Enjoy one of the many great sermons by Sarah Hollar...
December 13, 2009
The church is dressed in blue. The priest is dressed in blue. We are deep in the season of Advent. We are midway in that short time of making ready, of preparing our hearts and minds for the coming of the promised one. The Prince of Peace, the wonderful counselor, the Messiah is on his way to earth and these are the days we are to get ourselves in order and arrange to meet him. The church gives us elaborate symbols to encourage our focus. We have Advent wreaths and calendars and color coded candles. Holy Scripture offers pointed lessons to direct our thoughts. Last week, John the Baptist appears out of wilderness calling crowds to the Jordan River to be baptized. He draws the people into the water to wash away their sins, to refresh their minds so that they turn away from their self-serving lives and turn back to healthy righteous living with God. Last week, we were introduced to this powerful prophet with a new message for a new age. This week we hear him speak. John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers!” And here paraphrased: Do not say to yourselves, I’m safe, I’m on the right side. My people are church goers. Even now the ax of judgment is an arm’s length away and every tree, every shrub that isn’t firmly rooted in faithful living will be cut down and thrown into the fire. And if you think I’m formidable and aggressive, the one who is more powerful than I is coming. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit, that power that cannot be contained. He will baptize you with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand. He’ll use it. He’ll clear his land with it. The good he’ll gather to him. Those he finds lacking, he’ll pitch into the unquenchable fire. The lesson ends with these words “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.”
Did you hear exhortations? Did you hear affirmation, celebration, good news? If that was John’s intent he is incredibly subtle and nuanced. Brood of vipers and unquenchable fire has different implications in my mind. What is John about? Where exactly is the good in his news? The jarring disconnect in John’s message reminds me of the requirements for ordination to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. The process is long, complicated and arduous. This is not a personal commentary. Right there on page one of the Ordination Protocol in bold, italicized letters is the statement “The ordination process is long and arduous.” The next line doesn’t read “Turn back ye faint of heart,” but the implication is pretty clear. There are multiple meetings with multiple convened groups with multiple depositions. Some entering the process refer to these steps as jumping through hoops. These folk are quickly weeded out. Those who state for the record, “I appreciate these opportunities for spiritual growth” are moved ahead. In the process one’s character, world view, family relationships, theology, church experience, personal successes, private traumas, fears, failures, and aspirations are examined again and again and again. No question is off limits and for years your fate is in the hands of subjective committees. As one progresses through the system, letters from the bishop arrive. There are two standard forms. One says I’m sorry you have not been approved for further consideration. The other says, congratulations, you have successfully completed this phase of the ordination process. The next sentence reads, this in no way guarantees approval of the next phase. I suppose the congrats and the good news expressed is that the winnowing fork has been stayed a little longer, but make no mistake, it is still close at hand.
If one accumulates enough letters, one moves from clueless hopeful to Aspirant to Postulate to Candidate to Transitional Deacon to Priest. In the candidate phase, one is uprooted, unemployed and ensconced in one of the ten Episcopal seminaries in the United States. For three years you study religious doctrine, spiritual disciplines, ethical conundrums, so that in the end you will have an M. Div. degree. At that point, you’ve become a Master of all things Divine. The seminary years are not for academic accreditation only. While there, one is closely observed and evaluated. How one endures sanctimonious, pious, impossible people is noted and reported back to your bishop.
On the first day of orientation, the Dean of Academic Affairs, not the Dean of Student Life as one might expect, but the Dean of grades announces there are people in this room you will soon determine have no business being priests. You will wonder how they got this far. You will firmly believe a terrible mistake has occurred. Know this, someone is thinking the same about you. So, as the stacks of syllabi are passed out and the security code to the library is posted and erased, you’re looking around, wondering who dislikes you so intensely so soon.
Years pass, courses begin and end, trips back home for interview and psychologicals, updates to the bishops, clinical internships, and suddenly it’s the beginning of the final semester. On the first Friday, Saturday, Monday and Tuesday of January, all 3rd seminarians across the U.S. sit for the General Ordination Exams. He dreaded vomit-inducing GOEs. Like the Sword of Damacles, they’ve been hanging over heads since the beginning of the process. But then they seemed so far removed, a terrifying myth used to scare frivolous students back to their books. Now the packets sealed and guarded have arrived.
At 8:00am, in each time zone, green, queasy candidates for Holy Orders are on their knees in chapel. They don’t hear a word of the service. A loud droning sound in their head blocks out the readings. All they hear is a panic-stricken voice repeating, “Please God, let me have a clue.” At 8:45, released from church, the horde runs to exam central and gets packet #1. There will be 7 packets given out over the four day period. Six will be four hour exams. One will be an 8 hour exam. All are essays and the topic can be anything, anything related to one of the seven areas – scripture, church history, liturgy, ethics, pastoral theology, systematic theology, contemporary issues. Folk rip open the envelop, read the question, run to the library or dorm room or worse, jump in their car and drive home to sign into the exam answer site.
Day Two, I almost run over an old man as I drove and read Part 7 of a nine part question. There is nothing, nothing affirming about the GOE experience. It’s anxiety provoking. It’s nausea inducing. There’s no way to study. There’s too much to cover. One can only organize. One can only maintain focus and remain calm. The problem is they come really late in the process, so by the time they arrive, you are really, really vested in the outcome. Huge sacrifices have been made to get you this far and if you fail any one of the seven, you don’t get ordained. There is no clear mechanism for retesting. You can’t just take one of the seven again the next year. In fact, the standard is a one time attempt.
One might think that examining Board of Chaplains would be a gracious, accepting group eager to encourage folk in the vocation. Not so much. They see themselves as the arbiters of the tradition, the last bastion of ecclesiastical truth and quality. This is good and healthy for the church, but their determinations are sometimes skewed. The story circulating in my seminary was about the honor student who failed his contemporary issue exam. That year, the question centered on racism in America. His answer was deemed inadequate. That determination was problematic on two fronts. First, it suggested he was a racist, a deterrent for future employment. Second, it was ridiculous. He was a white seminarian, married to an African American pediatrician and together they had adopted a bi-racial baby. Clearly, the man knew something about race relations in America.
These kind of stories, coupled with the dramatic consequences of exam grades made the GOE experience hard and painful. Folk would avoid them if there was any possible way to do so. The memory stays with you. Two childbirths I vaguely recollect. The GOEs, I remember! Still and yet…in the trauma, through the hardship, there was and remains good news. At the end, when the results arrive and tests are passed, one knows that one is prepared, one is ready for the work ahead. One has integrated the essential lore and facts. One is equipped to address the issues and answer the concerns. Prepared, ready, equipped and focused for the work ahead. Prepared, ready, equipped and focused for the coming goal, for the great celebration of ordination and the deeply satisfying life that follows.
The call to repentance, the call to serious self-examination that John the Baptist demands of would-be followers as a prerequisite to the coming of Christ is this kind of hard, good news. Much is expected so that the prize will be gratefully received. John the Baptist calls us to focused organization of our minds and hard study of the dry, cracked places in our relationship with God and neighbor. He calls us to consider our sins, the places where we’ve fallen away from God and how, how and when we’ll make amends and turn back to God. He calls us to repentance so that when the Christ, the Messiah, the Prince of Peace, the Wonderful Counselor arrives, we will be prepared, ready, confident in both our need for his coming and our appreciation for his appearance.
This hard, serious examination is our work and the ultimate good news of the season. Go. Go and consider. Go and make yourself ready for the coming of the greatest good news.
Go and prepare, just be careful. Don’t drive over anyone in the process.
John calls us, dear ones, to “make ready” ….He is coming.
