March 20, 2021, (Feast Day of Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, Bishop and Missionary 687)
The Rev. Kathy D. Boss ordination to the priesthood
White Mountain School, Bethlehem, New Hampshire
Numbers 11:16-17, 24-25 Philippians 4:4-9
Psalm 132: 8-19 Matthew 9:35-38
By the Rev. Jamie Hamilton
Joy is Divinity dancing in us. Amen
(Thank you’s on behalf of Kathy)- Bishop Rob Hirschfeld, the Revs. Curtis Metzger, Colin Chapman, Elsa Worth, Derek Scalia, Sandi Albom, the staff of the Diocesan house, the parishioners and priests and deacons throughout the diocese. The congregations of All Saints, both in Peterborough and Littleton, and St. James in Keene, the students, staff, and professors at Boston University, at the White Mountain school, the community at the Peterborough Food Pantry, your co-workers at Jellison’s Funeral Home, your three sons Jonathan (his partner Katherine), Adam (his partner Allison), and “Baby” Noah, and your parents and siblings, and your many friends, including Michal and Allison.
And for all the other invisible hands and hearts that have nurtured you, Kathy. With landscape weaving your theology, as you listen to the ice sing, pray the Camino, or dig in gardens, we acknowledge this land. This land is located on N’dakinna, the traditional lands and waterways of the Abenaki, Pennacook and other related Wabanaki Peoples past and present. We honor with gratitude the land itself and the people who have stewarded it throughout the generations. And finally, we pray for all those who are no longer with us, remembering especially Eunice Chalmers, your dear friend who died over four years ago, and today, March 20, is her birthday. She and so many are with all of us in spirit.
On the occasion of an ordination, all of us today-priests, deacons, bishops, laity, and this, our deacon, our soon to-be priest, Kathy, are trusting our lives, yet again, to our Beloved, the Ancient Heart of all Life, who beckons us daily into the dance of intimacy with our faith, as we live and move and have our being. Kathy, thank you for giving us this opportunity with you as you embrace your life as priest, to renew our own promises and our own vows.
“Rejoice in the Lord Always; again, I will say, Rejoice.”
When Paul writes these words to his fledgling church in Philippi, he is writing by candlelight from the cell of a dark prison in Rome. It’s difficult to imagine such hope and joy in the face of such possible despair, defeat, and ruin.
Actually, maybe it’s not so difficult to imagine as we have struggled mightily this past year during a global pandemic. Covid-tide is a season too long, too painful, with too much loss, too much uncertainty and too much distance. Imagine the irony (we’ve all talked about this… as minsters, parents, friends, co-workers, siblings) that our separation, our protection, our abundance of caution, our receiving of guided autonomy, our mask wearing, our acts of closing doors- to church buildings, homes, businesses, schools, community suppers, nursing and retirement communities….
Yes, CLOSED OFF…YET...
All of these “closing” actions are acts that are saving lives. These are acts of sacrificial love.
These things “shutting down” make absence, yet in the vacuum, the presence of LOVE emerges in a new way. The Holy Spirit is present, especially right now in our many acts of not doing, not being, not sustaining how we’ve always been. These strange ways of being, (disorientation, forgetfulness, confusions, sorrows, anxiety, etc.) are like seeds buried in the deep dark earth, and rather than being smothered, they are breaking open… strong enough to reach for the sky. So unlikely, so strange, yet so true.
Paul would say, “Welcome to the faith. Of course, everything is upside down. Remember, in the midst of your vertigo, to cling to the Sustainer of all Life, as your center which will always hold.” Paul would continue, “I greet you as you enter into the cell of my dark prison. Pull up a chair. Find your prayer beads. Strap yourself into your heart and know that God remains with us, even in possible horrors. Dead center. And by the way, this is where Joy resides!”
And before we even have a chance to resist, Paul writes, “Again, I will say, Rejoice,” even though he has no idea of his own fate. He has no idea whether he will be rescued, like he was before, with God unlocking inner cell doors by earthquakes and jailers converting to liberators before his very eyes,
OR…
whether he will waste away, tied to chains and to darkness and to a brutal end. For Paul, it doesn’t matter. He trusts he’s in God’s hands which gives him great joy. Rejoice, the Lord is always near.
“Don’t be anxious,” he tells us, “God is the next breath.”
Paul knows the peace of God which surpasses all understanding because this peace has nothing to do with his circumstances, and everything to do with trusting in the sustaining presence of this Living Love, the fire of the Holy Spirit’s belly. Paul wants to pass this joy, this gladness, this longing, this steadfastness, this reassurance to us, today…
Really??? Don’t you sometimes just want to break out of his prison? Or get off Noah’s salvific ark? Or be like the Israelites who complained to Moses about being brought out to the desert just to starve? (They had a point). Sometimes, I just want to quit/escape/give up/forget. I don’t think I’m alone in this feeling. (Right?)
