Consider your own call
Ordinary Sunday 4, 30th January, 2005
The Rev'd Dr Craig D'Alton
Assistant Priest, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
A number of things have changed about the interior of St Peter's since I first entered it in the mid-1980s. Several of those changes have been for the good: who else remembers the tired state of the walls back then?! But some of the changes I regret; perhaps one in particular. At the back of the Church there is an honour board listing the vicars of the parish. Since some time in the 1990s it has had on its central panel a memorial to Charles Joseph LaTrobe, who was a founder of this parish. Previously, the board used not to include the LaTrobe memorial, but instead included two other lists alongside the parish priests. One list was of those from this parish who had been ordained priest. The other was, if I recall correctly, those who went abroad as missionaries, particularly to Papua New Guinea. I seem to recall that the last name in the list of ordinands was that of Peter Bennie, a name some older parishioners will recall with fondness. The list had not been added to since, I think, the 1930s, because there was no room for any more names.
I was reminded of this board recently when reading some of Fr Maynard's writings from the 1950s. He commented that he knew personally of another twenty or thirty names that could be added to it, and that perhaps the parish needed to decide either to put up a new board, or to give up on the exercise of keeping such records in a public way: after all there were so very many.
That board made a great impression upon me as a teenager flirting with the idea of ordination. There seemed to be so many names over such a short period – about one a year – and Maynard's reflections, of which I was not then aware, demonstrate just how very many clergy of this and other dioceses owed at least some part of their priestly formation to time here at St Peter's. This seemed the right place for me to come if I too were intending to travel that particular path.
Those from St Peter's who have proceeded through to offering for ordination are perhaps not as great in numbers now as they once were, but they're out there. Excluding curates and theological students at least some five St Peter's women and three St Peter's men have been ordained since the 1986, including four of the first group of women ordained priest in this diocese, probably more than from any other parish.
It is, then, I think important every now and then to ask from this pulpit very direct questions about vocation and ministry, for if the tradition in which we stand is to grow in influence in the diocese in the coming years we should, we must, be encouraging of those who feel called to test vocations to leadership, lay or ordained, within the Church. So I ask:
- Have you ever considered your own call?
- Have you ever felt chosen, called by God?
- Have you ever felt a little tap on the shoulder suggesting that, just perhaps, there is something else you should be doing with your life in order to become the person you truly are?
- Have you ever felt a sense of destiny, of vocation, of a direction in life that seems absolutely right for you?
Not everyone does, of course, but for some people there can be a real sense of call. This may be to a particular type of work – a doctor, a teacher, a mechanic, a musician; or to a relationship with a particular person or to a style of living, or to the ordained ministry. And in answering such calls such people can feel more alive, more fulfilled, as they journey along the right path, the right track in life, for them.
The moment of realisation, or perhaps acceptance, of a call can be dramatic, like a conversion experience, or it can creep up gradually as, suddenly without really realising it has happened, one finds oneself in a new place headed in an unexpected direction. However whichever of these paths one follows, one thing is common to all – the moment of realisation becomes the start, not the end, of a journey.
When St Paul, writing to the Corinthian church, speaks of the general Christian call to salvation he talks not about something that is complete and finished, but about something that continues beyond the conversion moment. He speaks of "us who are being saved" [present continuous, not past tense]. Paul has much to say about salvation, but in the first letter to the Corinthians he places this discussion in the context of the call to Christian life and ministry. He emphasises that it is God, not human beings, who decides who and what is and is not useful in his service. Who or what others perceive as weak or foolish may in fact be chosen as the building blocks for God's great work. In the eyes of the world the cross is the ultimate symbol of weakness, yet through it God in Christ brought about salvation for all. In other words, when you're looking for signs of Christian life, don't close your eyes to that which the world might regard as beyond the pale. It might just be that God will choose to manifest his strength and his wisdom in very unexpected people and places.
Paul asks the Corinthians, and by extension each of us, to consider our own call. All of us are called to Christian ministry in some form. By virtue of our baptism we each have a vocation to service. Some of us – perhaps some of you – may make further, specific promises of service by proceeding to ordination as deacons and priests. But just as our Baptism was a marker, a rite of passage on our journey, so ordination is merely the beginning of a journey. It's a rewarding, exciting, sometimes stressful, sometimes terrifying, journey. Its models are the ministries of Christ, of St Paul, of the Apostles and their successors through the ages. And it is, if God is calling you to it, the best possible life. However, be warned! The Church does not always make it easy. Indeed, sometimes good people with clear calls have needed to find ways to exercise deaconal or priestly ministries without the sanction of ordination, because the institutional Church is not yet ready for them. But even then it's worth it, because God's work is going forward through them. What's more, those on the margins of the Church are often particularly well placed to minister to those for whom the Church seems an intolerant, outmoded, even abusive institution.
I wonder whether anyone wrote down that list of names from the old honour board. I wonder whether we could reconstruct Fr Maynard's extra list of thirty-odd names. I wonder how many more there were between the 50s and the 80s. I wonder if I've missed any in putting together my list of those since I first turned up. I wonder, is all this merely a nostalgic exercise in reconstructing our glorious past, or might it in fact serve as an inspiration to build an exciting future? I wonder how many more names might be added to such a list in this century. I wonder if any of those names might be yours. Finally, I pray and I believe that we, as a parish with a rich history of nurturing vocations to ministry, will always be supportive of those women and men of our number who seek from this place of relative safety to explore what it might mean to consider their own call. Because that is our tradition, and that is part of our call as God's people in this place.
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