William H. Willimon - "Your Ordination" (January 11, 1998)
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| - | Today's gospel is from | 0:06 |
| the third chapter of Luke. | 0:09 | |
| As the people were filled with expectation | 0:12 | |
| and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, | 0:16 | |
| whether he might be the Messiah, | 0:20 | |
| John answered all of them by saying, | 0:23 | |
| I baptize you with water. | 0:25 | |
| But one who is more powerful than I is coming. | 0:28 | |
| I'm not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. | 0:31 | |
| He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. | 0:35 | |
| His winnowing fork is in his hand | 0:40 | |
| to clear his threshing floor, | 0:42 | |
| and to gather the wheat into the granary. | 0:44 | |
| But the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. | 0:46 | |
| Now when the people were baptized, | 0:52 | |
| and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, | 0:54 | |
| the heaven opened, | 0:59 | |
| and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form | 1:01 | |
| like a dove. | 1:05 | |
| And a voice came from heaven. | 1:07 | |
| You are my son, the beloved. | 1:09 | |
| With you I am well pleased. | 1:13 | |
| This is the word of the Lord. | 1:17 | |
| Congregation | Thanks be to God. | 1:20 |
| - | I remember well, so vividly, | 1:25 |
| the night that I was ordained | 1:29 | |
| over 20 years ago. | 1:32 | |
| Broad Street Methodist Church, | 1:36 | |
| Clinton, South Carolina. | 1:39 | |
| We gathered for a grand service | 1:41 | |
| there with family friends. | 1:44 | |
| The bishop called me forward. | 1:48 | |
| He handed to me a Bible. | 1:51 | |
| He said, take thou authority to preach the word. | 1:53 | |
| He handed to me a chalice. | 1:58 | |
| Take thou authority, he said, | 2:01 | |
| to administer the sacraments to God's people. | 2:04 | |
| And then I knelt and the bishop | 2:08 | |
| and gathered clergy laid hands upon my head | 2:11 | |
| and I was made a minister. | 2:15 | |
| I was ordained that night. | 2:18 | |
| I was called out, set apart, | 2:22 | |
| equipped, authorized to minister | 2:25 | |
| the night I was ordained. | 2:30 | |
| Do you remember your ordination? | 2:33 | |
| Because in baptism, | 2:39 | |
| that's what all Christians are, | 2:43 | |
| ordained as ministers | 2:46 | |
| to share in Christ's ministry. | 2:49 | |
| Trouble is, | 2:53 | |
| when most of you hear the word minister, | 2:57 | |
| you think like pastor, or priest, or preacher. | 2:59 | |
| But you don't think you, the baptized. | 3:03 | |
| In the early rights of baptism, | 3:08 | |
| it was made more clear. | 3:12 | |
| The newly baptized person was dressed in a white robe, | 3:14 | |
| symbolizing the new identity that you had received | 3:18 | |
| as you had been commissioned by Christ. | 3:21 | |
| The baptized were given various implements of their ministry | 3:24 | |
| like the Bible. | 3:28 | |
| Hands were laid upon the head | 3:30 | |
| as symbol of the gift of the Holy Spirit | 3:33 | |
| to empower this person for ministry. | 3:36 | |
| Now if we had the time and you had the inclination, | 3:39 | |
| I could tell you the whole story | 3:42 | |
| of how in the history of the church, | 3:45 | |
| these activities which once related to baptism, | 3:47 | |
| everybody, | 3:51 | |
| gradually bled over into the right of ordination | 3:52 | |
| just of clergy. | 3:56 | |
| So that now, when you think of laying on of hands, | 3:58 | |
| you think of it as a gesture done to pastors, | 4:02 | |
| done to clergy, | 4:06 | |
| but not done to all the baptized. | 4:06 | |
| That's sad. | 4:09 | |
| Because in baptism, | 4:12 | |
