Bob Morris 01-28-07

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were being cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

That’s the collect for ordinations. I read it because it has been a weekend full of ordinations—the call to ministry—both in our new Bishop’s consecration yesterday in a true “Episcopalian extravaganza” at NJPAC., and in my own memories of ordination to the priesthood forty years ago. I was ordained on January 26, 2007, at St. James Church in Detroit in the middle of a snowstorm extravaganza—a three-day blizzard that dumped three feet of snow on the city.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the issue of “call” — my own call, and the call all of us share as Christians. Because, make no mistake, the really important “call” is the call all of us, laity and clergy alike, share to “grow up in every way into Christ,” to follow Christ, and become Christ-bearers in the world. We’re all called to cooperate with the purposes of God in the world. My calling to ordained ministry is just a footnote to that bigger call we all share as the baptized. I’m a minister of Word and Sacrament. You are called to your own particular ministries—as mothers and fathers, as stockbrokers or teachers or salespeople, as boy scout leaders, city council members, PTA volunteers. Whatever we’re doing, the question is “how can I serve God’s purposes here, in this place, in this role, with these people?”

So, as I bear witness to the calls in ministry I’ve experienced over the past four decades, I invite you to be reflecting on ways in which you’ve been called into service in your own life. God needs all of us in his project of continuing to create, heal, and develop to the world. And God needs us crucially in this world of peril and crisis, a world crisis that is deepening, but a world where “that which is old is being made new and that which was cast down is being raised up.”

I was first called 52 years ago to the ordained ministry, way back in the 8^th grade—because I believed that following Christ led into the fullness of life and I wanted to call people to find that way of life. The ultra-fundamentalist church I grew up in was narrow in doctrine but generous with its young people, with a vital youth program, and an opportunity for teenagers to take real responsibility. The “Young People” — as we were called in those days before adolescents became “teens” — led the Sunday evening service once a month, every bit of it. And so it was 50 years ago, as a tenth grader, that I first stepped into a pulpit and preached, something I did regularly all through high school. I am grateful to that warm and supportive fundamentalist congregation for encouraging and supporting the call I felt, even though, as I studied and thought, I found their beliefs too narrow and confining.

I felt called 46 years ago into the Episcopal Church, because I felt this church offered a richer and deeper way to be Christian than my original fundamentalism — too narrow for generous grace, too narrow for the Bible itself. I loved its prayerful way of worship, so God-focused. And I loved its combination of traditionalism —the Creeds, the respect for the long centuries of Christian thought — with its openness to reason, and tolerance for a wide variety of interpretation. So I let my call to ordained ministry take me into the Episcopal priesthood on that snowy Saturday morning in 1967.

I felt called 39 years ago to come to Calvary Church because of two reasons. The first was a bright, progressive 39-year old Rector, Bill Strain, who really wanted to let the gospel engage the culture. He held the Bible in one hand, and the cover story on Time magazine in the other, and brought Christian commentary to the issues of the day. He was a church growth pioneer, insisted the Christian minister’s association become truly interfaith, initiated the a really Interfaith Thanksgiving Service in the community, and sponsored a town meeting on fair housing the second year he was Rector. He was an important mentor in the public aspects of ministry for me. Our laypeople at Calvary were major figures in the low-income housing built in the early 1970s in town. Our current clergy continue that tradition in their own distinctive ways, concerned about public issues and how the church can connect with the larger society.

The second reason I came to Calvary was this building. When I came through the Woodland Avenue door and stood in the back, this church felt prayed in — and like a place I could really pray.

Under Bill Strain’s leadership, I was given a wide latitude to create ministry—in education for children, with teenagers, and in adult education. And, in this remarkable congregation, I found enthusiastic support for most anything I proposed. These were yeasty days, the days of the counter-culture. We did things which were considered, back then, fairly radical—offering the church as a rallying point for anti-war protesters, having folk masses on Sunday morning, featuring occasional liturgical dance. My hair grew long along with that of my teenage flock as we confronted directly the issues that concerned them. When I got discouraged about the controversy some of this sparked, my therapist and spiritual director—a Congregational minister—would always remind me that other young clergy he knew were getting dismissed for doing things this congregation accepted and allowed, in spite murmuring from some quarters.

