Charge

At the beginning of December, my friend Laura Kuster was ordained and then installed at two small churches in rural New Mexico.  She asked me to give the Charge to the Congregation at the two installation services.  As opposed to my normal process, I went without a manuscript, mainly because I didn't finish until right that moment. Here is what I reconstructed after the fact:

At seminary, in between teaching us about the Bible, Greek, Hebrew, Theology, Pastoral Care and Christian Education, they teach us a little about how to write sermons.

What I learned was, when it came time to write a sermon, I’ll a journal like this and just write and write and write. I’ll write in church, I’ll write at Starbucks, I’ll write wherever I have a chance. Eventually I’ll come up with a beginning, a middle and an end, not necessarily in that order, but a beginning a middle and an end.

When I get to that point, I rush home, sit down at my computer and type them up into a neat manuscript before they get away.

When Laura asked me to write this charge, I started out the same way. I grabbed my journal and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote.

And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and eventually I came up with . . . three beginnings and an end.

So if this seems a little disorganized and disjointed, that’s why.

Because I’ve never written a charge before, the first place I started was to contact some preacher friends and get them to send me samples of what they had done.

What I learned from that was that I’m supposed to tell you about how he needs his time off, how you haven’t hired his wife, and how his kids are just kids and need to be held to the same standards as other kids.

I was going to go from there to congratulate you on calling someone who, in another time and place, would not have even been considered.

But I also wanted to talk to you about the different ways our society treats men and women and married and single people.

The truth is that a man coming into this position would be granted a certain amount of authority simply because he’s a man.  Laura needs that authority and she shouldn’t have to ask for it.

Married people have the advantage of all kinds of built in excuses to get away, “I have to pick up the kids,” “Dinner is almost ready.”

But a single person doesn’t have those excuses, and it is very easy to think, “she doesn’t have any one waiting for her at home, so it’s no big deal if she stays an extra couple of hours.” Or “it’s no big deal if Laura is here all night.”

That was a good beginning, but it wasn’t going to get me where I wanted to go, so I went back and started again.

This time, being the big Presbyterian geek that I am, I went back to my favorite book, The Book of Order and specifically to the part where it reminds us that Ministers of Word and Sacrament differ from every body else “in function only.”

All of the praying, laying on of hands and all nine sermons this weekend have not changed the fact that Laura is a human being like any of us and like any of us, Laura is going to make mistakes.

We believe in our tradition in the “priesthood of all believers,” and that means that Laura is not on her own, but you are all in it with her and you need to work with her and support her when she makes those mistakes.

That was a good beginning, but again, it wasn’t going to get me to where I wanted to go, so I had to start again.

This time I thought I would start with a more casual, personal approach, and tell you about Laura who I met in seminary and who has stood beside me in some of the hardest moments in my life.

I was going to borrow a phrase from poker and tell you that Laura is “all in.” I know that because Laura is “all in” in everything that she does, school, work, friendship.

Now that’s a wonderful gift, but it is a gift that can be very easily squandered and snuffed out.
It can be squandered not through any malice, but because when someone is so willing to give, it because far too easy for people to ask for “just a little bit more” and eventually, there’s nothing left to give.

So I was going to talk to you about boundaries and about not only allowing Laura to take time off, but encouraging her to.

And I was going to tell you that when she does take a day off, you need to let it really be a day off. If you have an emergency, call her, she wants to hear from you, but if you have a question about the docket for the next session meeting, it can wait.

And that was a good start, but it didn’t get me to what I really wanted to say to you.

That one thing is simple, it’s not eloquent or elegant, but it is the charge that I want to give you today:

This is Laura, my best friend, whom I love, and I need you to take of her.

Grant her the authority of this office, while allowing the mistakes that all of us humans are bound to make.

Hold her tight when she needs to be held, and give her room when she needs to get away.

So that’s my charge to you as brothers and sisters in Christ:

Take care of my friend.

Comments

[Whitney]

This is a fabulous charge. I got a little teary reading it. :)

[arobitueria]

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