Bishop LaBelle's Seating Sermon
Catherine of Genoa — John 15:5-17
Back in the era when I took the General Ordination Exams—or “GOEs,” for those in the know—the last part of the four day written exam was often called “Coffee Hour Questions.” This closed book section was used to see if the ordinand had the chops to answer difficult questions from parishioners wanting to stump the chump all while sipping a cup of joe. My seminary classmates and I scoured previous years’ GOEs in order to get a sense of what types of things might come up. Often included in the mix was a random question about the life of some saint. In conversation with our Dean about this, he said, “Remember, it’s completely reasonable to respond with ‘I don’t know, but I know where to look for the answer.’”
Now we knew darn well that it was always better to know who the saint was rather than admitting we didn’t have a clue, so I spent many evenings leading up to the GOEs feverishly reading my copy of Lesser Feasts and Fasts on the lives of the saints hoping that it would somehow all stick.
However, instead of a saint that year, we were asked if we would go to an elderly parishioner’s home in order to anoint his dying dog with holy oil. This was not something they covered in seminary, mind you, and my first thought was “How the heck do I know?” I blustered along, claiming that since dogs weren’t baptized, they didn’t need to receive unction, but I think I’d rather have been asked about an obscure saint.
“I don’t know,” is one of the four statements that lead to wisdom if you say them and mean them, according to Chief Inspector Armand Gamache from Louise Penny’s “Three Pines” mystery series. He teaches the statements to all of his new recruits, many of whom wonder when they’ll get on to actual detective work. He gently slows down to tell them the statements again, hoping they will stick. They are: “I don’t know,” “I’m sorry,” “I was wrong,” and “I need help.” I’ve been around long enough to know that when I was first ordained I would have seen those statements like Gamache’s new recruits, an unnecessary speed bump on the way to more pressing ministerial matters. And yet they are all about being in relationship and the need to be honest with one another and to stay connected, essential learnings for both detectives and clergy.
Up until six weeks ago I had no idea who Catherine of Genoa was, but I knew where to look. During her teenage years, this 15th century Italian noble longed to become a nun like her sister, but was rebuffed by an older brother—the patriarch of the family—who refused so he could marry her off for political reasons. She spent a miserable decade in a deep state of depression, while her husband–seeing her dissatisfaction—squandered their wealth on dissolute living, eventually fathering a child out of wedlock.
While making her confession one Lent, Catherine had a mystical experience. She was so overcome by the deep love of God that she couldn’t utter another word and left the church. The mystical visions continued, always centered on the abiding love of God, and she eventually wrote them down. Interestingly, Catherine refused to become focused solely on her mystical contemplations, realizing that the faithful love of God called her to compassionate service to the sick and the poor. She became the director of the Pammatone Hospital and was joined by her husband, who saw the change in her and discovered his own burgeoning faith while recommitting himself to their marriage. Her biographer Friedrich von Hugel, writes this of her work during the plague of 1493: “Throughout the weeks and months, .. she was daily in the midst, superintending, ordering, stimulating, steadying, consoling, [and] strengthening this vast crowd of panic-stricken poor and the severely strained workers.” All of it due to the profound love of God that she had encountered.
During his last night with his disciples before the crucifixion, Jesus detailed the importance of being connected to him. “I am the vine and you are the branches,” he tells them, “abide in me.” He continues, “Just as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you, abide in my love.” And then he tells them how to do just that, how to abide in his love: they do so by following his command to love one another. This isn’t any trifle or fickle sort of love, mind you. Rather, great love is shown by offering your life for your friends. And that’s when Jesus says something remarkable, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” They are his friends, they are friends with God, if they sacrificially love one another.
Now Jesus knew a thing or two about love. In fact, it was St. Augustine of Hippo who suggested that the Trinity was best be described as the Beloved, the Lover, and the Love shared between them. Augustine realized that self-offering love defined the Triune God and their relationships with each other. That the kenotic love of Jesus—the sacrificial love—defined not just the second person of the Trinity, but the Godhead in its entirety, and in all of God’s interactions with humanity. For us that type of love, when offered freely without coercion or demands, allows us to become most fully the people God has created us to be. When we offer ourselves for each other—as Catherine of Genoa did for those around her—we become ourselves as we were dreamed up by God. And in so doing, we remain connected to Jesus. We abide in him, and we become more like him. In fact, we become more like Trinity—the Lover, the Beloved, and the Love—and the interconnected mutual relationship which they share.