| everybody is a minister, | 4:13 | |
| everybody called apart to share in Christ's ministry | 4:15 | |
| to the world. | 4:19 | |
| It's sad that we think otherwise. | 4:22 | |
| I teach over in the seminary. | 4:24 | |
| And we always have people who show up at Divinity School | 4:27 | |
| preparing to be clergy | 4:32 | |
| when in reality, as it turns out, | 4:35 | |
| they're not called to be clergy, | 4:37 | |
| not called to be leaders of congregations. | 4:38 | |
| What they're called is, they're called... | 4:41 | |
| They want to lead lives of deeper commitment to Christ. | 4:44 | |
| They want to give themselves fully to Christ's ministry. | 4:48 | |
| And the sad state of the church today is | 4:52 | |
| the only way they think they can do that | 4:55 | |
| is to go to three years of seminary and be clergy. | 4:56 | |
| But no, all are called to be ministers. | 5:00 | |
| The ministers of the church are the laity. | 5:07 | |
| With clergy there to serve in equipping | 5:11 | |
| the laity to be ministers. | 5:15 | |
| I've gotten on this theme of ordination | 5:20 | |
| because today's scripture | 5:23 | |
| is the story of the baptism of Jesus. | 5:26 | |
| And in that story, | 5:31 | |
| Jesus, beginning of his adult life, | 5:33 | |
| he comes to the river and he is baptized. | 5:37 | |
| And as he is baptized, the heavens open. | 5:41 | |
| The Holy Spirit descends like a dove. | 5:44 | |
| There's a voice. | 5:46 | |
| This is my son in whom I am well pleased. | 5:47 | |
| It's clear that this is the beginning of Jesus' ministry. | 5:52 | |
| That day with the Holy Spirit, | 5:56 | |
| there's a sign that Jesus is being authorized, | 5:58 | |
| empowered, equipped | 6:01 | |
| to be a sign of the kingdom of God in the world. | 6:05 | |
| This is Jesus' day of ordination. | 6:10 | |
| All right, here an echo here | 6:15 | |
| of a story that we read also from the gospel of Luke | 6:16 | |
| just a few weeks ago here in the chapel. | 6:19 | |
| Here's Mary, | 6:22 | |
| young peasant woman in Judea minding her own business. | 6:23 | |
| An angel comes and says Mary, | 6:26 | |
| God is calling you. | 6:30 | |
| The Holy Spirit will come upon you to equip you | 6:32 | |
| to do what God wants you to do. | 6:35 | |
| You will be the vessel by which | 6:38 | |
| God will bless the whole world. | 6:40 | |
| See, Mary is receiving the Holy Spirit. | 6:43 | |
| She is entering into her ministry. | 6:47 | |
| In baptism, each of us is gifted with the Holy Spirit | 6:51 | |
| to be about our ministry. | 6:56 | |
| This story of Jesus' baptism, | 6:59 | |
| the story of Mary's annunciation, | 7:02 | |
| these are stories about ministry. | 7:04 | |
| And from these stories I draw three implications for you. | 7:08 | |
| You the ministers. | 7:14 | |
| The first implication is | 7:18 | |
| that ministry, your ministry, | 7:21 | |
| is a gift of God. | 7:24 | |
| It is something that God does | 7:26 | |
| before it is anything that you do. | 7:29 | |
| It's a gift that symbolize | 7:32 | |
| the descent of the Holy Spirit, | 7:34 | |
| the laying on of hands. | 7:36 | |
| This gesture, it's a gift. | 7:38 | |
| Your ministry is God's idea | 7:42 | |
| long before it becomes your idea. | 7:44 | |
| And I can tell you as a pastor, | 7:47 | |
| when people get called for ministry, | 7:49 | |
| invariably they protest. | 7:53 | |
| They say, God must have gotten the wrong name. | 7:56 | |
| God must have the wrong address. | 7:59 | |
| I'm not the right person for this. | 8:00 | |
| But it does seem, | 8:03 | |
| and you can think of stories in the Bible | 8:04 | |
| that back this up. | 8:06 | |
| It does seem that | 8:07 | |
| that's sort of the way God does it. | 8:08 | |
