Vocation

Thanks to everyone who came out to my installation as rector on Tuesday; it was a great service. I was a little worried that it would feel like “liturgy by the yard”—there are a lot of parts to the service!—but I think it came together well. Special thanks to the altar guild who made the church look so beautiful, and Cathy Hughes’ team of helpers (Sally, Jeanne, Paula, Janet, Marjorie, Warren, and George) who put together a delicious reception. Our organist, Stephen, wrote a wonderful anthem for the day, and St Peter’s choir offered some great pieces, too. We were joined by some of my Waltham clergy colleagues, too, with Rob Mark from the First Presbyterian and Tom Maehl from First Lutheran in Waltham. Mayor McCarthy came, too, and we saw some friends who aren’t always able to come on Sunday mornings.

In his sermon, Bishop Shaw talked about what the role of the clergy is. A rector does a lot of things, like pastoral care and education, and preaching and teaching, but the main thing, the most important thing, is that they are there to help the congregation hear where the Holy Spirit is leading. To hear how each individual’s gift can go toward the wider whole. My job as your priest is to help you (and help you help each other) discern how God is calling you to use your gifts in the service of God in this community. I think I quote this every time stewardship season comes around, but here it is again: Frederick Buechner says that real vocation is where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. God’s desire for us to be who God created us each to be. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t be anybody else. This reminds me of something I saw in writing my sermon for last Sunday, when Jesus talks about “taking up your cross”—(retold in Benedicta Ward’s The Desert Fathers, via Jan Richardson’s blog, “The Painted Prayerbook)

Abba Macarius tells a story of meeting two monks, quite naked, who have spent forty years on a tiny island in a sheet of water where the animals of the desert come to drink. At first Macarius thinks the men are spirits, so strange is their presence there. Learning that they are monks of flesh and blood, he asks them, “When the winter comes are you not frozen? And when the heat comes do not your bodies burn?” They tell him, “It is God who has made this way of life for us. We do not freeze in winter, and the summer does us no harm.”

God made this way of life for us—God has given us this thing to do. God has not given your ministry to anyone else to complete but you.

Let us all pray for the grace to find, and fulfill, those deep desires of God for us.

Coming soon—October 4, Christ Church Ministry Fair—see all the different ways there are to serve at Christ Church.