Are You out of Your Mind

"Are You Out of Your Mind?"
Service of Ordination
Alabama-West Florida Conference
First United Methodist Church
Montgomery, Alabama
June 2, 2014
Scripture Lessons: II Corinthians 5.13-20
Mark 3.13-27
"I am no longer mine own, but thine."
You belong not to yourself, but to God and to God's Church. To you is given the sacred call of leading the people called Methodist in that highly unfashionable, countercultural notion from the Covenant Service: "I am no longer mine own, but thine." It is to that kind of leadership in the Church that you are set aside, ordained tonight.
Charles Wesley gets to the heart of the matter about what it means to be the Church you will be leading. He gets to the heart of the matter through poetry, of course, as poetry does. As I pray this poem, this hymn from Wesley about the Church, dear ordinands, listen to what your life is...and will be...and give thanks. Let us pray:
Why hast thou cast our lot
In the same age and place?
And why together brought
To see each other's face.
To join with softest sympathy,
And mix our friendly souls in thee?
Didst thou not make us one,
That we might one remain,
Together travel on,
And bear each other's pain,
Till all thy utmost goodness prove,
And rise renewed in perfect love?
Amen.
Any ordination sermon worth its salt is really about the Church. I am going to talk later in the sermon about just what kind of Church it is to which we are setting aside, ordaining these men and women for leadership. But I want to start by talking a bit about ordination itself, and, specifically, my ordination.
I was not ordained in the Alabama-West Florida Conference. I was ordained in the North Carolina Conference, twice -- as we were in the old days, once as deacon and once as elder -- in a tight, bland place where the sardines were packed in double layers, Reeves Auditorium at Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Fayetteville: where it's never warm in June. It's hot, it's hotter, it's the hottest. Like Montgomery....only very sandy with no breeze. Reeves Auditorium (no windows, barely-functioning air conditioning, at least back in the 1970's) is not a place marked by the transcendent, ethereal beauty of this sanctuary. No beautiful organ, no long nave, no stained glass windows, no carved statues of the apostles, no magisterial pulpit. Nevertheless, Reeves Auditorium -- hot, ugly and pedestrian in a hot, sandy, mosquito-ridden city -- Reeves Auditorium is where I first came to the clear and high realization that giving oneself to Jesus is a bit unsettling, out of the ordinary, and not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly.
I will never forget the night I was ordained elder 35 years ago and the awesome feeling that penetrated my whole body -- from my head as Bishop Blackburn laid his hands on me, to my heart as the Spirit searched out every last secret I held, to my hands and my feet literally made weak by the excitement of the hour. Set apart, ordained to Christ's ministry. Right after my ordination, someone came up to me and jokingly asked, "Do you really feel any different now than you did two hours ago?" My response: "Yeah, I do. I really do."
"So how do you feel?"
"I feel a little crazy."
The only other times I have had an experience like the one that hot June night were the times I stood for 21 years of parish ministry at the altar to baptize and confirm boys and girls, men and women, to be a part of Christ. When I laid my hands on their heads and prayed that Christ would send his spirit and set them aside to do his work. Or when I prayed at the altar during a healing service or beside someone's hospital bed for that boy, girl, man, woman, to be made well. Was I beside myself when I felt a power being sent into my hands as I laid them on those who knelt, or on those who were cradled in my arms, or on those who lay before me in the throes of dis-ease? If I was beside myself, then as Paul writes, it was for God. And when I was thus beside myself, out of my mind, crazy -- as I said the night I was ordained -- I was never more in my right mind.
To be sure, Jesus was in his right mind when he reached out his hands, and laid his hands on the twelve apostles, and set them aside to work with him. Jesus knew exactly what he was doing when he chose Simon Peter, and James and John the sons of Zebedee, and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Cananean, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him. Jesus knew what he was doing. Although we might wonder why he set aside a tax collector -- Matthew -- and a political revolutionary -- Simon the Cananean -- to walk together alongside him. That is to say, an employee of the Roman Empire and a member of the political party committed to overthrowing the empire. And we might wonder why he set aside the man, Judas Iscariot, who was going to sell him out for 30 silver coins.
So: Did Jesus really know what he was doing when he chose Matthew, and Simon the Cananean, and Judas Iscariot...or all the others, for that matter? Was he in his right mind? Or was he beside himself, out of his mind, crazy? Does Jesus know what he is doing when he chooses any of us, warts and all -- ordained and lay? Or is Jesus maybe still beside himself, out of his mind, crazy? Look around you. What do you think?