| In God's great wisdom, | 8:10 | |
| God calls whom God calls. | 8:11 | |
| This came through to me very vividly sometime back. | 8:14 | |
| I was leaning on this seminarian because | 8:19 | |
| she was late on her second assignment in my class. | 8:24 | |
| This is not a story that involves Marty Luna. | 8:29 | |
| It could have but... | 8:32 | |
| (congregation laughing) | ||
| And she told me that she wouldn't have the second paper | 8:35 | |
| due on time because something had come up. | 8:38 | |
| And I used this as an opportunity to say to her | 8:41 | |
| something about being a pastor. | 8:44 | |
| And I said, look, this is unacceptable okay. | 8:46 | |
| This is irresponsible. | 8:49 | |
| You're going to be a pastor. | 8:51 | |
| Pastors have got to manage their time to get the job done. | 8:52 | |
| This is part of the work. | 8:55 | |
| You can't show up on Sunday and say, | 8:57 | |
| I'd like to have a sermon but it's been a busy week | 8:59 | |
| and so we're going to break up into discussion groups | 9:02 | |
| for 20 minutes. | 9:04 | |
| (congregation laughing) | ||
| You can't do that as a pastor. | 9:05 | |
| This is irresponsible. | 9:07 | |
| You have got to get more punctual and dependable. | 9:08 | |
| And you've got to... | 9:12 | |
| And she said to me, hey, hey, hey, hey. | 9:13 | |
| Back off, okay. | 9:16 | |
| I agree with you. | 9:19 | |
| I'm not equipped to be a minister. | 9:20 | |
| I am not a person who should be turned loose | 9:23 | |
| with a congregation. | 9:26 | |
| But I've said all of this previously to God | 9:28 | |
| and this is God's idea, | 9:31 | |
| and you're complaining to the wrong person. | 9:33 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 9:35 | |
| And you know, | 9:42 | |
| she was right. | 9:44 | |
| God calls whom God calls. | 9:47 | |
| It's called a gift. | 9:50 | |
| It is not something that wells up within us, | 9:52 | |
| but something that comes to us from the outside, | 9:55 | |
| this descent of the dove, this gift. | 9:58 | |
| You are a minister because | 10:01 | |
| you got your name called, | 10:05 | |
| because you said yes. | 10:08 | |
| The Holy Spirit is given to you | 10:10 | |
| to empower you for ministry. | 10:13 | |
| Which leads to the second observation. | 10:17 | |
| And it seems that these stories of ordination, | 10:20 | |
| of ministry are clear, | 10:23 | |
| are clear that as the church has always said, | 10:28 | |
| God equips those whom God calls. | 10:31 | |
| God doesn't call you | 10:37 | |
| to perform any ministry | 10:39 | |
| for which God will not equip you to do that ministry. | 10:41 | |
| What God called you to do is too difficult | 10:46 | |
| to be done on your own, | 10:48 | |
| or by your natural abilities. | 10:50 | |
| And so God gives you gifts. | 10:52 | |
| And so you should be asking yourself questions like, | 10:55 | |
| well where has God called me to be a minister? | 11:00 | |
| And then follow that up by, | 11:04 | |
| and how is God giving me the gifts that I need to be | 11:06 | |
| in that ministry? | 11:11 | |
| And I can tell you, again as a pastor, | 11:14 | |
| I have observed remarkable gifts of God given | 11:16 | |
| in remarkable ways. | 11:21 | |
| I have seen people be given a gift for ministry | 11:24 | |
| which at first view | 11:28 | |
| didn't seem like a gift at all. | 11:30 | |
| One of my former churches, I had a woman, | 11:33 | |
| she spent most of her life unmarried. | 11:37 | |
| Her husband had too. | 11:40 | |
| They met at mid-life. | 11:42 | |
| They married, they met dancing. | 11:43 | |
| They loved to dance. | 11:46 | |
| Within the first year of their marriage, | 11:48 | |