In describing ordained vocations, we often turn to the concept of “Servant Leadership.” Some mistakenly consider it a phrase taken from the Bible, when in fact it was first coined in 1970 by Robert K. Greenleaf. Greenleaf worked as a directing manager for AT&T, and, with the insight of a mentor, he realized that large corporations were “not doing a good job of serving individuals or the larger society,”1 and so he set about to change that. According to the Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, he proposed that “the best leaders were servants first, and the key tools for a servant-leader included listening, persuasion, access to intuition and foresight, use of language, and pragmatic measurements of outcomes.” While informed by a Judaeo-Christian ethic, his leadership philosophy was much broader and geared toward a wider audience. It was focused on making businesses better, which would ultimately help the bottom line.
Jesus looks at his disciples, that rag-tag group of followers, and says, “I no longer call you servants, but friends, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, yet I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” All that Jesus had learned from the one he called the Father centered on showing compassion and love. And when you love others like that, they do not remain as servants—or really slaves, which might be closer to the original text—they become friends.
Professor Edward C. Zaragoza cautions against the use of Servant Leadership as the ideal in ministry in his book No Longer Servants But Friends: A Theology of Ordained Ministry. Dr. Zaragoza declares that for Greenleaf, a servant leader is really just “a corporate CEO in disguise!” Zaragoza states that the focus is very much on the “leadership abilities of the person and not on the followers,” which is hidden behind the language of servanthood. He writes, “Today’s church seeks out leaders, managers, and administrators because in many ministries being a ‘pastor’—a shepherd and a guide—is not enough.” He continues, “The ministry of word and sacrament can sometimes lose centrality when the work of the church becomes meetings, events, and committees, rather than an extension of the real service of the church, the public work of the people of God that is worship.”3 As such, churches often look for a corporate ideal in their ministers—skewing heavily toward those of us who are male and straight and white—thinking that they will make good servant leaders because they have given up potentially more to serve the church seeing that they could have been C level executives. Zaragoza pushes back on this thinking: “In reflecting the gender and racial/ethnic biases of our culture, servant leadership perpetuates alienating-social-roles when, as a paradigm for ordained ministry, it should be offering a critique of those same prejudices and establishing inclusive patterns for the church.”4
And so Dr. Zaragoza points us back to Jesus’ own words for the ideal of ministry: “I no longer call you servants, but friends.” He suggests we look to the Trinity with its “emphasis on community, mutuality, and love”5 as the ideal of that friendship. It is, of course, what Jesus commands us to do. We are to love in such a way that brings life and wholeness to others. We are to willingly participate in a community of equality and trust where we give of ourselves for one another.
Friends, the world is hungry for the Church to live into that type of ministry. Our culture yearns to find friendship and to be known for who they are and to experience a deep and abiding love, and we know the God who calls us to do just that. Not so we can add numbers to our parish registers, but so we can live as disciples and followers of Jesus who came to us in love. “This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.”
I suspect that I would have been on shaky ground if I wrote this sort of theology on my GOEs back in the day because we like clear boundaries and separating clergy from laity and because we really do just want CEOs in servant leadership garb so we can ensure institutional longevity. Yet Jesus focuses on relationships and building one another up and working for justice and establishing equality and becoming, finally, finally, the beloved community that was dreamed up by God at the beginning of it all. We are called to be friends. With our Triune God, with one another, and with ourselves. I urge you to commit to that work with me.
Because here’s the thing: I need help. I cannot do this work alone. I’ve learned in the more than twenty years since I sat for the GOEs, that those four statements of Armand Gamache really do lead to wisdom if we can say them and mean them. Because they remind us that we won’t always get it right, that there are things that we can learn from one another, that we need to make amends when we mess up, and that we need each other. They are again: I don’t know. I was wrong. I am sorry. I need help.
We are at our best when we embody those statements and live in self-giving, mutual relationships. We are most authentically ourselves when we reflect the love of the Trinity. They are calling to us—the Lover, the Beloved, and the Love—to join with them in their unending joy and hope for our created world and for all humanity. We just need to decide if we want to be friends with God and with one another, and then faithfully respond. May it be so. Amen.
1 https://www.greenleaf.org/robert-k-greenleaf-biography/
2 Ibid.
3 Zaragoza, 60.
4 Ibid., 59.
5 Zaragoza 67.
