Mark Kvale Ordination Sermon
Saturday, June 25, 2005, Humboldt Iowa
Norma Cook Everist
Isaiah 42:1-5
Ephesians 4:4-16
Psalm 16
Luke l0:1-12, 16-20
Luke 10
After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.
The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.
And they went out. And they had results. “Lord, in your name even the demons submitted to us.”
When our ministry does not meet with positive results, there is the temptation to despair, or give in to the erosion of apathy.
When our work does “Succeed,” the temptation is to get carried away with our own ability for ministry and mission.
So, it is important to mark the concluding words:
Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.
Each of us gathered here together is being sent forth. Some leavings are not of our making. Some of us may literally not know what in the world God has in store for us.
And Mark, even though you have spent all of this time in preparation, and your family was moved about, and you know a little already of the people in Wisconsin, their lives and needs, it still is hard to really know what it is to which God is sending you.
Know this, Know Jesus is already there.
The Gospel: they went ahead. They didn’t go alone; in pairs…together, collaborative ministry: And Luke 10: to every town and place where Jesus intended to go. Interesting wording.
We gather here today after the cross, after the resurrection, which liberates us all. After the ascension, Jesus left one earthly spot, to be present in and through the body of Christ everywhere.
That’s why this Ephesians text is so important.
I begin with 4:1: I beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called. I, “a prisoner of the Lord.” Remember Paul’s life.
With all humility, and gentleness and patience, bearing with one another in love….yes, I see those characteristics in you, Mark.
We, the body of Christ, have been called.
Bind us Together, Lord!
Liberated for lives of service, Lord, bind us together with cords that cannot be broken,
There are all sorts of ways we are bound together, most recently, your class of friends at Wartburg Seminary. There have been many moving vans, but some are still waiting, “We won’t forget one another” we say, and if I know Wartburg, that is true. We are more like a missionary order than a seminary. We are sent out, like the 70, two by two, sent out, and we belong to each other for lifetime.
Bind us together, Lord.
Families are bound together for life. I just came from the home of my own son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter over in Mason City. We also have two sons far away: Vermont and Arizona. Far away, yes. But no matter, the cords are there, binding us across distance. Oh, we know it is not easy, and sometimes yes, family ties are broken, and we participate in that brokenness.
Bind us together, Lord.
We are bound together as congregations, as a synod, as a nation-wide and global church. But all too often we minister together with fractured pain.
Where we are closest, we seem to hurt each other the most.
I know the strain, I fear the danger. I have lived through a national church schism, Church wars kill people.
Bind us together, Lord,
And our globe: What can I say that you don’t know about facture and fear, and the needs of the poor. Well, just one fact: While the cost of combating poverty worldwide would be $70 billion at most, global military spending is $956 billion.
Mark, all of us here present: hear the words of Eph 4:3: Make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Bind us together, Lord.
There is only one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God….
And in this unity which is both gift and challenge, comes the Word.
Each of us was given grace, gifts that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. This would seem to be the reason we gather here on this Saturday afternoon to celebrate a specially gifted one, to set apart Mark for ordained pastoral ministry.
But Mark knows, and so do you, that he’s not so special. Well he is. I know him well and care deeply about him.
But he knows more than any it’s not just about him.
The lists of gifts apostles, prophets, evangelists are here and in Romans 12 and in I Corinthians 12. The lists are slightly different. We could spend all our time figuring out who is the most special, whose on top, who’s in; who’s out. The lists are all there, but in our text they are not ranked and the lists are not closed. There is room for all, and for new kinds of ministries. Not only room; it’s absolutely necessary! All members of the body of Christ are needed and all of our gifts need to be used.
1 Cor. 12: Paul says that the body does not consist of one member, but of many. If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body (Have you ever felt that way?) that would not it make it any less a part of the body.”
(later) The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you.” Nor again, the head [can’t say] to the feet, “I have no need of you.”
On the contrary, all are included; all are needed. You are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
Why?
To equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.
Mark, you have been equipped, not to be a stellar pastor, but to equip the saints among whom Christ already lives.