Calvary Church is not unique. There are other fine congregations in the Church, but there are also many that are just stuck in their ways. I’m not sure you realize how resourceful and open you are, but I can tell you that I am deeply grateful for the ways in which this congregation supported, taught, and challenged me when I was on its full-time pastoral staff. And for the ways you’ve supported what happened next.

Twenty-seven years ago I felt called to launch Interweave as an interfaith ministry, rooted in a Christian congregation, but independent, interfaith, and open to the community at large. This was a distinct call, as clear as my original call to ordained ministry. I wanted to bring to this community some of the things I saw as the cutting edge of the new world that is trying to be born in our times. Most especially this was the “new paradigm” of an interconnected world—a world where we must re-learn to respect as sacred the realities that sustain our lives. In addition, it is a world needing to reclaim its ancient spiritual wisdom before moving into the future — a wisdom that says the soul is real, and can grow into its own godlikeness by spiritual disciplines and holy living, connecting with a soul-level of the world that is real, too. We need this wisdom because our current lifestyle contains to many elements that are undermining the world’s health.

At Interweave we’ve presented a number of key challenges to help people change the destructive aspects of our current lifestyle. The summarize briefly: We need to learn how to listen to the soul, to our own deepest wisdom, and through that to the wisdom of God, a power that can direct, guide, and grow us into service to the world. We need to recognize the reality of soul and spirit in many areas—in care for the body, where mind influences body, and vice-versa, in profound ways still not fully recognized by the standard medical system. We are called in our days to recognize the soul-dimension to nature, that set of interlocking realms of many different beings, we have reduced to “the environment,” just the stuff that surrounds us, as if we were the center of creation. Unless we learn how to respect the sacred realities of the natural world that sustains us as one of its many creatures, the rising of the oceans and the melting of the polar ice caps will be just the beginning of our difficulties.

Humanity needs to embrace the presence of soul and holy spirit in all our great spiritual traditions. God is too great and rich to be contained wholly in any one religious system. While remaining true to our own faith, we need to learn how to discover and respect the reality of God in all life-giving traditions, and respect the experience of the holy that actually happens in people’s lives.

Any rumors you’ve heard about my retirement from Interweave are a few years premature. I will be shepherding this ministry for a some years still, as I and the Board lay plans for Interweave’s long-term future. Once again, I’m grateful for the remarkable group of people who have coalesced around Interweave, some of the brightest and best people in this region—people deeply involved in their own business, family, civic, and volunteer work in their communities.

I’m also mindful that there are many dioceses in the Episcopal church where this ministry would simply not have been possible. For example, a good priest friend of mine had his license to officiate yanked in a conservative diocese out west simply because he taught that Jews would be saved. I’m deeply grateful to have been living out my priestly call in the Diocese of Newark, one of the most progressive Dioceses in the Anglican Communion—progressive, by the way, long before Bishop Spong ever came here with his radical theology and assertive social action. On issues of race, interfaith relations, sexual orientation, and other social issues, the Diocese of Newark has been a place where the future is happening now.

So, those are my calls, and my gratitudes. I wonder what yours have been in your life. God needs us all as partners to heal and build the world and this is the ultimate purpose of what we call “personal growth,” to empower us to join the Spirit of God in turning life away from destruction toward all that builds, keeps and grows life.

Such communities of love, value, and commitment are God’s vessels for work in the world. They are the places where we will find support, fellowship, and inspiration in the days ahead as we follow our calls. Because these are communities of hope, rooted in the vision of Christ and the prophets of the humanity, the community God is seeking to create.

In this and every age souls need to hear a message of hope in order to live through difficult times without reverting to smaller, more defensive, less creative selves. What more hopeful message is there than the Good News of God’s commitment to us proclaimed by Jesus? I believe that the strong, just and compassionate humanity revealed in Christ Jesus is the only kind of humanity that can hold the nuclear code in one hand and the genetic code in the other. Only God can save the world, but each of us is called to do our part—and we do that, precisely, by having our ears open for how God is calling us to serve the good wherever we are. God’s dream for us is “new creation or bust,” however long it takes. Each “yes” to a call — mine and yours — is a small step toward that goal.

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