03.12.2014
CITI Ordinands Commissioned as Student Readers
Twelve student ordinands have been commissioned as student readers at the Church of Ireland Theological Institute by Archbishop Michael Jackson.
Philip Bryson (Connor), Jonathan McFarland (Connor), Peter Munce (Connor), Rebecca Guildea (Dublin and Glendalough), Danielle McCullagh (Connor), Stuart Moles (Connor), Geoff Hamilton (Down and Dromore), Nigel Cairns (Derry and Raphoe), Simom Scott (Dublin and Glendalough), Mark Gallagher (Armagh), Lucy Burden (Connor) and Chris St John (Down and Dromore) were commissioned during the Community Eucharist in the Institute Chapel.
In his sermon, Archbishop Jackson said it was important that people be commissioned to serve, challenge, obey and experiment in and from tradition in a spirit of holiness and dynamic of grace.
He focused on the word ‘Commissioning’. “Commissioning is an interesting word to unpick. Co–Mission–ing seem to me to express the three parts of this word and these parts draw us into the idea of sending and being sent out together with others. Connection and commitment are vital to this understanding of discipleship and ministry. And mission, therefore, forms the core of ministry,” he said.
He also said that mission had to be aggressive – not in the modern sense of the word but meaning that it had to be active in going towards those who are different from us.
“We have let the word: aggressive fall around our feet; we have used it to divide ourselves from others but this is not the primary or indeed best use of this word. It is for this reason that we need an active and not a passive understanding of mission and it is to this purpose that you are all being missioned together (commissioned) this evening by God, in this community and for the communities in which you will serve and work on any and every part–time basis,” Archbishop Jackson stated.
The Archbishop’s sermon is reproduced in full below.
Photo caption: The Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Michael Jackson (centre), the Director of the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, the Revd Dr Maurice Elliott (left) and CITI lecturers the Revd Dr Paddy McGlinchey and Revd Canon Patrick Comerford (right) with the 12 student ordinands who were commissioned as student readers: Philip Bryson (Connor),
Jonathan McFarland (Connor), Peter Munce (Connor), Rebecca Guildea (Dublin and Glendalough), Danielle McCullagh (Connor), Stuart Moles (Connor), Geoff Hamilton (Down and Dromore), Nigel Cairns (Derry and Raphoe), Simom Scott
(Dublin and Glendalough), Mark Gallagher (Armagh), Lucy Burden (Connor), and Chris St John (Down and Dromore).(Photo: Canon Patrick Comerford)
Church of Ireland Theological Institute
Service of Commissioning of Student Readers
Wednesday November 26 2014
Readings: Revelation 15:1–4; psalm 98; St Luke 21:10–19
A sermon preached by the Archbishop
Revelation 4.8a: … day and night unceasingly they sing: Holy, holy, holy is God the sovereign Lord of all, who was, and is, and is to come!
I was preaching recently in the chapel of The Queens’ Foundation, Birmingham. I noticed something interesting towards the end of the service. Quite deliberately and just before the Dismissal, the presiding minister himself physically opened the doors, both the inner and the outer doors of the chapel, on to the world outside. Unlike this chapel where we are this evening, the doors opened out on to the open air and on to a pathway rather than back into the house. As he and I walked out, I noticed a sign which said: You are now entering a sacred space, by which of course was meant the space outside. It happened to be on All Saints’ Day which made the idea of sacredness and of holiness all the more pertinent and poignant since we had grappled with this holiness in our worship and in our shared Eucharist.
Holiness is not an individual achievement. Rather, holiness is a community creation: by this I mean a creation of a community by God and a creation by the community with God of something for God and for others. The very language of creation reconnects us with the presence of God in everything and in everyone who is. For us, as disciples of Jesus Christ, holiness is energized by the act of supreme condescension by which God became human in order to give to us a good, a restored, a redeemed relationship with God and to reveal to us and in us the brightness of God’s glory in the world of God’s creation. For reasons such as this it is important that people be commissioned – as are you this evening being commissioned – to serve, to challenge, to obey and to experiment in and from the tradition as we know it, in a spirit of holiness and in the dynamic of grace.
Today’s Reading from Revelation is framed in the context of holiness:
Who shall not fear you, Lord,
And do homage to your name?
