Sermon on the Occasion of the Ordination of Trent Williams
“Lions in the Library”
Delivered by Reverend Dan De Leon
At St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, Gerald, Elm Mott, Texas
4:00pm, Sunday, February 10, 2008
Isaiah 6:1-8; John 13:3-7
Greetings to you all in the name of Christ. I’m pleased to be with you this afternoon on such a remarkable occasion: the ordination of our dear brother, Trent Williams. Trent asked me months ago if I would preach his ordination sermon, so I’ve been holding this day close to my heart and my prayers. And make no mistake about it, it is a blessing that we are here today making up this rare cloud of witnesses at St. Paul’s. Trent, all of us are so honored, so proud and so happy for you.
But as your colleague and your friend, I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to pull you aside if even from this pulpit right now and ask you something: Trent, are you sure about this? Are you sure you want to do this? It’s not too late to back out now. This ministry thing, it’s not all wine and roses.
And old mentor of mine used to say, “If there is anything you can do that brings you joy, if there’s anything you can do to make you happy besides ministry, then, by God, you’d better do that.” Now, Trent, I’m just looking out for you…honestly. I know that you enjoy ministry and you’re confident in the path that you have chosen (or the path that has chosen you, as they teach us in seminary), but speaking to you as your colleague and friend, I just don’t want to see you lost or undone or ruined.
OK, now I can speak again to everyone in this room. I want to assure all of you that I’m not trying to talk Trent out of his calling, as if that were possible. I’m just taking an honest look at the Scripture that Trent has chosen for his ordination service.
The Isaiah passage talks about the commissioning of the prophet; Isaiah’s encounter with the Lord in the temple with six-winged seraphs hovering and the doorposts shaking. It’s obviously an appropriate text for this moment in Trent’s life because Isaiah is the one who goes out there and serves God. He’s the one who answers God’s mighty cry of ‘who will go for us,’ with, “Here am I. Send me!”
But upon his encounter with God, Isaiah cries out, “Woe to me! I am ruined!” The New Revised Standard Version of the text records Isaiah saying, “I am lost.” The King James Version says, “I am undone.” And the New International Version says, “I am ruined.” Lost. Ruined. Undone. Is this what the ones who would come forward in answer to God’s call can expect in return for their obedience? Is this what we are commissioning Trent to receive today?
A young candidate for ministry sits across a table from an older, more experienced clergyman. The table is covered with plates of oysters and wine goblets brimming with fine German Riesling. The young pastor had just preached his trial sermon for placement in a church, and the older clergyman was charged with breaking the bad news. He said to the hopeful young pastor, “Son, the written evaluation of the search committee states that your preaching style was too challenging, and your message too depressing. I’m here to tell you that no church will have you with your present opinions that you preach. Churches around here will just chew you up and spit you out. At this rate you might end up over in London filling a pastoral vacancy that’s been open for nearly a year now. It’s a low-paying position that no clergyman in their right mind would want to up and leave this country to fill. Mark my words: you’ll be lost, undone…ruined.”
The older, more experienced clergyman breaking the bad news was Martin Niemoller, the eventual founder of the German Confessing Church. He was telling a young Dietrich Bonhoeffer that his opinions would have to change if he wanted to fall in line with all the other churches that were accommodating Hitler and his new-to-power Nazis.
A dramatic story, to be sure, but we get the point. The young Bonhoeffer’s response to Niemoller’s smarmy advice was simply, “You can’t be serious.” Trent, although on a less tragic scale, there have been those Niemoller moments in your ministry when you have said the same thing: “You can’t be serious.” It’s that authenticity that has brought you to this moment. It’s that uncompromising obedience to your calling to serve the church pastorate that may have left you with mornings at Brite Divinity School when you felt lost, or afternoons driving from Fort Worth to Waco when you felt undone, or maybe even some nights toiling with yet another paper for one of your seminary classes when you felt ruined. But that kind of moment is where God calls out to Isaiah. By this example, we testify today to God’s call to Trent Williams.
Two thousand years ago it was radical to demonstrate humble acts of service to anyone, and it’s in this context that Jesus looks around a room at people who are supposed to be his underlings—the disciples—and he does the unthinkable: he serves them. He radically serves them by getting on his knees, taking the shirt off his own back, and using it to wash his disciples’ feet.
And even in an environment where his present company was supposed to agree with him, Jesus is met with opposition. “You’re not supposed to wash my feet, master. Get off your knees and be the leader we expect you to be.”
Jesus demonstrated radical love through radical means, and he was constantly met with opposition, even at home among his friends. And what did Jesus preach? Justice, mercy, forgiveness, liberation, love and peace. Did Dietrich Bonhoeffer preach anything less than that? And was the context any different for him? He had opposition, too.
So, it seems that we must now take a candid look at the context into which we are commissioning today’s candidate for ordination. I was on a conference call with various clergy around the country the other night. We were all listening in on a dialog between a handful of pastors from United Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ and Baptist churches. And one of the clergy, Dr. Cynthia Hale, who pastors Ray of Hope Christian Church in Decatur, Georgia, had this to say. She said that in our present day, peace is absent. Peace is absent. I couldn’t agree more. This is a potent tonic for us to hear on this first Sunday of Lent, too, because during Holy Week, we might hear Jesus’ words from John’s gospel, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” We might need to face that absence of peace before Easter morning.
