Commencement: May 9, 2015
Sermon for the Commencement
of the Bishop Kemper School for Ministry
The Very Reverend Craig Loya
Dean, Trinity Cathedral
Omaha, NE
of the Bishop Kemper School for Ministry
The Very Reverend Craig Loya
Dean, Trinity Cathedral
Omaha, NE
Rowan Greer was a professor of Patristics and Anglican Studies at Yale Divinity School for more than thirty years. He just died last year, and he has probably had more influence on how I understand the Christian faith and life than anyone else I've known.
Rowan was cut from the classic, Ivy League gentleman, scholar-priest cloth. His days consisted of a genteel routine of praying in the seminary chapel, walking his beloved Golden Retrievers, translating some Theodore of Mopsuestia, and teaching a class or two. When you submitted a five-page paper to him, he would almost always return it within 48 hours with at least five pages of hand-written commentary and feedback (an example that shames faculty like me that probably still haven’t returned a few of your papers). His soul was a well of kindness, and his intellect was outpaced only by his genuine holiness of life.
But there was one thing that, for a long time, I thought Rowan was dead wrong about. I can still picture him saying to me one evening at a party: "Well Craig, it seems to me that being a rector is really very simple: you visit the sick, you preach your sermons, and you basically keep track of what's going on in people's lives." Over these past eleven years, as I've tried really hard to figure out how to do all of this and how to be of some use to Jesus, I've often found myself thinking, "Actually, Rowan, it really seems a lot more complicated than that!"
Especially in this moment in history, when the cultural establishment the church once enjoyed has almost entirely crumbled away, when conversations in vestry meetings, and clergy gatherings, and seminaries, often involve a lot of hand-wringing and "whatever shall we do?" In the church geek corner of the Internet, it seems like there's something new every week that is lauded for finally having the right answers, or the right approach to relieve us from all the angst. If only churches would do these three things, if only bishops would start doing this or that, if only seminaries taught people how to the thing they don't teach.
But as I've watched all of this in recent years, and particularly as I've spent a little bit of time in the center of that ring as one of the co-chairs of TREC, I've gradually come to believe that it turns out, Rowan was right. Rowan actually did know what he was talking about.
Rowan knew that God really doesn’t need all of our anxious strivings because he actually paid attention to history. Rowan knew that all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again. Rowan knew that Gregory of Nazianzus, whose feast we celebrate today, lived through the changing winds of imperial favor and heated theological controversy. He knew that Augustine stood in the midst of the rubble of the Roman Empire, with vandals threatening the very existence of the church going forward. He knew that Jackson Kemper, and Thomas Vail, and Robert Clarkson looked out onto the breathtaking vastness of our prairie, wondering what they had signed up for, deeply uncertain about how it was going to go. And in every single one of those cases, the church was strengthened, and renewed, and invigorated once again not because someone had a brilliant solution, not because of anxious and frenzied activity, but because of the patient and faithful endurance of local communities, who stood in the midst of it, and followed Jesus, loving one another as he loves us, trusting in God’s faithfulness and mercy.
It's because of their faithful endurance in the face of uncertainty and challenge that we are sitting here, in this place, today. It is really only that, but really that, that God is asking of you as you move into new roles in your local communities that are faithfully and patiently enduring.
In our gospel lesson for today, Jesus describes two important pieces of the faithful endurance we are called to. He reminds his interlocutors that he does nothing on his own, and he instructs those who have come to believe in him to simply continue in his word. We do nothing on our own, and we continue in Jesus' word. That’s what our communities and our leaders are called to.
A person can't spend very much time in the church in this part of the world without seeing that everywhere. I've seen that faithfulness in working with every single one of you here at BKSM. I've seen it congregations that sit all over these prairies and plains, in places like Iola, Kansas and Syndey, Nebraska. I see it every single day in the little cathedral I've come to love with everything I've got in downtown Omaha. I see it in our ridiculous idiosyncrasies, in our petty squabbles, and in the mind-blowing generosity and love we manage to show each other despite our worst. We do nothing on our own. We dwell in the word of Jesus.
You are all being called to be lay persons, deacons, and priests in a church that faces an uncertain future, just like it always has. I have no doubt that you will meet incredible, sometimes insurmountable challenges in your ministry. Whatever it looks like for you, it really is almost as simple as Rowan would have it. Help the people God gives you love each other like Jesus, and live your life in a way that helps them better know that God is faithful. The churches you serve might experience some miraculous growth, they might continue on much the same as they've been, and they might dwindle down to almost nothing. All of that has happened before, and all of it will happen again. Though the mountains may topple to the earth, the waters rage and foam, though you will face with your people just how brutal and tragic life can be, though you stare with them into the darkest death, your call remains the same: love them like Jesus. Remind them that God is faithful, and God's power is mighty to save. We do nothing on our own, and we dwell in the word of Jesus.
