light is not how much we accomplish but our own lightness, our own reflection of the bright God who has chosen us and lit us up and sent us into the world like candles into a dark room?

It is just an idea, but if there is anything to it then there is no such thing as laboring in vain. How would we know? Can a flame see its own light? Who asked our opinion? Who put us in charge? The Holy One of Israel has chosen us, has called us from our mothers’ wombs and named our names, giving us mouths like sharp swords, making us like polished arrows. It is not up to us to decide whether we have succeeded or failed. It is not up to us to decide if we have labored in vain.

To spend our strength doing that is to spend it on nothing and vanity, while the call of God hauls so much more strenuously at our hearts, calling us to serve, certainly, but calling us first and last to stay as close as we know how to the one who has chosen us, to stay as close to the light as we can, so that our witness is not a matter of performing tasks or playing roles or meeting expectations, but of remaining in white hot relationship with the one who is able to make epiphanies out of all our days.

It is just an idea, but if there is anything to it then it is too light a thing, you servants of God, that you should spend your strength doing your duty when what you have been called to do is to ignite, enflame, combust, burn, shine with the glory of God who has chosen you, and given you to the world, bright lights to the ends of the earth.

Greg, your own historical, spiritual mentor, Karl Rahner, realized that God is always already there. May you, Greg, and we, people, never lose sight of that reality. May you, Greg, and we, people, servants of God, remember that we have been chosen and called by the Holy One who stands with us and equips us for the ministry to which we are called. May you, Greg, and we, people, continue making radical, absolute decisions, even as lightning strikes; and trusting that when we say “Yes,” a way will be made where there is no way. May you, Greg, and we, people, remain in the divine flaming presence, and become the bright lights of God, given to the world, that God’s love and justice may reach to the ends of the earth. AMEN