| she was struck down by a terrible, | 11:49 | |
| debilitating spinal disease. | 11:52 | |
| And within a year or so, | 11:55 | |
| she was paralyzed from the waist down, | 11:56 | |
| lying in bed. | 12:00 | |
| She lay there. | 12:02 | |
| It was a great tragedy. | 12:03 | |
| And one day as I was visiting her she said, | 12:06 | |
| I'm lying here and I've been wondering, | 12:11 | |
| what can I do for God in my situation? | 12:13 | |
| What can I do for the church? | 12:17 | |
| And I said, oh well I think you're doing well | 12:18 | |
| just to be here. | 12:20 | |
| I mean just keeping on living. | 12:22 | |
| That's a challenge enough for you. | 12:25 | |
| But wisely, she wouldn't let that be enough | 12:28 | |
| and she said, I'm just thinking, | 12:31 | |
| I wonder what God might want me to do. | 12:32 | |
| And I'm sitting there as a pastor thinking, | 12:35 | |
| look, you are totally helpless, | 12:37 | |
| what can you do? | 12:38 | |
| You can maybe talk on the phone some. | 12:40 | |
| You can feed yourself if the food is brought to you. | 12:43 | |
| That's all you can do. | 12:46 | |
| That's enough. | 12:47 | |
| Couple of days later, | 12:50 | |
| she called me and she said, | 12:51 | |
| well the answer was right under my own nose. | 12:53 | |
| I know something I can do. | 12:57 | |
| And I said, what is that? | 12:59 | |
| She said, well you're always complaining about | 13:00 | |
| having too much office work to do, | 13:03 | |
| too much administrative work to do. | 13:05 | |
| Why don't you let me be sort of your secretary? | 13:07 | |
| Why don't I call people for you on the telephone | 13:11 | |
| so you won't have to call them? | 13:14 | |
| In the days that passed, | 13:19 | |
| we devised a system whereby | 13:22 | |
| every meeting we had at the church, | 13:24 | |
| she would start that day and call everybody on the list | 13:26 | |
| for that meeting. | 13:31 | |
| And that became her ministry. | 13:33 | |
| Attendance at meetings skyrocketed. | 13:36 | |
| Somebody came in there and said, | 13:39 | |
| you know, I'd had a hard day at work. | 13:40 | |
| The last thing I wanted to do was go to a church meeting. | 13:42 | |
| But I'll tell you, | 13:44 | |
| it's low to have a paralyzed woman call you | 13:46 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 13:49 | |
| and say, you are coming out | 13:51 | |
| to that meeting tonight aren't you? | 13:53 | |
| He said, I think this is really low. | 13:56 | |
| It became her ministry. | 14:01 | |
| Another man, that very same church, | 14:04 | |
| he was downsized. | 14:06 | |
| He was fired. | 14:08 | |
| He was an executive with a big corporation. | 14:10 | |
| When he was laid off, he hit bottom. | 14:15 | |
| He spent the next weeks just lying on the sofa | 14:17 | |
| in his living room staring up at the ceiling. | 14:19 | |
| His life was over. | 14:21 | |
| He was an executive, what could he do? | 14:22 | |
| One of the women in the church called him one day and said, | 14:25 | |
| we got a mess down here at the clothes closet. | 14:27 | |
| How 'bout you coming down here and helping us out? | 14:30 | |
| And he got dressed. | 14:34 | |
| He went down there. | 14:35 | |
| He started working in the clothes closet | 14:36 | |
| straightening out clothes. | 14:38 | |
| But he started talking | 14:40 | |
| to some of the poor people who came there seeking clothing | 14:41 | |
| for themselves and their children. | 14:45 | |
| And was talking to this woman one Wednesday | 14:46 | |
| and she was telling me that her power had been cut off | 14:50 | |
| at her house. | 14:52 | |
| And she called the power company. | 14:55 | |
| She couldn't get ahold of 'em. | 14:57 | |
