Commencement Sermon – School of Theology
The Rt. Rev. Frank S. Logue preached this sermon for the St. Luke School of Theology Commencement at Sewanee: The University of the South in All Saints’ Chapel on May 10, 2024.
Working Together
1 Corinthians 3:5-11 and John 4:31-38
The hours of lectures, reading, and taking tests are so very long.
The days can also pass slowly as you toil into the night studying, researching, and writing.
Yet, the years of working toward an advanced degree are surprisingly short.
After what feels like a very long time, that somehow passed quickly, you discover that all the other lemmings have jumped off the cliff and your turn is up. The DMin thesis has been defended or the GOEs are done or, in whatever way applies to you, every box has been checked and you need only pick up your degree to move forward in a new season of ministry enriched by your time on The Mountain.
You, the School of Theology Class of 2024, have been gifted with a very different experience than many fellow alumni. Your decision to pursue ordination or advanced studies was made in the midst of a global pandemic. For those of you who are MDiv students, unlike the classes immediately before you, you were permitted to worship in the Chapel of the Apostles in your junior year. Masking precautions remained and while you were living into the EQB ideal of “how good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity” you did so without sharing the chalice in the Eucharist.
You have not only learned of how the experience of the Babylonian Exile formed the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you also experienced exile from Hamilton Hall for the past year and a half. Because of, or in spite of, these challenges, you have relied on each other, your professors, and others in your circle of support which has given you a key to ministry: teamwork. You know this well as you have supported one another.
As we read in the first letter to the Christians in Corinth, “we are God’s servants, working together.” Ministry is inherently teamwork where we work alongside others and build on their work. More importantly, even the team of people does not work alone as “neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”
Jesus puts it this way in our reading from John’s Gospel, “‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.”
The gift nestled in our propers for this commencement is clarity that while we long to see lives changed by the Good News of Jesus, that metanoia does not depend on us alone or even on us primarily. Everything that needs to be done has already been done by Jesus. The grace of someone experiencing a conversion of heart and mind depends neither on dazzling homiletical prowess nor on gorgeous liturgies. The metamorphosis we long for people to experience is Holy Spirit work. You can’t earn it. You can’t deserve it. But you do get the immense joy of sharing this love of God with others.
This overwhelming, audacious Good News is life-giving. Those with whom you minister have been fed a steady diet teaching them that they are not enough. Casual cruelty on the elementary school playground or betrayal by friends in our teen years, and all the experiences of a lifetime when others see us with harsh judgment, can shake anyone. Many people know the feeling of never having measured up. You and I know that as well in our own lives. But we also know the loving care of the Holy Trinity. We know that while there is much we can do to amend our lives, no one needs to be taller, thinner, prettier, funnier, fitter, smarter, younger, more mature, or anything other than the person God made them to be in order to be loved by the creator of the Cosmos. If this awareness feels beside the point in a world on fire, remember that failure to see every other person as a sibling is at the root of all the pain and suffering we do see.
This is not to do away with our knowledge of sin and our need for redemption. I am not sweeping aside the need for repentance and amendment of life. Instead, I want to remind you that your ministry is in communities where so many people need the grace, mercy, and compassion we have found in Jesus as much as a thirsty person needs water.
Yet, we are not immune to the cult of earning and deserving. If your goal is to be successful in ministry, know that this is a never-ending race set at an unsustainable pace. Someone will always seem to be effortlessly thriving in ministry. Another will get an amazing call to some plum position. Life, especially life in the church, can become yet another place where we feel we never measure up. The antidote to this poison of perfectionism is coming to know deep in your bones that only God can give the growth.
If neither Apollos nor Paul are anything, who are we to seek to be the greatest of lay leaders, deacons, priests, and bishops. The church has suffered much from those who want to be a Great Bishop and no less from those who want to make their mark as a scholar or a pastor, priest, and teacher. This is why the word from scripture about working together matters. We work together with lay leaders, clergy colleagues, and most importantly the Holy Spirit. Your ministry is not now, nor will it ever be, about you. Our common call is not to achieve great things for God. Our common call is to faithfully follow Jesus. In any key decisions in ministry, ask the question of what faithfulness to Jesus looks like in this moment. Respond as well as you can with what you know at that time and trust God with the rest. This is the life of faith and so it is the life of ministry.
