A sermon by the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, Associate Professor of New Testament, during the ordination to the priesthood of the Rev. Catherine Tyndall Boyd, ETSS 2006, presented at St. John's Church in Austin on January 13, 2007

How joyful it is to be here this afternoon in this opening week of Epiphany to set apart Cathy Tyndall Boyd, disciple of Jesus, to the ministry of priest. As priest, she will preach, absolve, bless, baptize, and preside at the supper of Christ’s body and blood. Matthew’s gospel tells of the prophet Jesus traveling through dirty, conflicted, chaotic, impoverished, occupied country and proclaiming the good news of God’s reign -- that the final age was dawning when the righteous would be vindicated, and all would dine at the wedding feast beyond all weddings. Bridesmaids’ lamps would burn brightly all night long in preparation for the feast. Musicians would pipe and revelers would dance.

This ordination is another sign of God’s reign. It bears a strong resemblance to a wedding, not just because Cathy’s wearing white, families and friends have gathered from all corners of the earth, but because here, like at a wedding, we rejoice in the love of God for humanity, the dignity and value of human life; we celebrate the ultimacy of love for one another which defeats all disappointment and death and which never ends, just as Jesus is with us always even unto the end of the age.

On first look the gospel reading from Matthew seems far from a wedding banquet, the celebratory Epiphany image. Discipleship looks like a lot of work. Animal husbandry, sheepherding and agriculture – harvesting. I think of those sheep getting lost and then falling into pits and having to be dragged out and how sweaty and scratchy you get with those little bits of grain sticking to your skin as the stalks are felled by the iron scythe. These biblical metaphors for ministry and mission seem rather more muscular than the images of priest I think my creative friend Cathy was aiming for here.

These images of shepherding and harvesting are old fashioned ways of speaking of what we also call the mission of the church, what God sends us disciples to do in the hurting world. In a brave new world of I-Phones and hybrid stem cells, the priest finds even in these homely metaphors in scripture angles on the life giving, blessed, difficult, dynamic, satisfying vocation/work.

The disciple of Jesus, and the priest, is called to proclaim the reign of God even in the most unlikely places. Jesus didn’t miss a single city or a village or a synagogue. Like him, the priest is called to proclaim the good news of God’s reign will come in the malls and gated communities as well as in rural hamlets and backwaters. In most every place in this global culture, other media tell human beings who they are – who they are not -- and what they need. Disney and Pixar and Paramount and General Electric and Microsoft proclaim other kingdoms with rules unlike the basileia of God. What challenging work indeed to find compelling words and ways to share another vision. A world made and loved by God – polar ice cap, desert, and oceans. A world where no one nation or ideology possesses God. The holy invitation to unload the burden of sin. Cast off the yoke of slavery.

“Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy laden and I will refresh you.”

There wasn’t one disease or infirmity that was too intractable or debilitating or hopeless for Jesus. Healing and casting out demons was the key sign of the kingdom dawning.

Think of the series of hurting folks he just encountered, the blind, the mute, the bleeding, the dead, the damned. In the time of Jesus those conditions were just as scary and stigmatizing as HIV-AIDS – no plight was so dire or so dangerous that Jesus didn’t make it well. .

Mission comes from compassion. This passage includes the wonderful word for Jesus’ emotions – his feelings not often given much attention in the gospel stories -- spalanknizomai – has compassion. Jesus is moved in his in guts. The impulse for ministry begins in the body and is executed in action to make what’s wrong to be right.

Jesus was moved because the sheep lacked a leader. They were as helpless as those poor Colorado cattle stranded in the blizzard.

Here the shepherding image definitely has to be updated. For we no longer picture our communities as a flock of scattered sheep who desperately need a creature with a more evolved brain to show them the way out of the thistles. The pastor, the shepherd, was the one who leads, who judges fairly, who discerns wisely, who protects and provides. Wise and gentle and confident leadership, now we’re talking about qualities we recognize in Cathy and seek for a priest of Christ’s church.

Last image: the harvest. The image of the harvest focuses on timing. The urgency and fullness of time. For when the crop finally ripens, you’d better gather it in time or it will be gone. All that plowing and sowing and reaping is for nothing. Harvest is an image of reckoning and of judgment, and the coming to fruition of the labor of family and farm. Jesus is saying, there’s a labor shortage, and at this rich and promising moment we need leaders, disciples, people to join me and John and all the prophets of wisdom in our work to proclaim and make real the reign of God.

Pray for, ask God for friends to help.

So harvest is consummation. In this it brings us back to Matthew’s other image, of the wedding. For the wedding too is consummation, when everything comes together and the moment arrives to eat and drink and dance in thanksgiving. The time to which all the preparation has been directed.

As a priest Cathy will preside at that meal which is a foretaste of the feast to come -- Jesus’ farewell meal in which everything began, around the table where we say the reign of God is coming and where we know it to be here. In the sacrament of the eucharist all is at once fulfilled, rest and peace and consummation – and the hardworking laborers of the harvest are refreshed for their unfinished work in the world. The priest echoes Jesus’ words as she calls out and invites those from the highways and byways to eat of her bread and drink of her wine and find rest for their souls.

Cathy, please stand:

Mother, wife, juggler, doer, fixer, organizer. In your family with David, Mark, Clare, you have known sweaty scratchy work, exercised and received wisdom and known the consummation of death defying love. Love them and trust them to find their way with God’s help.

Be not afraid. But rather be bold. Be of good courage. Draw on your memory of God’s saving care in your history, in the history of Israel and of the Church, and go forward boldly.

Tell the truth. I have known you to do so. Honesty has enormous power.

Finally, keep finding and using your voice – Sing, speak, evangelize, prophecy. The voice is the instrument through which the Holy Spirit breathes and blows. Play it! Play it loud! Amen.