Ordination and Installation of Mary Vance
Fellowship Presbyterian Church
February 17, 2008
Isaiah 6:1-8; I Peter 4:8-11; John 21:15-19

What is Ordination? 

It has been my great privilege over the past few years to walk alongside Mary Vance as she has been preparing for this moment. "Mentor" is not the right word for my relationship with Mary. "Admirer" comes closer to the mark, or at least "Observer" of the way the Holy Spirit has been polishing up the many gifts for ministry that the Spirit has given her.

I am also wearing a couple of other hats this afternoon. I am the Moderator of the Presbytery of Florida, and I was, until very recently, Presbytery’s liaison with the Pastoral Nominating Committee that recommended Mary’s name to this congregation. (I assure you, that was their decision, which they weighed prayerfully and carefully, decently and in order. My tongue is still bleeding from biting it so often in those meetings.)

Mary has served as a student assistant pastor at First Presbyterian Church for about two years. I have noticed that her transition from downtown attorney to downtown pastor has caused some confusion at the bar. On several occasions, while the two of us were chowing down on unhealthy but delicious Rueben sandwiches as the downtown Metro Deli, attorney friends came up to Mary to say hello and catch up.

Hey, Mary! Haven’t seen you in court lately. Oh, your studying to be a minister. How . . . interesting. That’s like a nun, right? So you and James aren’t . . . Oh, I see. That’s still allowed. Well, it’s nice to see you and meet your . . . your colleague. Nice to meet you, Bishop.

After she graduated from seminary and passed the written ordination exams, I would overhear conversations like this:

So you’re a Rev. now! No? Why not? You passed the bar, right? You have to have a church before you can be ordained? You can’t just be ordained and hang out your shingle? What was the name of that denomination again? How do you spell that?

Interpreting Presbyterian polity to non Presbyterians is tricky. So is interpreting Presbyterian polity to Presbyterians. Allow me a few minutes to explain, from a Presbyterian point of view, exactly what’s happening this afternoon.

It all starts with this curious notion of "call." "Vocation" is the Latin word, but in certain other Christian traditions that word tends to be reserved for priests, nuns, monks, deacons and the like, so we’d better stick to the word "call."

We believe that all Christians are called, and the sign of that calling is baptism. In these waters we die and rise with Christ. And from these waters we are called to live a new life, following him.

Our guide for this journey is Jesus himself. As Jesus was baptized, you might recall, he was also called. That calling took him to unexpected places, and brought him into contact with some pretty unsavory characters, several of them lawyers, but by following his call, the Epistle to the Hebrews says, Jesus learned what it meant to be the Son of God.

Callings vary. Some people are called to be teachers, some are called to be business people, some doctors, some graphic artists, some janitors, some politicians. The point is, however we make a living, we are called to serve Jesus Christ in that context. In this sense, every Christian has a calling. It’s inscribed on our foreheads when we rise from these waters.

"You are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever." We say that to the baptized to remind them of their calling.

Now, God calls doctors and business people, teachers, lawyers and politicians, and all the rest to do God’s work in the world. That’s because the world needs these people to do this work. Hence Frederick Buechner’s famous definition of calling. "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."

The church of Jesus Christ has a specific hunger – a hunger for leaders who are, before they are anything else, servants of the living Lord. Depending on their gifts, each of these servants has a particular role to fulfill within the church.

The Apostle Paul started a pretty good list of those roles in his letter to the Ephesians: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Scripture mentions others -- deacons and presbyters. "Presbyter" is a Greek word for "elder." (I could also mention "bishops," but when you do that in Presbyterian circles, it usually starts a fight.)

What all these roles have in common is that they are functional, not honorary or ceremonial. Their purpose, says Paul, is "to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ."

This brings us back to those conversations over Rueben sandwiches in the Metro Deli. Ordination in our tradition is functional. The only reason for ordaining people is to set them apart to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ in its service to the world.

There are at least three aspects to the call to ordained ministry. The first is the inward call of the Holy Spirit – that "deep gladness" Frederick Buechner talks about. Clearly, Mary has that inward call. If you ask her, she will tell you of her experience of "conversion." I prefer to call this her "confirmation," but whatever you term it, it’s still God’s call to her.

The second dimension to ministerial call is the outward demonstration of the gifts required to do the work. You don’t send a carpenter to build a house without a hammer and nails. You don’t send a scuba diver underwater without a mask and oxygen tank. And the church doesn’t – or at least shouldn’t – send people into congregations without the equipment necessary to do the work.

We all know through bitter experience that when ill-equipped ministers are let loose on congregations, everybody gets hurt.

But even the inward call plus the outward demonstration of gifts are not enough for ordination. A third element is required, and that’s the confirmation of a governing body of the church – what the Reformers called "public election." That’s when the church says "Here is a job that needs to be done and there is the servant God is calling to do it." Only then does ordination take place.

Ordination is not a promotion from "layperson" to "clergyperson." It’s a designation, a setting apart for a specific work. It’s not even a sacrament, the Reformers maintained. It’s a matter of good order in the church.

John Calvin said God doesn’t need ordained ministers to do the work of the Spirit, but we do. We learn humility by being led by a fallible fellow sinner, and are thus nourished in the bonds of love. The ordained ministry depends upon the ministry of the whole church, and not the other way around. A pastor works not above the people, but among them.

So, in the Presbyterian church, nobody can hang out a shingle and set up as a minister of Word and Sacrament.

To put it bluntly, Mary, it’s not about you. It’s about the work God has for you to do in this place, among these people whom God loves with a love that is stronger and purer and more powerful than anything you or I could muster on our own. A love that goes all the way to the cross and grave, and cannot be defeated, even by death itself. A love that transcends the limits each of us brings to our calling and transforms us into the body of Christ in and for the world.

The rite of ordination goes all the way back to the New Testament Church, and is accomplished by prayer and the laying on of hands.

Those hands are important. This afternoon, no doubt, Mary’s hands are clean. Soon she must get them dirty equipping the saints for the work of ministry. While baptism is the sign of Gods calling, dirty hands are the evidence that we are getting the message.

Let us, together, do the work to which we are called.