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Reflections on Life and Vocation

 

Bishop James Mathes
Reflections on Life and Vocation
For Clericus, April 12, 2005

 

Introductory Remarks:

Thank you for coming today: It is my hope and prayer that today will be a day of reflection, prayer, and community building where you come to know something of the journey of faith of your bishop and your fellow presbyters and deacons. Most importantly, I trust that through these readings, prayer, reflections, silence, and sacred conversation, God will bring to your consciousness a word that you will treasure as you continue in the vocation of ministry to which you are called.

What I offer you today is three Scripture readings and reflections wrapped in prayer. The reflections are decidedly autobiographical on my part. I do this because it is important to know each other's stories. And even though you have read answers to questions posed, heard others answered in walkabouts, read my resume, and biographical statement, you still are coming to know the heart and faith of your new bishop. I pray that in opening my heart today that you will see this as a necessary act of vulnerability and transparency on the road to knowing and loving. I invite you to do likewise with each other in the conviction that your stories will help you to know each other and thus increase love and mutual affection.

After each reflection, I will lead us in prayer and then ask you to be silent for a period of time. That silence will be broken by another prayer, at which point I will suggest a question for you to ponder for ten minutes. I encourage you to help us move along by monitoring your own breaks and bring us back together for the second and third meditation.

 

FIRST MEDITATION: Three witnesses to the Gospel

Prayer:

Help us, O God, to live by light and not in the darkness; help us to risk acting in ways that reveal rather than conceal us from ourselves. Give us this courage to be vulnerable knowing that life finally comes as a gift to those who have no place to hide. This we pray in the name of the one who gave himself completely in vulnerability and self-surrender, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

First Reading: Isaiah 61:1-8

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion - to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, to display his glory. They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, foreigners shall till your land and dress your vines; but you shall be called priests of the LORD, you shall be named ministers of our God; you shall enjoy the wealth of the nations, and in their riches you shall glory. Because their shame was double, and dishonor was proclaimed as their lot, therefore they shall possess a double portion; everlasting joy shall be theirs. For I the LORD love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.

This reading from Isaiah is a powerful vision of the coming of the Kingdom. Good News is proclaimed to the oppressed, the wounds of the broken hearted are bound up, prisoners released, and the acceptable year of the Lord's favor is announced. I suspect that this reading is chosen by many an ordinand because they hope to be a part of proclaiming that Good News, as well they should. But when I was choosing a lesson from Hebrew Scripture, I chose this one because it was a touchstone which reminded me of those who brought the kingdom of God nearer to me. It reminded me of times far away and distant to where we now assemble, but if I close my eyes I can return to them in an instant.

The household of my childhood was one of privilege, not of mansions and such, but of no want. We lived in a very nice suburb of Dallas, where my father worked for his father, as did his brother. I suspect that the assumption was that I would do the same. We went to church each Sunday, school during the week. In the evenings, we watch TV shows such as "My Three Sons", "I love Lucy", and of course "Leave It to Beaver"-- tranquil domestic archetypes that I was invited to assume I shared. And I thought that I did.

II.
Milton Crum, who would later teach me homiletics, often said that if people are going to be able to hear the Good News they are going to first need to understand the bad news. In the '60's as tumultuous as that decade would turn out to be, for me and my family it was a time of harmony and stability. We were "Leave it to Beaver". June was always happy, Ward was always home on time, and Wally and the "Beav" never got into any real bad trouble. You just had to watch out for Eddy Haskel! On the outside all seemed good and wholesome, especially to a boy who would rather go play in the creek and run in the fields than pay attention in school…because after all everything conflict was resolved by the end of the show.

III.
But on the inside there was a shadow that could not be held back. There were demons in the household, and like any family system ours was complex with its own pathology. I will make a long story shorter by saying that by 1970 it was clear even to me that things were not okay. For some time, my brother was getting more and more out of control and one Saturday morning in a surreal experience he almost ended my sister's and my life. As it turned out, he was tripping on LSD. All we knew was that as we were walking home from the sandwich shop he came careening around the corner and came with inches of hitting us both. Moments later he was pulled over by the police and arrested. On a technicality, my father got him off and thus began a lifelong saga of addiction, arrest, and failed treatment.