| They said she hadn't paid her bill. | 14:59 | |
| She knew she'd paid the bill. | 15:01 | |
| She asked 'em, could you give | 15:02 | |
| some consideration on the bill? | 15:03 | |
| They cut off the power. | 15:06 | |
| He said, let me make a call for you. | 15:07 | |
| He phoned down to the power company. | 15:11 | |
| He got some bureaucrat down there who said, | 15:13 | |
| look, a rule is a rule. | 15:15 | |
| He said, well let me talk to your supervisor. | 15:17 | |
| Turned out he knew the supervisor. | 15:19 | |
| One thing led to another. | 15:22 | |
| And so every Wednesday, | 15:24 | |
| there were always people who showed up there and said, | 15:27 | |
| could Mr. Jones make this call for me? | 15:31 | |
| Just the gift of being able to talk on the phone. | 15:34 | |
| Just the gift of not being intimidated | 15:37 | |
| by some voice on the other line. | 15:39 | |
| The gift of saying, hey look, | 15:41 | |
| I've sat where you sat. | 15:43 | |
| You're behind some desk somewhere. | 15:44 | |
| You're enforcing the rules. | 15:46 | |
| Look, this woman's down on her luck. | 15:47 | |
| She needs a helping hand. | 15:49 | |
| Now what can we do to work this out? | 15:51 | |
| That became his ministry, | 15:55 | |
| a gift he didn't even know he had. | 15:59 | |
| Wasn't the wisdom of God and the church | 16:02 | |
| named, claimed, rediscovered? | 16:05 | |
| And then my third point is that | 16:08 | |
| ministry is the gift to all the baptized. | 16:12 | |
| You drive past these churches. | 16:16 | |
| They've got a sign out front and it says, | 16:18 | |
| Pastor Jane Smith. | 16:20 | |
| And it says, ministers, the whole congregation. | 16:22 | |
| That sign has it just right. | 16:26 | |
| It's sad when your valid baptismal ministry | 16:29 | |
| is given over to the clergy of all people. | 16:33 | |
| No, I'm only here this morning, | 16:37 | |
| I only have significance here | 16:40 | |
| to equip you to be in ministry. | 16:43 | |
| And that may be why you're here this morning, | 16:45 | |
| even if you didn't know that was why you're here. | 16:47 | |
| You're here to get equipped. | 16:49 | |
| You're here to develop the skills and the gifts you need | 16:51 | |
| for ministry. | 16:54 | |
| I think the church oughta spend more time reflecting, | 16:55 | |
| asking laity. | 16:59 | |
| Now what do you need | 17:01 | |
| that will enable you to be in ministry where you are? | 17:03 | |
| You're an elementary school teacher? | 17:07 | |
| Okay, what equipment do elementary school teachers need | 17:09 | |
| to be in ministry in their place. | 17:13 | |
| That's why we have preachers in the first place. | 17:16 | |
| As Luther says, | 17:19 | |
| you have clergy who preach on Sunday | 17:21 | |
| so that the whole church can go out and preach on Monday. | 17:25 | |
| You have clergy who teach on Sunday | 17:28 | |
| so that the ministers can be out teaching | 17:32 | |
| the rest of the week, | 17:35 | |
| to equip you for ministry, | 17:36 | |
| not to take away your ministry. | 17:38 | |
| As my colleague, John Westerhoff at the Divinity School said | 17:41 | |
| a number of years ago, | 17:44 | |
| if you're a clergyman, | 17:46 | |
| and you're spending more than 10 hours a week | 17:49 | |
| running around, doing various things out in the community, | 17:51 | |
| you're wasting your time. | 17:54 | |
| Your ministry is in the church | 17:56 | |
| equipping the laity to be in ministry. | 17:58 | |
| Ministry in the world has become so difficult. | 18:01 | |
| We need prayer, and Bible study, | 18:04 | |
| and teaching, and counseling of the laity so much. | 18:06 | |
| You need to do that. | 18:10 | |
| On the other hand, Westerhoff said, | 18:11 | |
