This Friday the 13th will be my fifth anniversary of ordination to the priesthood. Some of you were there, as the Rev. Laura Palmer was also ordained that evening at our sending church, St. Martin-in-the-Fields. She had been serving at St. Peter’s as a transitional deacon.
As I recall it was a rainy night, also a Friday the 13th. The Rev. Emily Richards preached. A combined choir from both parishes sang. I remember lying prone with my face on the concrete and sobbing. I recall the packed church, and the blur of the service, the bishop’s hands, and the long line of people to be blessed at the end.
With just about every other moment of my path to the priesthood, I had no idea what was coming next. I didn’t know that I would become St. Peter’s pastor a few years later. I did not know that the COVID pandemic was right around the corner and would change everything for everyone for quite a long time.
But I did know this. The sacrament of Holy Orders would bring with it divine gifts that were necessary to do the work of the priest. That’s the supreme act of faith front-loaded into the service – that God’s grace would fill in all the gaps in our experience and abilities in ways that we couldn’t even imagine.
At the time I recall praying to God for the gift of remembering people’s names, thinking that would be a fine divine gift to accompany my ordination. God said no for some reason. Instead, God poured on us the grace to face COVID with the beginner’s mind necessary to start church over from scratch. Five years later, there are still things I get wrong in the liturgy because the service is still rather new to me. My formative years as a priest were spent leading worship on Zoom, navigating masks and hand sanitizer, planning outdoor liturgies, creating ritual that would help parents bring their kids back to church despite the risks.
In many ways, I still come to work with beginner’s mind. There is much I’m still figuring out. The post-COVID church has many new faces, many new needs. The post-election church has its work cut out for it, and it’s still not clear what that is. I reach for that ordination grace every day. On my morning drive to work, which is also my prayer time, I ask for a fresh dose of that grace, with some wisdom as well, please. It’s my morning leap of faith. Because priests can have issues with faith, too – mainly we struggle to have faith in ourselves. Knowing that God is ready with a supply of grace, reminds me that I can face whatever new thing my beginner’s mind hasn’t figured out yet – with God’s help.
God’s grace for us is the same as God’s faith in us.
God has faith in us – faith enough to promise us deliverance, faith enough to join us as Jesus, faith enough to die at our hands and to rise in a defiant act of forgiving us. God has faith in us, even when we don’t have faith in ourselves.
This is a particularly good lesson for all of us as we pick our way through Advent, with its promise of wisdom and grace. This Sunday during the 10 am liturgy we will experience the stories leading up to Christmas through the lens of Advent Lessons and Carols. They invite us to remember God’s ineffable insistence in our value and God’s unwavering presence on our journey. They invite us to open our hearts to God’s grace and to trust God’s faith in us all along the way.
In the rush of the secular holidays, Advent slows us down enough to anticipate and to notice. It invites us to look for signs of God’s grace and wisdom in our own lives and the world around is. In my five years as a priest so far, God hasn’t let me down in this regard. As we light the rose candle of hope this Sunday, starting the third week of Advent, we can celebrate our joy in the One who has such faith and joy in us.
soooo glad to have you with us, barb!