Promises Remembered

On Saturday morning I went to an ordination service. The ordinand is someone I know from our local text study, but not that well. I went for two reasons. One is that I've been absent from many events of the broader church lately. The other reason is that I needed an ordination recharge.

Ordinations are much like weddings; they can be as meaningful for the people who are in the congregation as for the one or ones at the altar. I have learned that wedding sermons are almost never for the couple (they aren't really listening, anyway); they are really for all the married people in the congregation. People who have experienced the shine coming off of their wedding vows, who have lived through those first fights, people who might be in a waxing or a waning of their own relationship, are the ones who really need to be reminded of why they got themselves into this in the first place. As those married folks in the pews listen to the sermon and as they hear another couple make vows like the ones they made to each other some years earlier, it's a reminder and a recharge.

The same was true for me on Saturday. I heard the bishop ask the ordinand the same questions another bishop asked me over nine years ago:

"Before Almighty God to whom you must give account, and in the presence of this assembly, will you assume this office, believing that the church's call is God's call to the ministry of word and sacrament?

Will you preach and teach in accordance with the Holy Scriptures, the Creed and the Lutheran confessions?

Will you be diligent in your study of the Holy Scriptures and faithful in your use of the means of grace? Will you pray for God's people, nourish them with the word and sacraments, and lead them by your own example in faithful service and holy living?

Will you give faithful witness to the world, that God's love may be known in all that you do?"

To each question the ordinand responded just as I had, with an enthusiastic "I will, and I ask God to help and guide me." I remember that moment of my own ordination vividly. I truly intended to follow through on these promises. I could hardly wait for the work to begin.

But now the shine has come off of those promises a bit. The work is sometimes more burden than joy. I dream of a career in academia or as a long haul trucker. As I heard the bishop's questions, I knew that I had failed to live up to all I had promised and hoped.

On Saturday I noticed a part of the service that I barely remember from my own. The bishop followed up these questions with these words -- a prayer of sorts. "Almighty God who has given you the will to do these things, graciously give you the strength and compassion to perform them." Just like living into marriage vows (I would guess), living into ordination promises gets hard in the day to day. The scriptures are not always read, the people not always prayed for, my life is not always an example of "holy living" (whatever that means). While I needed to be reminded of those things I had agreed to do, even more I need to be reminded by whose strength I do them. One thing I've learned in these nine years is that I cannot ever do this on my own.

I'm not entirely recharged in my work after the service on Saturday. But I am reminded where to turn when the promises are too heavy and the work is too much. It seems a pastor should know to turn to God; but sometimes we, too, need to be reminded -- reminded of the promises that God has given to us to see us through our calling, whatever that call may be.

So, dear friends, whatever your work is this day, may Almighty God who has given you the will to do these things, graciously give you the strength and compassion to perform them. Amen.