| if you're a lay person and you're spending | 18:13 | |
| more than 10 hours a week down at the church, | 18:15 | |
| you're wasting your time. | 18:17 | |
| That's not where your ministry is, | 18:18 | |
| running errands for clergy. | 18:20 | |
| Your ministry is to share in Christ's ministry in the world. | 18:22 | |
| You come to church in order to get equipped | 18:27 | |
| for that ministry. | 18:29 | |
| And the world is so dependent on your ministry now | 18:30 | |
| more than ever. | 18:34 | |
| You need to demand of your church the equipment you need | 18:35 | |
| to go out there and be in ministry. | 18:38 | |
| And we clergy, I'll admit, | 18:46 | |
| have to keep being reminded of that, | 18:48 | |
| the power of your work in the world. | 18:50 | |
| Student said to me a while back, | 18:56 | |
| I know it's quite a challenge to preach | 18:59 | |
| and do chapel, he said. | 19:02 | |
| I know it's quite a challenge to get up in that pulpit | 19:03 | |
| and have to preach the word of God. | 19:07 | |
| And I said to him, no, no, no. | 19:09 | |
| That's easy. | 19:12 | |
| What I have to do on Sunday, | 19:13 | |
| that's easy compared to what you have to do all week. | 19:15 | |
| It's real easy to stand up in a pulpit and preach. | 19:18 | |
| But to stand up in a fraternity meeting | 19:21 | |
| on Monday night and preach, | 19:23 | |
| that's hard. | 19:25 | |
| Over a tray in the cafeteria, | 19:27 | |
| to witness to your faith, that's tough. | 19:30 | |
| And yet, I'm only here so that you can be there. | 19:35 | |
| And the power of ministry that each of you have. | 19:40 | |
| I was talking to a guy a while back | 19:45 | |
| and he runs a prison camp in a county in Missouri. | 19:47 | |
| And he was talking about the challenges | 19:53 | |
| of running a prison today, | 19:55 | |
| and the exploding prison population. | 19:57 | |
| And he was saying, | 20:00 | |
| we were talking about things that oughta be done | 20:02 | |
| to make our penal system more functional and all. | 20:05 | |
| And he said, you know, | 20:08 | |
| about the best thing we got going is | 20:10 | |
| there's a woman in town | 20:13 | |
| and she bakes a dozen Toll House cookies | 20:15 | |
| for every prisoner that comes into our camp. | 20:19 | |
| And she boxes 'em up. | 20:23 | |
| And so as a warden, | 20:25 | |
| when I receive this prisoner into the prison, | 20:26 | |
| and I tell him the rules, | 20:29 | |
| and I tell him what's expected, | 20:31 | |
| I hand him this box of cookies and say, | 20:32 | |
| here are these cookies. | 20:35 | |
| There's a note from the woman who made it | 20:37 | |
| and she wants you to know she's praying for you | 20:38 | |
| and she cares about you. | 20:41 | |
| He said, I've had hardened prisoners | 20:42 | |
| just fall right down on their knees in tears. | 20:44 | |
| First gift they've ever received in their lives. | 20:47 | |
| And those boxes of cookies have made a greater difference | 20:51 | |
| in what's going on inside our jail | 20:55 | |
| than anything that's been done. | 20:58 | |
| Here's a woman just making cookies. | 20:59 | |
| My last church, | 21:02 | |
| we had something that I just always despised. | 21:04 | |
| It was the men's Wednesday morning prayer breakfast. | 21:07 | |
| And I just don't feel that religious at 6:00 a.m. | 21:10 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 21:16 | |
| But the men liked it and we would go and we'd have breakfast | 21:17 | |
| and we'd have a little short Bible study, | 21:20 | |
| and then we'd have prayer. | 21:22 | |
| And one day, the Bible study was from Luke, similar text. | 21:23 | |
| And I was talking about serving God | 21:29 | |