Mark in this service will soon be presented, has been prepared, is ready. Mark, this is not the end of that preparation, but the beginning of your continuing education. People say. that when you leave seminary you go into the real world. I hate that “advice.” Seminary is a real place where people are born, contract cancer, lose loved ones, suffer and rejoice: pretty real! This may be a time to pack books, but I would hope you never put the books away. As a seminary professor I hope we have equipped you in such a way that you never leave seminary. Oh, I don’t mean you should remain tethered to us, but equipped with a learning that has led to mission so that ministry can lead you to more learning.
I hope seminary has been a translating and transforming experience. And that now as you go forth, you translate the language of the Good News of Jesus’ liberating love which binds us together into everyone’s heart-language so that we do not need to tear each other apart. The everyday lives of the people you serve pose complicated questions begging for God’s word translated into the issues of the day: IPTV Frontline this week, showed private contractors and business profits making an institution of being at war in Iraq; Here in central/western Iowa: farm prices. How are the needs of farmers here connected to globalization, and living wages for people around the world? Poverty and HIV/AIDS and homelessness. That’s doesn’t even make the news any more but I learned last week that Des Moines may have a higher percentage of homeless people for its population that any other U.S. city. Could that be? Surely it’s not true. Or is it? No matter who “wins” that percentage rate, the challenge is great for all of us. The Ephesians text calls for the body of Christ to be equipped, to grow into maturity, to speak a clear word of justice and care and peace and transformation in the world in which we live.
The country debates social security reform and health care. And in our personal lives there is stress: too much stuff to do; too much stuff.
What in the world does this all mean? We need the entire congregation equipped to discern what God’s call to discipleship means for each and every one of us.
For all we know, we may be equipped to be instruments of binding up the broken world.
There are verses in the Ephesians text I could easily skip over. Each is given grace according To Christ’s gift. Christ made captivity captive. All these things which would bind us up, stress us out, divide us, hold us captive from being all that God made us to be, those forces of evil and greed which hold some enslaved economically while others flout their self-congratulatory wealth, Captivity itself is captive. We are free to live entirely differently, boldly to value to all people.
Be liberated for life. Be full of zeal and courage.
Yes, Mark, zeal and courage, ministering for the sake of the other. Serving others, however, doesn’t mean groveling in subservience. The Spirits’ power doesn’t work that way, e.g.: “I have power so you don’t, Too bad!” “You have power, I’m afraid, so we are enemies.” That’s the world’s economy of power. And sometimes we do that in the church, too. We may act as though we are trying to be nice. Meanwhile we get about the real business of personal body building, “deceitful scheming,” our text says, so I can kill you…nicely, of course.
You, I, we, are called to be leaders in a church full of people who have a hard time understanding each other. Well, the ear can’t really understand how an elbow works, cannot see thing from that perspective. So we must ask one another, “How do you see things here?” “From your perspective, help me understand you.” So that in all we think, say and do, we are working together to build up each other, build up the body of Christ until all of us come to the unity of faith
And then, the last verse: Remember it! So we can grow up into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly promotes the Body’s growth in building itself up in love.
Bind us together, Lord.
[Some years ago, I was called upon to preach from this same text at another ordination not far from here, actually, in rural Western Iowa. I was preparing to leave home in Dubuque the afternoon before and called the farm home to make sure I had clear directions. The man who answered said, “Yes, come, but we had a terrible tragedy. His grandson, the nephew of the man who was to be ordained had been run over by a tractor in a farm accident. The four-year-old had one arm and one leg torn off.I did go to the ordination. I sat outside the farm home that night talking with John whose ordination was planned for the next day. He had questions, doubts. I had doubts inside as well. How could I preach on this text about the whole body being knit and joined together when this dear little child’s body was torn apart. But the family went ahead with ordination. The extended family was there, including the one who had been driving the tractor. The words of the text came forth even more powerfully in our midst that day. And each time we preach them, hear them, there is some body, and some body of Christ which is not joined together. Churches once knit together begin to unravel. At just such times, we are called to believe more boldly still.
Believe God is equipping, forgiving, loving this corporate body of Christ ministry into which Mark and all of us are called. Bind us Together in Christ’s all powerful, liberating love.