To this call to faithfulness, I need to add counter-intuitive wisdom from G.K. Chesterton, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”
I say this to describe what fidelity looks like in the real day-to-day work of serving God through the church: “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” There is much in ministry that is worth doing and doing well including prayer, reading scripture, teaching classes, leading Bible studies, planning liturgies, giving sermons, visiting the sick and shuts ins, being with those at the end of their life, then caring for their families after a death, not to mention stewardship campaigns and budget meetings. All of these and so much more need you to do them to the best of your ability. But if they are worth doing well, they are also worth doing poorly.
For example, you must have spiritual disciplines which you maintain in order to nourish you from the deep springs of living water which they offer. But when you have two funerals during the week and Sunday is coming fast while you are trying to finish preparing the confirmands for the Bishop’s visit, it is okay if morning devotions replace Morning Prayer, or you intercede for those on your prayer list as you drive to the funeral home. Be gentle on yourself, not everything can be done equally well every day. Sermons need more time than seems possible, and sometimes you simply won’t be able to give them all they need. As your liturgics professor has taught you, “Done is better than good.” The Holy Spirit will bless what you can do that week. Faithfulness is the goal, not greatness. Don’t let your idea of the perfect prevent the possible.
The church has suffered enough from narcissists with a messianic complex. You and I have been wounded and we have experienced healing, but we are not The Healer. Those of us who want to do this work over the long haul without getting close to that narcissistic terrain need people with whom we can share our real struggles. Get a WhatsApp, GroupMe, or private Facebook group for your sake and the sake of the church. A therapist, a spiritual director, a colleague group, activities and friends not connected with the church—these are essentials rather than options—as are spiritual disciplines that nourish your faith day-by-day.
Being gentle on yourself is not an excuse to drop your private prayers and devotions and leave the reading of scripture to sermon prep alone. That is not what steadfast devotion looks like. Yet the ebb and flow of ministry means doing all things well will always be beyond your grasp.
“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly,” also, quite surprisingly, applies to love. The most important part of serving God in the Church is to love your people, those in your congregation and those in the community around your church. This is at the heart of any call to follow Jesus who distilled all the Law and the Prophets to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”
Loving your neighbor includes everyone made in the image and likeness of God, so it certainly includes the person who is chairing the parking lot conversations that have turned far less than charitable. Loving your people is everything, and it is, therefore, worth doing badly on the days when you can’t love them perfectly. Love is an act of will, so choose to love them even when it is hardest to see the image of God within them. Jesus gave his life for the salvation of the person making your life difficult. You will find a way back to loving him or her if you decide to do so and ask God to give you the grace to love. The person most difficult to love can also be yourself. You are also in need of the grace and mercy you want for others. You too need this loving kindness. This matters because the Gospel is not “get your act together and God could possibly come to love you.” The wonderfully Good News we get the joy to share is that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
The fate of the church does not depend on you, or even on all of us together. Yet our faithfulness does matter. The deepest center of our call is to fall in love with the God who made us and loves us again and again and again and in so doing remain steadfast in servant ministry, knowing that God is the one to give the growth. When you can manage this balancing act of ministry well, do so delighting in the knowledge that God is doing more than you could ever accomplish on your own.
And on all the days when this call seems much too heavy, remember that the church is not yours to save and, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” Pray. Read the Bible. Reflect with your spiritual director. Share your sorrows with your colleagues. Muddle through as best you can and occasionally pause and take note of the ways the Holy Spirit keeps showing up in your life. The hours and days can be so very long, but the years will pass quickly as God works in, through, and around you, and all those on your team, to build up the Body of Christ. In this there is great joy.
Amen.