MUSINGS. . .

 On ordinations, Incarnation, and being human

The Revd Deacon Polly M. Bowen

There I was, in the last week before my vacation, tying up all the little loose ends so I could leave without having to worry about what was happening (or not happening) in the office, when Alice came into the room to tell me Tom Broad was on the phone and wanted to talk to me. 

“Hi, Polly,” he said, and continued with a few trivialities about his current math course, the weather, seminary and the fact that his ordination to the transitional diaconate was “right around the corner.” 

Then he dropped the bomb: would I please preach at his ordination.  This is truly an honor, but my heart sank and my mind raced: I was fresh from preaching the day before, and thinking that I didn’t have to do it again for a couple of months now that we have four priests on the staff. 

And besides, preaching in front of your peers is a tough assignment.  There would be lots of clergy there - most of them better and more experienced at preaching than I am.  It would not be the first ordination at which I had preached, and there were other occasions when I was subject to the scrutiny of the clergy, but it does add considerable stress to the mix. 

Eventually I calmed down and remembered that the event on September 2 is not about my preaching – it’s about Tom, the Church, and the Holy Spirit.  (Or, to be even more succinct, it’s all about God.)  Whatever I said would be forgotten soon enough, but Tom’s ordination would be forever.   So I said yes.

But my reaction was so totally human – I thought first of myself, feeling the fight or flight mechanism rising within me.  Thank God we are also human at our very best when we begin to think rationally.  Being created in God’s image means we have the means to overcome our baser instincts and act on a less than selfish level. 

It made me stop and think about being human – this great gift that we accept in such a nonchalant manner.  I’m only human, we say, making excuses for our shortcomings – and not realizing that human is a wonderful thing to be.  It’s what God chose to be when he decided to walk the earth.  Unlike the ancients who considered themselves playthings of remote, sometimes even malevolent deities, we are the precious creations of a great Creator who loves and cares for us – so much so that he chose to humble himself to become one of us. 

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. . .  There it is – that great, heart-stopping hinge of history on which we base our entire faith.  There are Christian denominations that stress other parts of the great faith-story, but for Episcopalians, it is to the Incarnation that we return again and again.   Every other part of the story depends on the Incarnation, that cardinal act of our God’s great love for us.

It’s all about Immanuel – God with us, isn’t it?  Without the Incarnation there would be no Passion, no death on the Cross, no Resurrection, no Christian Church at all.    There would be no sacraments, no ordinations in the way we know them.  Tom’s great love for God would still be genuine, and would still be fulfilled in some way – but not the way we see it today.

What happens at ordination is a mystery.  Far from being something we do, it is something God does.  As in all sacraments, the joining of Creator and Creation fills us with reverent awe.  We have busied ourselves with planning – do we have the right action?  the right words?  is the candidate fully prepared?  - and in the end, it’s the sheer gift of the Holy Spirit that makes Tom a deacon. 

And to make it even simpler (or more complicated, depending on your point of view) God’s time is not our time.  Tom has been a deacon – and a priest – for years – perhaps from all time.  We see things in linear terms of days, years, hours, but God only sees Tom – Tom, whose growing willingness to embrace his vocation has seemed to us a frustratingly slow process, but to God it just is. 

And I believe God smiles today.