For you alone are holy. (Revelation 15.4)
It is for such a reason as the real capacity of holiness to embrace and to energize within the justice of God that people gather to worship; it is for such a reason as the energy of being sent by the Spirit of Holiness to sing the praises of the Lamb of God that fresh communities are formed from and by confident communities of faith, hope, love. This month is shaped and framed by All Saints’ Day. The Communion of Saints encourages us not to settle for the partial or the temporal when, in fact, the fulness of God is freely offered to us. Holiness is enriching; and holiness is what binds together heaven and earth in a relationship of grace to the greatness of God.
At this time of year as we move towards Advent and Christmas there is much warning and there is much apocalypse. There is a purpose in this and it is both to forewarn and to forearm us to be vigilant, to be alert and to be responsible and appreciative to the presence of God within and around us. The language of apocalypse is cosmic as well as personal; we tend to laugh at apocalypse. I suggest that this is not a wise place to be nor a wise thing to do. Understanding and interpreting the urgency of the eschatology embedded within the apocalyptic is our invitation and our calling as disciples; and as clergy–in–training it is our vocation to offer helpful interpretation to others in this minefield of imagery and of metaphor.
The Parable of the Talents from St Luke 19 is one such parable of urgency. Often we rush to alarm and to punishment, particularly of ourselves if we are vulnerable types, prone to being bullied either inside or outside the church; or alternatively we rush to the alarm and punishment of others, of those whom we think have ‘had it coming to them,’ if we are the sort of people who bully others inside or outside the church. The first reactions which any of us have to this parable are not particularly edifying. The parable deals with the delivery of work and with the fulfilment of potential – clergy are frequently prickly around any questions or explorations by others in such areas of life. Vulnerability and anger are emotions and characteristics which clergy need to keep in check if they are not to become a distorting filter of the grace of God to God’s people. I suggest that both vulnerability and anger as ways of reading this text are immature and no more than partial readings of the text. The extended parable does offer an active encouragement to us in our own day and time to be proactive in the things of God and neighbour. At the core of this parable lies the character of the individual who was too afraid to get moving and use what had been entrusted to him or her – to any purpose whatsoever within the kingdom of the parable; and this kingdom must, in some way or another, point towards the Kingdom of God. Inertia does not commend itself. And inertia is the curse of disengagement and it feeds the cynicism of clericalism. That is why ordination is not admission into a caste but into an order of ministry openly and freely shared with and fed by the ministry of all God’s people. The encouragement to us, therefore, is to transcend our own sense of either unworthiness or pride and do something for others with the gift of grace which God has given to us for them.
Commissioning is an interesting word to unpick. Co–Mission–ing seem to me to express the three parts of this word and these parts draw us into the idea of sending and being sent out together with others. Connection and commitment are vital to this understanding of discipleship and ministry. And mission, therefore, forms the core of ministry.
Co–
Mission
Being sent out together.
It is not an individual achievement but a corporate act of commitment and service. It is a dedication to attentive altruism and therefore is a pro–active interpretation and implementing of service. Mission is always of God by God through us to our neighbours and therefore back to God. Mission has to do with the Body of Christ and with relationship. Mission connects the Creator and the creation and in so doing imparts to those who are sent a real sense of being participants in the exuberance of re–creation. Again, the dynamic potential of language comes to our aid. This type of recreation is in fact a refashioning and a reformation in the divine life. Humanity, as we live it, reconnects with matter itself and there is no dualism but rather a redemption of us and all those things and those people of which and of whom we are part in such freely–given divine life.
As you are commissioned, I want to offer you another word which has somehow got lost in our modern usage is the proper use of aggression and aggressive. Mission has to be aggressive by which I mean it has to walk towards those who are other than we are. We have let the word: aggressive fall around our feet; we have used it to divide ourselves from others but this is not the primary or indeed best use of this word. It is for this reason that we need an active and not a passive understanding of mission and it is to this purpose that you are all being missioned together (commissioned) this evening by God, in this community and for the communities in which you will serve and work on any and every part–time basis.
Increasingly, I am interested in preaching at what we conventionally call: the end of the service. I mean during The Dismissal and before The Blessing. Yes I know it is the point at which people are impatient to check their mobile phones; keen to get home and check how the dog has been since everyone has been away; but don’t worry it isn’t a second address, simply a dis–placed address. Why do I call it: dis–placed? I mean that it is out of its conventional or normal or even normative – again a word which needs correctly to be used and acknowledged – place; a little bit like dis–ease, the deep sense of being deprived of ease itself, a place of fear and alarm. But such reflections, at this stage, are for another evening.
Revelation 4.11: You are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honour and power, because you created all things; by your will they were created and gave their being.