Ken

We are ordaining you to the Ministry of the Word.

You are joining a long tradition of ministry reaching back to the earliest days of the church and to Christ himself. Your ministry belongs to the wider ministry which all Christians share, but has a particular focus and task. That task is to offer leadership to enable all people to fulfil their ministries and to do so by helping people engage with the rich Christian heritage in ways that will bring them life and bring life to others.

The track is well worn and for some the road is to be negotiated as it always has been. In the contemporary landscapes of human life we can never know where that road will lead nor decide in advance how it should be driven. Your task, beside engaging the tradition, is to engage current issues being faced in the community and the church. Theology and practice is best worked out at the crossroads where Christian tradition, contemporary critical thought and human need meet.

You will have your logbook, your detailed maps, your careful planning, your controls. But trees will jump out at you on the road. Grass and gravel will make unexpected intrusions. Kangaroos and emus will appear at unexpected moments. Blinding light will flash onto your windscreen and for a moment you will have no idea where you are going. Let the wheel run and turn it to the flow; otherwise you will find yourself in the ditch or down the bank.

There will be times when it is right to lift the controls, to leave the vehicle, to roll down the bank yourself, to cast yourself freely into the surf, to engage in deliberate abandonment of knowing and planning and steering. Provided you are not trying to make bread from stones or perform outrageous stunts, the angels will bear you up in those creative moments of falling and failing. Make room for madness – for your sanity and always in love for others, for yourself, and for God.

You will take others on the journey with you. For some it will be their first time. That, too, belongs to your task. For others you will lead them to explore unknown routes which bring splendid views or expose scars on the landscape and on lives. Drive slowly with the anxious, but remember this is not tourism. The journey to the source has many sidetracks, but one highway which is as broad as it is sometimes steep and narrow.

Sometimes it will be as though you are on a track totally alone and where to stop would be to risk being bogged or where to enjoy the view could send you to the gully. Someone has been there before you. There is an end. Sometimes you will sport with a convoy of fellow travellers grided in community.

You will need to stop. You will need to return regularly to those resources in scripture and tradition which make it all possible. Never go on too long or race on bald tyres. You are not called to win. You are not called to be clean and polished. The best parts will sometimes be when you are caked with red dust and unrecognisably muddied and just able to make your way. You are called to the journey of compassion and caring and to make that journey possible for others.

Ken

We are not ordaining you to be a caring person; you are already called to that;

We are not ordaining you to serve the Church in committees, planning activities, and organisation; that is already implied in your membership;

We are not ordaining you to become involved in issues of justice and peace, in the struggle, personal, social, political, against all forms of oppression and idolatry; for that is laid upon every Christian.

We are ordaining you to something smaller and less spectacular:

to read and interpret those sacred stories of our community so that they speak the Word to people today;

to remember and practice those rituals and rites of meaning which in their poetry address people at the level where change operates;

to foster in community through Word and Sacrament and pastoral care that encounter with truth which will set people free to minister as the body of Christ.

We are ordaining you to the Ministry of the Word. Amen.