I'm so grateful to every single one of you for what you have sacrificed, and what you will sacrifice, to join Gregory, and Augustine, and Jackson Kemper, and Rowan Greer, in the hard and holy and incredible work of using your whole life to point to God's unimaginable love and faithfulness, and to sing out Jesus' final and triumphant victory over sadness, and suffering, and death. Alleluia. Amen.
Rowan was cut from the classic, Ivy League gentleman, scholar-priest cloth. His days consisted of a genteel routine of praying in the seminary chapel, walking his beloved Golden Retrievers, translating some Theodore of Mopsuestia, and teaching a class or two. When you submitted a five-page paper to him, he would almost always return it within 48 hours with at least five pages of hand-written commentary and feedback (an example that shames faculty like me that probably still haven’t returned a few of your papers). His soul was a well of kindness, and his intellect was outpaced only by his genuine holiness of life.
But there was one thing that, for a long time, I thought Rowan was dead wrong about. I can still picture him saying to me one evening at a party: "Well Craig, it seems to me that being a rector is really very simple: you visit the sick, you preach your sermons, and you basically keep track of what's going on in people's lives." Over these past eleven years, as I've tried really hard to figure out how to do all of this and how to be of some use to Jesus, I've often found myself thinking, "Actually, Rowan, it really seems a lot more complicated than that!"
Especially in this moment in history, when the cultural establishment the church once enjoyed has almost entirely crumbled away, when conversations in vestry meetings, and clergy gatherings, and seminaries, often involve a lot of hand-wringing and "whatever shall we do?" In the church geek corner of the Internet, it seems like there's something new every week that is lauded for finally having the right answers, or the right approach to relieve us from all the angst. If only churches would do these three things, if only bishops would start doing this or that, if only seminaries taught people how to the thing they don't teach.
But as I've watched all of this in recent years, and particularly as I've spent a little bit of time in the center of that ring as one of the co-chairs of TREC, I've gradually come to believe that it turns out, Rowan was right. Rowan actually did know what he was talking about.
Rowan knew that God really doesn’t need all of our anxious strivings because he actually paid attention to history. Rowan knew that all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again. Rowan knew that Gregory of Nazianzus, whose feast we celebrate today, lived through the changing winds of imperial favor and heated theological controversy. He knew that Augustine stood in the midst of the rubble of the Roman Empire, with vandals threatening the very existence of the church going forward. He knew that Jackson Kemper, and Thomas Vail, and Robert Clarkson looked out onto the breathtaking vastness of our prairie, wondering what they had signed up for, deeply uncertain about how it was going to go. And in every single one of those cases, the church was strengthened, and renewed, and invigorated once again not because someone had a brilliant solution, not because of anxious and frenzied activity, but because of the patient and faithful endurance of local communities, who stood in the midst of it, and followed Jesus, loving one another as he loves us, trusting in God’s faithfulness and mercy.
It's because of their faithful endurance in the face of uncertainty and challenge that we are sitting here, in this place, today. It is really only that, but really that, that God is asking of you as you move into new roles in your local communities that are faithfully and patiently enduring.
In our gospel lesson for today, Jesus describes two important pieces of the faithful endurance we are called to. He reminds his interlocutors that he does nothing on his own, and he instructs those who have come to believe in him to simply continue in his word. We do nothing on our own, and we continue in Jesus' word. That’s what our communities and our leaders are called to.
A person can't spend very much time in the church in this part of the world without seeing that everywhere. I've seen that faithfulness in working with every single one of you here at BKSM. I've seen it congregations that sit all over these prairies and plains, in places like Iola, Kansas and Syndey, Nebraska. I see it every single day in the little cathedral I've come to love with everything I've got in downtown Omaha. I see it in our ridiculous idiosyncrasies, in our petty squabbles, and in the mind-blowing generosity and love we manage to show each other despite our worst. We do nothing on our own. We dwell in the word of Jesus.
You are all being called to be lay persons, deacons, and priests in a church that faces an uncertain future, just like it always has. I have no doubt that you will meet incredible, sometimes insurmountable challenges in your ministry. Whatever it looks like for you, it really is almost as simple as Rowan would have it. Help the people God gives you love each other like Jesus, and live your life in a way that helps them better know that God is faithful. The churches you serve might experience some miraculous growth, they might continue on much the same as they've been, and they might dwindle down to almost nothing. All of that has happened before, and all of it will happen again. Though the mountains may topple to the earth, the waters rage and foam, though you will face with your people just how brutal and tragic life can be, though you stare with them into the darkest death, your call remains the same: love them like Jesus. Remind them that God is faithful, and God's power is mighty to save. We do nothing on our own, and we dwell in the word of Jesus.
I'm so grateful to every single one of you for what you have sacrificed, and what you will sacrifice, to join Gregory, and Augustine, and Jackson Kemper, and Rowan Greer, in the hard and holy and incredible work of using your whole life to point to God's unimaginable love and faithfulness, and to sing out Jesus' final and triumphant victory over sadness, and suffering, and death. Alleluia. Amen.