This is a great day for the church! It is a day for rejoicing and I say along with the Apostle Paul, “Rejoice, and again I say rejoice!” It’s my great privilege to be here to see Susan Carpenter ordained a priest in Christ’s one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. I, like many of you, know what a wonderful person is becoming a priest today.
I first got to know Susan when we both arrived at General Theological Seminary in New York City to begin our formation for the priesthood. It’s a curious time, those first few weeks in seminary. The new students size each other up pretty carefully. There are young people and older folk, men and women, married couples and single people, gay folk, straight folk -- and a few that you’re never really sure which category they go in! All gathered for the same purpose, in response to the same call. And the first thing you notice is the differences between yourself and your new classmates.
What am I going to have in common with a 23 year-old hockey fanatic just graduated from the University of Texas, or the youth minister from Alabama or the lawyer from Ohio, or the special events coordinator from Boston, or the former teacher from Rhode Island. Of course, over time you begin to realize that you have a great deal in common with these many people. In fact, these are the people with whom you can most closely identify because they are all answering a similar call and are on the same journey as you. But in the first few weeks, when you’re just sizing each other up, you notice things about people. And one of the first things I noticed about Susan was not her priestly vocation, but her vocation for hospitality.
Susan never showed up anywhere for any gathering without something hot from her oven. When the group project called for a meeting outside of class, Susan would say, “Oh, let’s meet at my apartment and I’ll make breakfast!” Susan never let us go hungry or thirsty. She opened her home to us at every turn. One of our classmates tells the story of how, very late at night while packing for a trip home, she needed a ziplock bag. Knowing Susan was probably still awake, she knocked on her door. Sure enough, there was Susan in her robe and slippers, bright as the noon day sun, saying, “Oh, a baggie, sure! But come in and let me make you a cup of tea!” No one showed forth more Christian hospitality than Susan. Certainly not that hockey fanatic, I think in three years all I got from Jeff in the way of hospitality was half a bag of chips and a six-pack of Natty Light.
Susan’s vocation for hospitality is really a vocation for relationship. Susan found ways to be friends with the biggest loner among us, and with the most gregarious among us. Susan was more than just a friend to all, she was the nexus, the point around which people would gather to form relationships. Susan could be in turn mother-comforter, best girlfriend, sister, pal and partner in crime. Susan was able to find a point of access, a place of common life with almost every one of her classmates.
Our classmate in need of the ziplock bag knew Susan would be up in the middle of the night because Susan never sleeps. There is another vocation that Susan can lay ample claim to, and that’s the vocation of hard work. The rest of us would be complaining about the seminary work load, and the projects we had to do in our field parishes. Susan never complained. In fact, she could often be heard singing a little ditty under her breath, “I love my life, I love my life!” She did all the school work, and all that cooking and continued with her stained glass work, and her jewelry making, and so many other projects. When we finally went to her to ask her how, in God’s name, she was able to get it all done, we found out her secret. She told us, “Oh, I don’t really sleep that much. I got this stained glass done at 3 in the morning!” We were amazed! How could this short little New Englander be such a power house? Now, as she becomes a laborer in the harvest, she’ll be putting us all to shame with the sheaves she will undoubtedly bring in!
But we all of us have unique gifts to offer the church, whether as lay or ordained folk. And someone like Susan comes with a great many gifts. As a teacher, and farmer, and herbalist, as a business owner, as a spouse and parent, and now as a grandparent, as a scholar, and lover of books and learning, as an artist. Yes, Susan is a woman of many and varied gifts. She has much to offer the church, much to offer her bishop and her diocese, and much, much to offer those of you who will be lucky enough to be her flock.
It’s a funny thing, this priesthood thing. It can seem odd to folks in the outside world. More than a few folks -- work friends, and family members who are not church people, they can be confused by it.
First they want to know what changed in you to make you want to do this unusual thing. Why not continue to served God as a paragon of hospitality and hard work, why take on the vocation of priesthood? People think that there must be something inside of you that causes this strange desire to be ordained, something other than what they know and love about you already. When exactly did you come down with this, errr, condition, they want to know. Are there other symptoms? Can I catch it?