My sister and I simply tried to keep out of the way…keep our heads down and be the good children. Surely if we did this, we could have a "normal" life…you know where "Wally and Eddy" DON'T almost kill you and get arrested….where June throws a shoe at Ward in an unimaginable fury. "What was that about?" we asked ourselves, but never aloud or to each other.

Well, we found out what it was about on the Sunday following Thanksgiving in 1971, when my mother sat us down and told us that my father was leaving. I will never forget the moment, when after minutes of meaningless explanations my mother said, "Tell them! Tell them why you are really leaving!!" His answer was that he was in love with his secretary. As I say that I wish I could tell you that it was something less predictable, imaginative, or less sad. But that was it. And I remember my sister and I physical moving next to my terribly wounded mother and glaring at my father. And brothers and sisters, as for me, I was staring with eyes filled with HATE.

…he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor…

Into this time of grief, confusion, anger, and, yes, even hate, something curious did happen. Three Gospelers came into my life. The first was a Sunday school teacher who knew something about what was going on. As it turned out, he was a Scoutmaster and invited me to join the troop. Each month we would go on backpacking trips into the wood, learn new skills, including how to respect the earth and each other. And finally after about a year, my father began to join me on a few of these trips. You see my heart was broken, and my scoutmaster, Pete Lutken, created a holy place where my broken heart could be bound…where my father and I began…only began however incompletely to come back together.

The second gospeler came to me in a place of familiarity. As you may know, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico have long been a place of importance to me and to my family. It is also a place where I understand my conversion to Christ really began to take depth and meaning. Each summer I would go off to the mountains to attend a summer camp, at first for four weeks. But after my father's departure and in the midst of my brother's continuing struggles, I escaped for the entire summer. I would join backpacking treks up into the high country and over the years climbed almost every peak in the Pecos wilderness and covered most of the trails. I didn't know it at the time, but God was giving me my time in the wilderness. It was a time of preparation.

In the summer of 1973, I met my second gospeler, a counselor named Pam. She was a riding instructor, who I helped clean up a cabin between terms. Somehow we began talking about church, and she told me about Jesus. Now, I had just been confirmed, but now I had an incarnational experience of being evangelized. I was told how Jesus had changed her life. She invited me to invite Jesus into my life. Her gift to me was a Bible. I must confess to all of you biblical scholars that it was a Living Bible, but for me at 14 it was perfect. I believe that Pam was sent to me to bring good news to the oppressed.

I discovered my second gospeler in the Mountains of New Mexico. My third came to me in the valleys of Tennessee. Sometimes even fourteen year olds have a burst of wisdom. For me it was when I asked my mother to let me go off to school. And in January of 1974, I flew to Nashville, TN and enrolled in The Webb School in Bell Buckle. It did not start off well. In the second week, I had managed to get a black eye. By the third week, I wanted to go home. If every I doubted the love and devotion of my mother, it was made clear as she took each of my tearful calls begging to come home. In her exceptional wisdom, she pushed back and said, "No, stay the rest of the year and then we will decide what to do." By the end of my eighth grade, I knew I was home.

What made Webb work for me was a family named the Hollimans, Glenn and Lynn. They were my dorm parents my first year in an old nineteenth century dormitory named Sawney House. The simply loved me. Why I do not know….but they did just that. In a very real way they became my parents….they were family. In fact, I remember the days when both their children were born. Later I would become Godparent to both. Glenn was the best man in my wedding. To me, they gave "a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit." I saw them as "oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, to display his glory."

These three gospelers literally changed my life: Pete Lutken helped to heal a broken heart. Pam proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the Hollimans simply loved me. When I graduated from The Webb School I was given as my diploma a Bible as is the custom in the South, but I had already received a treasure which was going to set me on a life of vocation that I did not fully know.

Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, foreigners shall till your land and dress your vines; but you shall be called priests of the LORD, you shall be named ministers of our God; you shall enjoy the wealth of the nations, and in their riches you shall glory. Because their shame was double, and dishonor was proclaimed as their lot, therefore they shall possess a double portion; everlasting joy shall be theirs. For I the LORD love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.

Let us pray,

O God, whose word is not carefully edited to be either cool or dispassionate, but whose every word is loaded, whose every word is charged with passion and faithfulness towards His people, help us to be faithful listeners that the silence of our despair may be contradicted by the language of amazement. This we ask in His name who was Himself the unedited word of God, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Question:

When have you been in a place of darkness and sorrow? Who has given the gospel, GOOD NEWS, to you in that time and place?

SECOND MEDITATION: Where is the church?

Prayer:

O God, who is both author and finisher of that which is and is to be, teach us the sensitivity to discern the signals of daily life that we may miss no nuance or shading of your handiwork. In His name we ask this, whose body is for us the symbol of a purpose which so embraces the spectrum of life that it transforms what is routine into what is noble and unique, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Second Reading: Philippians 2:5-11

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

I.
When I was graduated from The Webb School, I enrolled at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. The next four years were simply wonderful. In my freshman year, I met and began dating Terri Sutton who very quickly became my life partner and soul mate. Our college years were truly a shared experience where being a part of the University Choir was the defining part of our college years. Even though I majored in mathematics, I felt my call to ordained ministry become clear and by my senior year I had been made a postulant for holy orders in the Diocese of Tennessee and we found ourselves in our first year of marriage leaving Sewanee for Virginia Seminary.

I was something of an oddity at VTS since I had come directly from college to seminary. We were so green and so young. Terri taught English at a Roman Catholic boys school and we quickly made lifelong friends. It was a year in which I continued to build a closer relationship with my father. In fact, Terri and I made a special effort to spend Christmas with his every expanding second family in Toronto.

II.
In June, I was in my second week of CPE at Sibley Hospital and thoroughly enjoying the chance to really do pastoral care rather than to merely study it. Days before, I had visited with my father and learned that his second wife was to have a fifth child. I should tell you that his ever expanding family had been a source of some pain for me. It almost feels as though we were not enough or were being replaced. But rather than arguing the wisdom of another child at age 53, I simply congratulated him and told him that I would pray that all would be well. And so when we watched the news, on what would be one of our darkest nights in early June of 1983, and saw photos of a plane on fire on the tarmac in Cincinnati, I did not know immediately that I had had my last conversation with my father. My sister called to say that our Dad was on the plane and that we did not yet know his fate. Terri and I simply said to my sister that we were on our way. We drove through the night to be with her in her new apartment in New York City, and when we arrived at 4 a.m., she had just gotten the telephone call. Twenty-one people had survived; twenty-three people, including my father, had died.

The weeks that followed were filled with a range of emotions that are too vast to share. At the end of five weeks it became clear that I could not continue in seminary. I was emotionally raw from dealing with my stepmother, my brother who was now in my care, and the financial impact of no longer having my father to support my education. I was able to secure a job at my alma mater, Webb, as a development officer in a campaign and Terri worked in Nashville for a fund raising consultant.

My bishop, William Sanders, took good care of me. He was available and kind. I remember one of our visits when I was feeling particularly sorry for myself and wondering about where God was in the midst of my loss and particularly where the church had been. I was blinded by grief and anger. I asked him, "Where was God?" "Where was the church?" His response was that God was on the plane, with me, with my sister. God was anywhere where there was a cross to be carried. As for the church, my bishop had listened to my story of the days since my father's death. And he replayed for me all the people who had done things large and small…for me. The church was there.

I was given an invitation to see grace and blessing as companions of my sorrow. I was asked to see light in the darkness. I must honestly say that at first I could not accept the simplicity of this witness, but his words kept coming back to me.

III.
And so slowly, I began to see more of God in my life not only the past chapters but the present moments. And so when Terri and I were asked to return to the Mountain and Sewanee, we saw this as a calling from God. I did not know if it was a path back to seminary. That seemed beside the point. It was simply a way to listen and to live out our calling. And so, we entered the world of Episcopal boarding schools where I taught math, coached cross country and soccer, and Terri was the director of public relations. Through adoption, we added a son. Blessings came from the most astonishing places…even Chilgok province in the Republic of Korea.