| in our daily lives and everything. | 21:32 | |
| And then we got ready for the prayer | 21:33 | |
| and one of the men said, | 21:36 | |
| I want us to remember in prayer | 21:38 | |
| Jane Jones and her son Stan. | 21:41 | |
| Stan was arrested last night, DUI. | 21:46 | |
| He's in jail. | 21:49 | |
| This is about his third arrest. | 21:51 | |
| He's got a problem and I want us to remember him in prayer. | 21:53 | |
| First I'd heard of it. | 21:57 | |
| And I said, | 21:59 | |
| all right, let's remember Jane, | 22:02 | |
| single parent, mother, | 22:04 | |
| trying to raise this teenage son, | 22:05 | |
| difficult situation. | 22:07 | |
| We remembered her in prayer. | 22:09 | |
| We ended the prayer. | 22:11 | |
| One of the men said, | 22:12 | |
| I think I need to go over to the jail and see that boy. | 22:15 | |
| Anybody want to go with me? | 22:17 | |
| And I said, well, | 22:19 | |
| I thought I would go sometime today. | 22:21 | |
| He says pastor, well you can go with us. | 22:23 | |
| And so two or three of us went over to the jail. | 22:25 | |
| Sure enough, we found the young man there in the cell, | 22:28 | |
| bad shape, | 22:32 | |
| went into the cell. | 22:34 | |
| One of the men said, | 22:37 | |
| Stan, you got a problem. | 22:39 | |
| And the boy said, | 22:42 | |
| I don't think I have a problem. | 22:45 | |
| And he said yeah, | 22:46 | |
| that's usually the way it is with alcohol. | 22:48 | |
| He said, I'm an alcoholic | 22:50 | |
| and I know one when I see one. | 22:51 | |
| And son, you're one. | 22:53 | |
| And one of the other men said, | 22:55 | |
| I want to take you to my next meeting of AA. | 22:59 | |
| And then the third man said, Stan, | 23:02 | |
| let's go see what it'd take to get you out of here | 23:06 | |
| and I want you to come stay with us. | 23:08 | |
| Said, your mother has got all she can handle. | 23:10 | |
| That doesn't seem to be working. | 23:13 | |
| I want you to stay over at our house for a while | 23:15 | |
| and let's see if we can't get this thing licked. | 23:18 | |
| Let's see if we can't get you back on your feet. | 23:20 | |
| And the boy was obviously grateful. | 23:23 | |
| And I said, well gee, | 23:27 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 23:31 | |
| I guess I'll go on back over to the church. | 23:33 | |
| I don't really see that I'm needed here. | 23:34 | |
| And one of the men said, you're not. | 23:38 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 23:41 | |
| That kind of thing is a gift. | 23:47 | |
| There's a world that's dying out there | 23:51 | |
| for lack of that kind of giftedness. | 23:53 | |
| That a bunch of ordinary everyday people | 23:58 | |
| could get caught up into the great purposes of God, | 24:00 | |
| that God could give those ordinary people | 24:04 | |
| the gifts they need to be a witness, | 24:07 | |
| a sign, a signal, | 24:10 | |
| that God has not left this world to its devices, | 24:13 | |
| that the kingdom of God is breaking out all over Durham, | 24:16 | |
| and that you are called to be in ministry. | 24:21 | |
| So get out there and be in ministry. | 24:26 | |
| But before you go, | 24:30 | |
| let me pray for you. | 24:32 | |
| Let us pray. | 24:34 | |
| Lord, in your great wisdom, | 24:38 | |
| or in your infinite, divine recklessness, | 24:43 | |
| you have called each of us to minister. | 24:47 | |
| You have sent us into the world bearing your name. | 24:51 | |
| Lord, give us the gifts we need to be in ministry. | 24:55 | |
| And then give us the courage and the resourcefulness | 25:01 | |
| to be your sign, your signal, your witness, | 25:05 | |
| that you are determined to have the world, amen. | 25:09 |