At the close of the first decade of the 21st century, the women and men who would come forward saying, “Here am I! Send me,” are facing a world where the gift of peace is absent. Today’s candidates for ordination are commissioned into a world where individualism trumps communion; a world where a small percentage of humanity bathes in bliss while millions of children go without clean drinking water; a world where sparks of neighborly hope are snuffed out by blind indifference; a world where war has compromised our best judgment and our God-given understanding that all human life is precious; a world that is in dire need of God’s servants who would look at this context and say with inspiring conviction to the world’s sleeping souls, “You can’t be serious!”
Trent knows this. I’m preaching to the choir on this. Trent knows a great many things:
Trent knows about theology, Christology, pneumatology, ecclesiology, teleology, anthropomorphism, pantheism, and transubstantiation.
Trent knows the Heidelberg Catechism, the Apostle’s Creed, and the United Church of Christ’s Statement of Faith.
Trent knows the histories of baptism, communion, and Sabbath in the Church, not to mention his knowledge of UCC history, regardless of its branch of origin.
Trent knows how to preach, teach and administer the sacraments.
Trent knows that if you take even one stanza out of the hymn A Mighty Fortress is Our God, it makes no theological sense
But, Trent, my impeccably polished earthen vessel of the Lord, did you know that there is a Lion in the Library?
I’m father to a nearly three-year-old boy and a one-month old girl, so often times my preaching fodder is founded on children’s books. There’s good stuff in there. You’d be surprised how palpably you can find God in the pages of I Love You This Much, Good Night Moon, or any old Dr. Seuss book. My son’s most recent discovery on his bookshelf is called Library Lion, and for the last few nights when we’ve read it together, Mac and I, my thoughts have looked to this day.
My friends, there is a lion in the library, but there is no rule against that, so a librarian, Mr. McBee begrudgingly allows this lion to stick around. He’s not causing any problems, this lion. He’s just walking around, browsing books, and curling up on the floor for a nap. Still, it’s kind of radical that there’s a lion in the library.
Finally the lion breaks a rule: When story time is over, the lion roars his displeasure. You can’t make noise in the library, so Mr. McBee says to the lion, “If you break the rules one more time, you’re out of here. You’re banned from the library.”
The next day, the head librarian, Miss Merriweather, falls off a ladder and breaks her arm, and the lion is the only one on the scene. So, Miss Merriweather tells the lion to go get Mr. McBee. So, the lion runs into Mr. McBee’s office and starts to whimper, and Mr McBee just gets agitated. The lion whimpers a little louder to get his attention, but Mr. McBee just acts annoyed. So, finally the lion puts his paws up on Mr. McBee’s desk, towers over the man, opens his enormous mouth and let’s out a blood-curdling roar.
Well, the lion knows he’s broken a rule again, so he just mopes outside, banned from the library; and Mr. McBee goes running down the hall looking for Miss Merriweather to tell her that the lion had broken the rules again.
Well, the story has a happy ending. Thanks to the lion, Miss Merriweather gets assistance for her broken arm, and Mr. McBee goes out and finds the lion to ask him back to the library. The moral of the story is that sometimes there is a good reason to break the rules even in the library.
You hear that? Lost. Undone. Ruined. Banned.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the soft-spoken lion who roared in the face of the Nazis in Hitler’s Germany. Rosa Parks was the determined lion who roared in the face of racist America when a white man asked her to give up her seat on a segregated bus. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the courageous lion who roared in the face of white clergymen who kept telling him to calm down and to be patient; to wait for a more appropriate time for justice. Jesus is the righteous lion who roared in the face of self-indulgent market and materialism when he overturned the tables in the temple exclaiming, “Why do you turn my Father’s house into a den of thieves?” All of these lions who roared because no one was listening to the whisper of God, all of these lions were in some way lost, undone, ruined, even banned in the eyes of their society; ruined in their respective context.
The women and men who come forward for ordination in our present context say, “Here am I. Send me,” because they would rather be ruined in the eyes of a broken world than exalted by the hands of a world gone mad. I know it sounds cryptic at first, but this is what brings ministers great joy; because the truth is that when our brother Trent finds himself lost, our God will always find him and return him to green pastures of peace. The truth is that when Trent finds himself undone, our God will send angels to keep him from dashing his foot against a stone. The truth is that when Trent finds himself ruined, our God will restore him. And when Trent finds himself banned, our God will say, “Good and faithful servant, welcome home.”
Trent, today you are our lion because the roar of Christ’s justice, mercy, and love are evidently in your heart, and we are gathered here today to tell you that we need you to get out into the world and roar with all your theologically-trained fervor. We need you to get out into society and roar with all your prophetic willpower. We need you to get into the church and roar with all your God-given might, because as Reverend Peter Gomes says of God’s servants, “You are God’s last hope.”
And Trent we wouldn’t have it any other way, because we know that you wouldn’t either. Amen.