Stumbling toward the light
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue preached this sermon in Reynolds Square in Savannah, GA
on All Saints’ Day 2019 for the ordination of Kevin Veitinger and Nathan Wilson
Stumbling toward the light
Ephesians 1:11-23
We gather under the gaze of a zealous minister of the Gospel on this All Saints’ Day to ordain Kevin and Nathan as deacons. It should be intimidating to proclaim the Gospel while overshadowed by a statue of the great revivalist John Wesley, who himself preached many times in the open air. Though his legacy as the founder of the Methodist movement has born so much good fruit for almost three centuries, John’s ministry in Georgia went catastrophically wrong.
Wesley arrived to a Savannah that was a village of two hundred houses. In less than two years, a 44-person grand jury, making up a significant percentage of the population, would approve a 10-count indictment against their idealistic minister. John had been felled by a rigid faith and a broken heart. One colonist described John’s spiritual leadership as “religious Tyranny.” To make matters worse, John had fallen for Sophia Hopkey who he tutored in French on the ship from England and continued to see regularly. She even nursed the pastor through a fever. But John became convinced that marriage would get in the way of his ministry and he told the apparently equally infatuated 18-year old that he could not marry until he accomplished his mission to the Indians. Wesley’s words did not strike the young woman as the words of a soul mate. Sophia married William Williamson. John’s diary on the day he heard the news says only, “Could not pray. Tried to pray—lost—sunk.”
The pastor excommunicated Sophy a few months later citing “falseness and inconsistency of life,” creating a stir in the gossipy colony. Nine more charges flowed from his rigid religiosity. Wesley wrote, “I shook off the dust of my feet, and left Georgia, having preached the Gospel there with much weakness indeed and many infirmities, not as I ought but as I was able.” He added, “This have I learned in the ends of the earth, that I am fallen short of the glory of God, that my whole heart is altogether corrupt and abominable.”
This All Saints’ Day, we gather under a statue of a Saint of Georgia who stumbled his way toward the light. This is the best that can be said of any saint, that he or she stumbled toward the light of Christ. For saints are not perfect people, but women and men, perfected by Christ working in and through them. We gather in this context to put forward two imperfect people, Kevin and Nathan, for ministry, asking the Holy Spirit to fill them with grace and power that through these two deacons who will become priests, many people may come to know Christ and to make Christ known.
We are here in Reynolds Square as this puts us alongside the Parish House for Christ Church, Savannah, the Mother Church of Georgia. The building hosts Emmaus House Ministries, which has been caring for people in need in Savannah since 1982. Their ministry fits well with Kevin Veitinger serving as the Episcopal Church’s missioner for homeless persons in Savannah through our Community of St. Joseph. This outdoor service alongside Emmaus House is also a tangible reminder that the ministry of a deacon is “a special ministry of servanthood” as deacons, “are to serve all people, particularly the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely.” So it is right to gather outside the church, alongside a place of significant ministry, and coincidentally in the shadow of a saint who stumbled to find the light of Christ in his life.
I need to note that Nathan and Kevin are each called to the priesthood. Yet, the Church in its wisdom has not trusted a person to be a priest who had not first spent time in the ministry focused on those outside the church. The diaconate is a separate order of ministry and we have many excellent real deacons who serve their whole ministry with a servant’s heart for those who would otherwise be lost and left out. We expect those women and men who will be priests to serve not as a time of being a “Junior Priest,” but in an intentional time of servant ministry.
Our reading from Ephesians is for All Saints’ Day rather than an ordination. That text includes this petition to God that fits well with our purpose this day, “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.” We do pray for wisdom and revelation for Nathan and Kevin that the eyes of their hearts may be every more enlightened by Christ.
We know that John Wesley did have the eyes of his heart so enlightened. It came in the fall of 1738, less than a year after he left Georgia in disgrace, that John found his life transformed by grace. He heard someone read Martin Luther’s introduction to Paul’s letter to the Romans at a meeting he had gone attended unwillingly. He would write that as he heard the words “describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ…I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
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With gratitude for our sisters and brothers in the Methodist Church, in whom we see Christ, and with whom, we enjoy worshipping and serving, we give thanks for a God who knows our imperfections and loves us just the same. Both Kevin and Nathan shared an admiration for John Wesley and were influenced by his passion for the Gospel and his robust theology of the sacraments long before any of us could have imagined this open-air ordination. And it is an understanding of the sacraments that sheds light on what we are doing this day.
