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Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
The Rev. Canon John Andrew, O.B.E., D.D.
Evensong, 17 May 2005“A Prophesy Fulfilled”
In my delight at worshipping with you all I want to say is that you are looking at a pack-rat. We all like to laugh at pack-rats. I have friend in the South whose old mother is the queen of the pack-rat pack. She throws nothing away. It makes easy living difficult. For reasons I can't quickly explain, I have kept every sermon manuscript I've written in almost half a century, in one form or another. And only a week or two ago, I came upon the manuscript of the sermon I preached in this pulpit on February 11, 1985, when your rector was installed: Preparing the Heart. I'm glad twenty years later that I am a pack-rat, because in it I made prophesies which became realities in the life of this parish and in the life of Douglas himself, my first American curate when I came to St. Thomas in 1972.
It was my first Sunday there. I came across an unknown cleric in the parish house, and I asked him who he was and why was he there? He sported his hair very long and he looked nervous. He wasn't employed in any parish. He was earning his living as a salesman. I was devastated! In the Church of England, Canon Law requires that a person has to have a territorial base for Ordination. You are ordained "to a place"; a parish. So began the first of my skirmishes with the Diocesan authorities when I asked for an explanation. The explanation was unsatisfactory.
I made up my mind to bring Douglas on board. So began the first of my skirmishes with my strong-minded senior warden. He looked at the long hair. It was evidence of a radical trendy trouble maker. We got over the hurdle. For the next five and a half years Douglas taught me a lot, and his beautiful wife Mary taught me a lot. Later when babies arrived I was gratified at their names: John, Andrew. An unconscious pair of choices, but gratifying nevertheless, to his old colleague.
In 1985 this parish beckoned to him and welcomed him. I prophesied this: When a person is called to the priesthood and ministry of Christ's Church there is no room for the coincidental, the "happenstance." The Divine will for us and for our lives doesn't work in this way. It has two aspects, neither of which can be in contradiction to the other, for the Divine will and the Divine love are one; the permissive will of God and the perfect will of God.
When He allows us to experience and to be are within the arms of His permissive will. His perfect will is what He wants us to do with what we experience and what we become.
And gently and silently, in the lovely words of the Psalmist, God prepares the heart. He prepares it to receive the yoke of our calling; its burdens, its restraints, its restrictions, its opportunities to fulfill his perfect will. Christ the High Priest whose priesthood Douglas shares had been preparing his heart for this place and this hour. Nothing has been wasted in the years of life leading up to this, from childhood on. He had prepared in Douglas a heart for justice among God's people, a heart of compassion as he has witnessed the disfigurement to the image of God perpetrated by war upon souls involved in it, whether victims or victorious participants. There is a loathing for the ambition which will use violence as a means to achieve its ends, for the human soul has a dignity for Douglas which is untouchably sacred.
The Lord has prepared a heart of discontent in Douglas, discontent with the easy assumption of the status quo, with the hardness of political stances, discontent with what I can only describe as monolithic religion, where there is no room for inquiry or debate, where people are discouraged from having to think and where disagreement is looked upon as treason. Fundamentalism has an evil side and this man's watchfulness will expose it. He was not made for popularity any more than he would be the center of dissension. This heart of discontent had made him impatient of inefficiency and brusque with denominational cant. A priest, if he is worth his salt, will tell people if he is not clear about an issue, theological or social, and will ask for time to let it become so. So with the heart of discontent God had been preparing in him a heart of content; to wait and see, based upon what his years have taught him and warned him, how he should take up his task of shepherding this flock. The Lord has been preparing his heart through his years in Paris and in his demanding apostolate in Rome for this task. He would discover the shape of this new apostolate through his nearness to Christ in worship and prayer and in his self-oblation. He would realize that in Manhattan souls are responsive and critical, both; impatient with poor standards and ready to give loyalty to leadership which knows what it is talking about through commitment not to a cause, but to a person: Christ. He realized that worship is the paramount activity of mankind. Beyond works of mercy, higher than social involvement, and it is worship which will test everything else. Get that right and you can tackle the world for Christ, its mistakes, its disasters, its dark sides, its miscalculations. His heart of content to worship as best as this place can offer would be soon seen in his ministry here. He would need your help, and I had no doubt he would get it. It would not be a breeze, an overnight victory.
And the Lord has prepared in Douglas a ready heart, a heart of oblation. Day by day the causes of this parish and its individuals would be offered from his heart to the Lord as he pleads Christ's Sacrifice in the Eucharist. I have always known him to be fond of prayer — he was a familiar sight in the Chapel of the Resurrection at St. Thomas. It would come out, in his teaching and preaching and writing, and you could be proud to have a Godly scholar and an author as your parish priest. The good he sees in Christians not of the Anglican fold would help you, for God prepared his heart by allowing him to be a Protestant before he became an Anglican, and he has lived at the heart and center of the Catholic world, in Rome. So his heart's preparation has been long. It has been costly to him and to Mary, his wife, for there is no such thing as easy grace, cheap grace. And you all are the more blessed because of it. You all would be blessed and tested and challenged, both, by the Lord's preparation of this good man's heart. I had no doubt that you would make a glad and sacrificial response to his ministry.
This prophesy has been fulfilled. Service to Christ unstinted, undeterred by life's fortunes, brave and generous, your priest and servant and father has exercised two decades of ministry in this place. We all have been the beneficiaries of it as he has brought us in his prayers before the Lord, has written and taught and preached a bracing and thoughtful Gospel. The heart of Douglas has been hospitable to the Lord's preparing for his pilgrimage in this place.
Douglas, will you stand? Your share in Christ's priesthood has been an example to me and many clergy. You have shouldered burdens some of us may have found too heavy as you have tried to obey Our Lord's commands to follow Him with your cross. And it is obvious that his joy is in you. What more reward could there be than that?
Thanks be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ to whom with the Holy Spirit be ascribed all might. All majesty, all dominion and glory, now and forever. Amen.