If we believe that a vital, living church comes from gathering around ourselves people who are exactly like us, then, yes, Jesus was and is out of his mind. No one could have been less like Jesus than Matthew the tax collector, or Simon the revolutionary, or Judas the betrayer. If we believe that Jesus heals people by appointing perfect ministers free from human fraility, then, yes, Jesus was and is crazy. Crazy when he chose Matthew, and Simon, and Judas -- and for that matter the other Simon, Simon Peter, who denied him; and Thomas who doubted him; and James and John who argued with Peter about which of the three was Jesus's favorite. No one could have been less perfect than Matthew, Simon and Judas; Peter, James and John. Thomas. Maybe Jesus was a little crazy to pick those men to follow him.
If we believe that there are transgressions which are impossible to forgive, then maybe Jesus was...and is...beside himself. No one would have more to forgive than Jesus, and he knew it even before the twelve did anything to forsake him. He knows it now about all of us, lay and ordained, all of us packed into this sanctuary and around this altar.
If you believe that Christ's Church should be made up of people exactly like you; if you believe that your minister has to be perfect and free of human frailty; if you believe that you have to be without sin to be worthy of approaching this altar; if you believe that you cannot forgive others and others cannot forgive you for some things that separate and divide -- if that is, indeed, how it is with your soul, then yes, I suppose you also believe Jesus is beside himself, out of his mind, crazy.
But if you can see with the eyes of faith that Jesus wants his Church -- even this church in Alabama-West Florida -- that Jesus wants his Church to be made up of all kinds of people; if you can see with the eyes of faith that your minister, and you, are sinners worthy of redeeming; if you can see with the eyes of faith that only the hospitality of mercy and forgiveness makes it possible for us to live together; if you can see all of this by faith, then you will see that Jesus -- far from being crazy -- was in his right mind when he laid his hands on those twelve. They were all different from Jesus...and each other; they were certainly imperfect; they would have much for which to be forgiven. Jesus chose them, anyway. And by choosing them, even them, Jesus who looked to be crazy, out of his mind, beside himself, was never more in his right mind.
The Church to which you and I belong -- and to which we ordain these men and women as elders to preach the Word, celebrate the sacraments, order our life together -- the Church is a very human institution. It is full of the weakness, inhospitality, self-righteousness, backbiting, lack of commitment to which all of us sinners are prone. If you don't believe it, just log on to the homepage of the United Methodist News Service. Or, for a birdseye view, go to church on Sunday.
We search for Truth; but when Truth speaks to us, we find reasons to deny Truth: Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy; honor your father and your mother; you shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal.... We make excuses, that a certain times and certain places, this truth is too hard to follow...as if it were not for the hardest times that Truth speaks to keep us from evil. Most especially, by failing to love our neighbor at all or by failing even to love our neighbor at least as extravagantly and generously as we love ourselves, we fail to love God. We choose to deny Jesus.
Yet still, it is to the company of the apostles, it is to the Church, that Jesus has so improbably gathered us just as he one day gathered those twelve who ended up denying him. It is to each other -- literally, Christ's Body -- it is to each other that we look for hope. Yours Are the Hands of Christ my friend James Howell entitled one of his first books, and so our hands are...the hands of Christ. Our sinful, weak hands. We may seem crazy -- "beside ourselves" and "out of our minds" if you will -- to look around this sanctuary tonight and realize, "Here is our hope; here is what, and who, make living worthwhile; here is what, and who, in the dark hours make life endurable." As impossible as it may seem that such a mixture of people as we can forge a life of mercy and forgiveness, of abundance and generosity, of peace that passes all understanding, nevertheless here we are because Jesus has summoned us here. And we have come. And we are setting aside, ordaining, men and women to guide us as we forge this life together we call Church.
Here we are: a little out of our minds to believe that Jesus will feed even us; never more in our right minds to believe that we are the Body of Christ and on this we are fed. Out of our minds, yet never more in our right minds.
Why hast thou cast our lot
In the same age and place?
And why together brought
To see each other's face,
To join with softest sympathy,
And mix our friendly souls in thee?
Didst thou not make us one,
That we might one remain,
Together travel on,
And bear each other's pain,
Till all thy utmost goodness prove,
And rise renewed in perfect love?
J. Cameron West
President, Huntingdon College