In the words of our Prayer Book, “The sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.” We have the two great sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Eucharist instituted by Jesus in his earthly ministry. In Baptism we have the outward sign of water and the spiritual grace new life in the Holy Spirit. In Eucharist, the outward signs of bread and wine convey the grace of Christ’s very real presence. Ordination is a sacramental rite with the outward sign of the Bishop laying on hands and the inward change is authority and grace for those ordained.
More than simply rituals of those who follow Jesus, sacraments are ways to see the world as not separate from God, but shot through with the presence of the divine as we see visible signs of the presence of an otherwise invisible God. This way of seeing the world is meant to flow from the ways we experience God in the rites of the church out to every corner of our lives.
Knowing that the material world, as imperfect as it is, does nonetheless convey the perfection to be found in its fullness in the coming reign of God in the life eternal, we come to the ordinands and their own stumbling toward the light.
Nathan’s faith formation occurred in the Church of God of Anderson, Indiana, which is a Holiness Movement that came out of a Wesleyan piety. Nathan’s believer’s baptism at the age of six was fraught as the water heater was out and the baptistry frigid. He recalls his own reluctance and a tight grip on the sides. He slowly let go to find himself plunged into a cold dose of forgiveness and love. Nathan first felt called to ministry in Middle School and went to college in Oklahoma City as Mid-American Christian University was affiliated with his denomination. There he learned of the means of grace and found himself shaped by John Wesley’s sacramental theology and practice. He came to receive communion as often as possible and found himself in an Episcopal Church where the liturgy felt like coming home. He experienced the rites and rituals of the Church as creating patterns for people to inhabit directing them towards God in the various stages of life. On graduating from college, he moved to Duke Divinity School where he would end up finding his way to St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church and a pattern of life nurtured by Word and Sacrament. Nathan has served this Diocese well as an intern at St. Michael and All Angel’s Church.
Though Kevin attended a Lutheran Church when he was young and served as a youth pastor at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Lakeland, Florida, years ago, he spent many years shaped in the United Methodist Church where he earned a master’s degree and served for years under license. But it was in youth group with kids with long hair dressed in black and carrying grudges against the world that Kevin discovered the power of music and its importance in his life and ministry. Gaining experience playing for youth group, his band gained popularity and confidence. Then came the death of their guitarist in a car accident. The Holy Spirit used the difficult months that followed to show Kevin the call on his life to ordained ministry. But the importance of music has never waned for the punk rock drummer we will ordain today. Kevin is quite in his element with today’s liturgy as his congregation meets in a field alongside the tents of some of his parishioners.
In Nathan Wilson and Kevin Veitinger, we see how a sacramental universe works as God is present within the brokeness. Just as people saw Christ in John Wesley in a way that transformed lives, the people of the Diocese of Georgia working through discernment committees, the Commission on Ministry, and others have seen the light of Christ shining in the hearts of Nathan and Kevin. Having seen Christ in Kevin and Nathan, we don’t get to leave ministry to them. Instead, we are to leave this ordination empowered by the Holy Spirit to see Christ even in those who annoy us or have hurt us. For an ordination service is never about those being ordained, not really. Persons are ordained for the sake of those who would otherwise remain lost and left out.
We live in a broken world with hurt people hurting each other even as we follow a God who poured out God’s own self to redeem us. The work of reconciling this fallen world to God is ministry shared by every one of us. None of us are perfect and yet, God can and will use us anyway.
In this imperfect world, we can see the light of Christ in people who sometimes don’t see it in themselves and in so doing help one another to stumble further out of the darkness toward the light of Christ. The challenge is to let God enlighten the eyes of our hearts so we come to see the face of Christ in everyone we meet and so make room for others to see the face of Christ in us.
Amen.