After a year of teaching, I became the school's director of development. We were just beginning a $4.2 million campaign to essentially renovate the 75 year old campus. As that campaign ended, I felt that my work on the mountain was done and I returned to VTS and completed my education. In the first weeks of my second tour at Virginia, our daughter, Sarah, came home.

After ordination in the St. Andrew's Chapel, I went to Belmont, MA where I served three years as assistant at All Saints' and also served as protest chaplain at McLean Hospital, a psychiatric hospital associated with Mass General and Harvard. Then in 1994, I was called to be rector of the Church of St. James the Less in Northfield, IL.

Northfield was a wonderful place. It was a parish ready to grow and expand their ministry. They taught me immense lessons on being a parish priest, being a community dedicated to Christian formation and service. I think that because of who they were and what happened there, Bishop Persell asked me to come join his staff as canon to the ordinary in early 2001.

On the staff of the Diocese of Chicago, I found myself a part of an extraordinary team. I do not use the word team lightly. We worked together with clear roles but a commitment to support each other for the cause of building up the body of Christ in that community. Again, I found myself being formed and coached by others.

When I found myself being encouraged to enter into a discernment process in San Diego, my first reaction was to demur with the clear conviction that others were more qualified. But I had a couple of people in particular remind me of my advice to them to be open to the spirit. Well, you know what happens when the Holy Spirit gets involved…for me, it meant coming to be with you.

IV.
As I reflect on what has happened to me since I received my Bible at the Webb School in May of 1978, I am aware of a few things. First, I am aware of the presence of God in my life. The blessings of Jesus walking with me are clear, sometimes at the moment but always upon reflection. For me, the question of where God is and where is the church is really the same question. Perhaps because of habit or stubbornness, I have always, through everything, remained at the Eucharistic table and fellowship. And because of that, Christ has been my companion and become incarnated in manifestations too many to number.

At my ordination, I asked that the kenosis hymn from Philippians be read for two reasons. First, it speaks to the qualities of Jesus and the faith community that I have come to know…incarnational, present, and healing through its woundedness. Secondly, I feel a constant need to be reminded that my own spiritual journey gets off track when I become focused on getting filled up rather than emptying myself. The Christian journey is a journey of submission and self-emptying. The cross is an every present reminder that by being humble and subject to Christ that we are filled. It is through our wounds and brokenness that we minister. It is through death that we find life.

Let us pray,

Lord make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

Question:

Where have you found God and the Church present in your life? What is the connection between being formed and self-emptying?

THIRD MEDITIATION: Come Holy Spirit, Come

Prayer:

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too pleased with ourselves; when our dreams have become true because we have dreamed too small; when we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord; when with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost our thirst for the waters of life. Disturb us, Lord, to dare boldly; to venture on wider seas where storms show your mastery, not ours; where in losing sight of land we shall find the stars. This we ask in the name of our captain, who is Jesus Christ. Amen.

Third Reading: John 20:19-23

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

I.
After my ordination and consecration as your bishop, I was asked by several people, "What was it like?" or what the most meaningful part of the service was. The truth is that much of the service was a blur. But it decidedly slowed down at that time of the Veni Creator Spiritu. I had nothing to do at that point but to kneel and receive the ordination to which you and the people of the diocese had called me. And so I knelt and let the words of the music surround me as the bishops of the church did the same and to do your bidding. I was surrounded. I was held in prayer by you and others. It was a holy space where even as I was alone…I was not alone…but held and surrounded. "Peace be with you." And I was at peace. "Receive the Holy Spirit." And it was given to me. I felt it as the hands of bishops were laid upon me. And those hands were weighty. They were weighed down with the traditions of the apostolic witnesses of ages past. They were weighed down with the stories of faith and witness that had gone before. They were weighed down with Sacred Scripture and Sacramental offices which I now carry on your behalf.