It’s a good question.
What causes someone to one day suddenly come down with the priesthood disease? There are as many answers as there are priests. If you’re like Susan, it might be a trip to Taize with a good friend who happens to be a faithful priest like Pam Gregory, with the courage to ask the question, “Have you ever thought that…? Has it ever occurred to you that God might be calling you to the priesthood, Susan?” I can tell a similar tale myself. For Susan and me, and I expect for many of our colleagues, it’s not so much what happens to us, but who happens to us. It’s not so much that we are uniquely qualified by our piety or intellect or deep faith. It’s that we have been nurtured and cared for in the loving community of the church, and then one day that church often in the form of the Pams of the world, says to us, “Hey, what about you?”
It’s not so much what God places in us, but what you, God’s people, call out of us.
Jesus did not say to the disciples in this today’s gospel, “Let’s pull together some shepherds, and then we’ll see if any sheep show up.” He didn’t say, “Let’s hire some laborers, and then, I dunno, maybe there will be something to harvest, maybe there won’t.” No, Jesus notices the many that he meets as he travels through the cities and villages, teaching and preaching and ministering to the sick. He sees them, he sees their needs. It is this multitude of God’s children yearning for the good news of the kingdom, good people, people of devotion, people willing to seek after God, and to listen for God’s word, but yet in need of a shepherd to lead them, to guard them, to care for them, to bring them the news of salvation.
So, it might seem like this is Susan’s special day, that it’s all about her. But it is not. It’s about you.
It’s about God’s abiding love for you. It’s about the fact that God knows that you are many and that your needs are many, and your questions are many. It’s about the unending compassion that God has for you. It’s about your hurts and your hopes and your joys and your despair.
It’s about the fact that sheep do, on occasion, get lost in the world, and sometimes need a little help finding their way home.
This day is about the children you will have that you will bring to Susan to baptize into the community of the church.
It’s about the family members and friends that you love so deeply, and will lose, that you will bring to Susan to lay to rest in the surety of rising again.
It’s about the illness you will face, that Susan will comfort you through, anointing you with God’s healing mercy.
It’s about the love you will find, love so powerful that you must declare your faithfulness to it, and it is Susan who will exact those pledges of fidelity from you.
This day is about the sins you will commit, that will trouble your hearts, and because you are good and faithful people, you will repent of these sins, and it is Susan who will administer God’s mercy and grant you God’s forgiveness.
This is about the hunger you feel for God’s presence in your lives, and it is Susan who will fill you with the body and blood of Christ, a holy feast that will sate your souls with God’s unassailable love.
So, this day is in so many profound ways about you. But then, what’s Susan doing here? We all have gifts to offer the church. So, why her, in particular? That too is a good question.
And it is one that more than a few people have asked her on more than one occasion. The process that led Susan to this day has been long, and arduous, and exacting, and strenuous. Your bishop and your representatives in the councils of the church have looked her over and looked her over thoroughly, I can assure you. So, Susan has been carefully, thoughtfully and prayerfully selected and then formed for the ministry that she is about to undertake.
But what sets Susan apart is something that she shares with some of the giants of our faith. Susan, after much struggle and much discernment, answered God’s call; Susan said, "Yes."
Like Mary, God put a fairly shocking proposition to Susan, and Susan in her great faith said, “Be it unto me according to your word.” Like Isaiah, God asked who would go out, who would shepherd his sheep, who would reap the bountiful harvest, and Susan said, “Here am I. Send me.” That is what set Susan apart and brought her and all of us here today.
Susan, will you please stand? Susan Elizabeth Carpenter, on behalf of those who know you so well, on behalf of all those who love you, on behalf of those who stand ready for your loving compassion and gentle leadership, on behalf of all those who have asked the Lord to send laborers into the harvest. Now is the time, this is the day, to you who have said, “Send me” I say to you, now, go! Go to the altar of God, the God of all our joy and gladness.
+Amen
© The Rev. Mark R. Collins
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