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November 19, 2011
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Electing Convention Sermon
November 19, 2011
Mark S. Sisk
Good Morning.
Here we are at last.
To say that I have looked forward to this day with mixed emotions is to understate the case, and having to reschedule this Convention didn’t help.
I have felt deeply honored to serve as your Bishop in one capacity or the other, for something approaching 14 years.
And, what’s especially nice about it all, I have loved every minute of it (or almost every minute of it). Therefore, the prospect of stepping away from this ministry that I have enjoyed so much is not something that I do with alacrity.
While it is true, as I have said on any number of occasions, that while I have called for the election of a bishop coadjutor, I have not announced my retirement, yet it is also true that our actions today are inevitably and properly part of my departure.
I have done a number of things in preparation for this day: First and foremost I have prayed for the guidance of the Holy Spirit upon this Convention, and upon those who, by God’s grace, will be put forward for consideration as bishop coadjutor.
I am not, nor have I ever been a person, who believed that God moves people around as though they were pieces on the chessboard of life. However, I do believe that God works with each and all of us in the life circumstances in which we find ourselves. That, in my view, is what we mean when we talk about the Providence of God, that is to say: All that is, is the foundation upon which God builds to bring about the Divine purpose. It is in that deepest sense that I have the most profound confidence that God’s Will, will be done today.
Another part of my preparation was to look back at the electing convention when I was chosen as your bishop coadjutor. I noted, and felt considerable identity with Bishop Grein’s sermon on that occasion. He admitted to having mixed emotions as well. He mentioned feeling a mixture of nostalgia and hope that is certainly resonant with my own sense of things. He spoke as well of the sense of a profound inner shift of being, a shift that came with the shouldering of the responsibilities of service that are those of a Bishop.
This sparked in me vivid recollections of my own consecration.
It will be of no surprise to anyone that I found the service deeply moving: the diocese gathered, the liturgy stately, music wonderful, and the preacher right on message. However, two things stand out most vividly in my memory. The first is the objection to my consecration. I will admit that I was startled when the objection was raised by a lone voice far back in the Cathedral. However, whatever fleeting anxiety I might have felt was almost immediately dispelled. It was dispelled because I recognized the woman who raised the objection as the same person I had encountered just a short time before outside the cathedral. As I got out of my car she had approached and looked straight at me. There I stood in my brand new and very bright purple shirt, and she said, “Are you the one?”
Already feeling more than a little awkward I rather lamely answered. “I guess I am.” At which point she reached into her pocket and drew out a set of pink plastic rosary beads, shoved them into my hand and said, “Don’t forget the poor and don’t forget the homeless.” And then she stalked off. And I thought to myself, “Well now, that’s not bad.” Whoever doubted that angels exist?
I had that set of rosary beads in my pocket as she approached the Presiding Bishop with her objection. As I have them in my pocket this morning.
The second vivid moment that lives in my memory to this day was the actual moment of Consecration itself. When the bishops gathered round to lay their hands on my head, quite unexpectedly I had the sense of being in a womb: a womb from which I was about to be released, or perhaps expelled.
I have never quite gotten over that first sense of living a new and unanticipated life, one that was well beyond anything I had ever expected.
Yet another, and entirely serendipitous preparation for this Election Day, was my participation in our own Scott Barker’s consecration as Bishop of Nebraska just last month.
It was a joy to see him begin his new ministry amongst a community he knows so well, and one that loves him so much.
It was in the course of the festivities of that day that the Presiding Bishop presented him with nicely framed quote by the late Roman Catholic Bishop of Recife in Brazil, Dom Hélder Câmara. It read,
"The bishop belongs to all. Let no one be scandalized if I frequent those who are considered unworthy or sinful. Who is not a sinner? Let no one be alarmed if I am seen with compromised and dangerous people, on the left or the right. Let no one bind me to a group. My door, my heart, must be open to everyone, absolutely everyone."
That same Bishop is famous for also having said,
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why are they poor, they call me a Communist."
These elements combine to form my prayer for this great diocese. I pray for the election of a bishop who is prepared to be born into a new and wonderful work, amidst the wonderful people of this diocese whose ministry is called and destined to be carried out in new, challenging and promising circumstances. I pray for the election of a bishop who, amidst the swirling demands and expectation of office, will never forget the poor and the homeless. I pray for the election of a bishop who will have the courage to be seen with, and listen to, those who others might call “compromised and dangerous people on the left and on the right.”
I offer all these prayers in the sure and certain hope that God is with us this day and in all the days of our lives. May it be that we so live that this, and all the days which are ours to offer, are seen always to be giving Glory to the One who gave Himself for us today and to the ages of ages. AMEN.