When I stood up, my good friend, Victor Scantlebury, said, "Brother, I meant to tell you to brace yourself." While that might have been helpful for the moment, how do you brace yourself for the gift of the Holy Spirit? You really can't; it is going to blow you over, swallow you up as if by a big fish, and blow you off your horse. It is going to find you even if you are behind locked doors.

II.
And so, this last meditation is not really one in which I look back and share my past and invite you to do the same. Rather, I would ask us to wonder together about the Holy Spirit moving in our lives together. On March 5th, I knelt and was ordained, but like with any ordination or the institution of a new ministry, it really was not about me but about us. It was a moment when the Holy Spirit was continuing to do a new thing in the life of the sacred mystery we call the Church.

We are here in this place, at this particular time, in our particular office because God has called us here. It is my sense that this intentionality of God has to be honored and recognized. And the time in the life of our church is one of significant confusion and turmoil. The tempter would have us get fixated on the turmoil and confusion and distracted from mission and ministry. What better way to cease the advancing of the Kingdom of God than to get focused on conflict and on ourselves.

III.
Many wise observers of our time have pointed to the abundance of interest in spirituality in our communities. We have been told that we live in a post-Christian world, reminiscent of the first centuries of the church, and I think it is true. Those first generations were an incredible time of mission. The gospel and the nascent church which proclaimed the Good News literally exploded on the scene. The first disciples were actually dying to witness what they had received.

My good friends and fellow bearers of the Holy Spirit: Welcome to the most incredible age of mission the church has ever known. We are called by God to minister in this place at this time because it is such a moment pregnant with potential. We are surrounded by seekers, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, of a myriad of cultures and languages who find themselves living in a world that tempts them to follow many idols…all of which will leave them desolate. But we know and proclaim the true God, the creator of heaven and earth, who is known to us through Jesus Christ. This is the one who will not leave us desolate. This is the one who creates, sustains and redeems us.

IV.
In the walkabouts, I was asked more than once whether Jesus is the way or a way. I think I said something like this: that for me Jesus is the way, but that we need to be careful to make sure that our own certitude does not lead us to the excesses of past generations where faith became a weapon of cruelty. As I continue to reflect on that question and the challenges that it holds for each of us, I would like to return to it and invite us to ponder it in a more fulsome way. Let us wonder about Jesus' words, I am the way, the truth, the life.

What is behind the question and the words of Jesus is really a question about salvation. Do we think of salvation in terms of the community or in terms of individuals? How does Jesus' oracle in John 3:16 relate to this? What does it mean that Jesus salvific work on the cross is out of love for the WHOLE world?

As I continue to ponder these things, I sense that it is really about the cross of Christ. Jesus is the way, the truth, the life. The way to true humanity, true life, is through the way of the cross. Jesus is the way; the way is through Jerusalem and Calvary. Jesus is the truth; the truth is that we only find life through self-surrender. We only find life through facing the cross. In my own prayers and incompleteness, I do not presume to know how God may accomplish this in the fullness of time. But I believe God is.

V.
The abiding question is how we participate in this as followers of Jesus and as evangelists. I only know of one way: we tell the Eucharistic story: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

We tell this story in word and deed. We live out the way, the truth, the life. We go to Jerusalem and Calvary knowing that it is the way to the empty tomb, the road to Emmaus and to beach with a charcoal fire and fish where Jesus says to us: "Feed my sheep."

Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, the life." "I died out of love…love for the whole world. Feed my sheep. There is a great yawning gap between what is and what can be. I sense that the spirit is calling us in this extraordinary age of mission to close this gap. People are hurting. People are hungry. People hope for something they cannot even name. Let us not tarry. Let us come together out of the love that we have been given, empowered by the spirit breathed on us by the breath of Jesus.

Let us pray,
O God, who is ever moving through a world fashioed by your own Word and who calls us to a future where we have been singled out for life, help us to live our lives as main events, bring to uninterrupted landscapes points of arresting distinction. In His name, we ask this, who being brought to nothing was lifted up as everything, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Question:

What is the spirit calling us to be and do in this extraordinary age of mission? What have I been given as a gift for ministry in this time? What do I have to give up to surrender to this service?