But today, Kathy, there’s no escaping for you. No escaping for any of us. (Thank God). Because here we are, accepting God’s invitation to renew our vows on the Ark of Only God Knows. In the midst of sorrows, grief, lost and confusion, we find courage to make our claims of joy. We can find this gift of Joy when God is our center, our touchstone, our hope, our source, our breath, our north star.
Thomas Merton, mystic monk once said, “If at the count of three God stopped loving us, we would cease to exist.” Everything would end… the world, you, me, time, space, cause and effect, the whole kit and caboodle… Gone.
Love… the love that is over and beyond all doors to existence, is what calls us here today. Love is the underpinning of all we know. We can try to deny it… sure. But once you’ve heard Love, full of tender mercies and compassion, call your name, you can never shut it out. Love is here to stay the course, through thick and thin.
We need this Love to be able to make promises, to keep vows. We are responding to the Call of Living that came into the depths of our being. God-initiated. In our surrendering, we are recognizing God’s beckoning and sweet invitation to unveil through the everyday- ness of our own lives, our unique translation of Love, awakening each one of us to the deepest nature of who we are, to discover the wild possibilities of our precious lives.
Last week when the President addressed the nation, he shared with us that he writes on that back of his daily schedule, the new number of Covid deaths for that day, as a way to remember, to pray, to commit, and to let suffering shape his daily work, as a way to be united with fellow citizens of our nation in their grief. That card is tucked in the inside pocket of his suit jacket, next to his heart. I’m moved by that simple, yet profound gesture, and so now in the back of my Prayer Book, I am writing down the new number of Covid deaths as a ritual to enhance my own prayer life… 527,726, 531,001, 535,997, 536, 472, 537,649, 539,207
As I write down the numbers, day by day, I am moved by the exactness, the counting, the one in the midst of many, a life well lived, a life lost, a family’s grief. In a strange way, writing down such a large number helps me see the stark power of an individual’s death. By writing down the “statistic,” I am moved beyond the statistic to deep connection. I am praying. And in this act of prayer, I feel joy rising up within me. Paul’s kind of joy, not as the world creates, but as God gives.
If we have any doubt about God appearing in the world not as we imagine, then all we have to do is see a young virgin, unwed, teenager called Mary, alone, minding her own business, caught up in her own insignificance, becoming the divine vessel to deliver the Word to the World. In her “YES,” her womb will also become the tomb. A womb, at first empty, not yet touched by God. And then a tomb, also empty, because it has been touched by God. God always fills-in our emptiness, sometimes in our wombs, other times in our tombs.
Mary’s womb which becomes a tomb, which will then become our womb.
Just as God never appears as we imagine, God also comes to us disguised as our own life. And in that life, Love resides. We just get distracted and don’t see it. Kathy, your greatest gifts are that you risk loving deeply and that you are Real.
There’s a classic story about the great Rabbi Zusha, who was found agitated and upset as he lay on his deathbed. His students asked, “Rebbe, why are you so sad? After all the great things you have accomplished, your place in heaven is assured!”
“I’m afraid!” Zusha replied, “Because when I get to heaven, God won’t ask me ‘Why weren’t you more like Moses?’ or ‘Why weren’t you more like King David?’ God will ask ‘Zusha, why weren’t you more like Zusha?’
Kathy, you’re the real deal. You’re comfortable in your own skin. You understand in a deep and natural way, as poet John O’Donohue teaches us, that the soul does not reside in the body. Rather the body resides in the soul and the soul shelters and mediates and holds the air, our minds, and our bodies. “In this primal sense, the soul is imaginative.” (Anum Cara, p. 97).
The only barrier to our soul’s imagination is our sense of readiness.
Kathy, you are committed to readiness in all things. Mostly in your capacity to sit with sleeping tigers of fear that reside in the corners of all our hearts, and to not be afraid. You’ll wake them up if need be, knowing that it is prayer that will get us through the darkest night of our souls.
Prayer gives us the power to touch God’s heart-strings, and Kathy you are there, helping us to ground ourselves in God’s love affair with us. It is God who resides in our heart, and you are there as our guide, helping us to the Truth of who we are in God’s gift of our real Self, our own heart-strings, and in our own knowledge of joy.
We are the same, like Jesus, both wounded and resurrected, and we are side by side with each other in the wonderful mystery of the Body of Christ. Woven together in our open and empty hands. In the giving and in the receiving. In the suffering. In the joy.
With Mary and her YES, we are reminded, day by day, to trust that our simple lives will show forth the glory of God. God, who often works through what is not said by people who are not named, will take the wombs of our suffering and our joy to create something… to let us come to something… to let us redeem something.
And you Kathy, by the grace of God, you will be part of this joy as Priest in God’s Church. You are so called, and today, with God’s Yes, Your Yes, Our Yes, we lay our hands on you and make you priest. Trusting as Paul did… that our souls know the geography of our destination, which will always take us on the path of Love. AMEN