At the Celebration of the 25th anniversary of his ordination
Genesis 1: 1-2
Matt.: 5 1-16
June 14, 1981
On Monday, when I learned of Bishop Kim Myers’ hospitalization, I was feeling very low. Not only was 1 concerned about Kim’s health, but it also seemed prudent to call the whole celebration off, since we couldn’t have the preacher we wanted. Manney, in his wisdom as well as his characteristic sense of humor, said, ‘Don’t be upset, Roger. Just preach to yourself. You can do it better than most. And then with his usual twinkle, he said, “Maybe there are some things you need to tell yourself.
Well, I am going to give it a try; so if this anniversary sermon is more personal than most, you can blame Manney. But you can also blame yourselves,
My text this morning comes not from Holy Scripture but from the poetry of e.e.cumnings. Here it goes: “To be nobody but yourself, in a world that is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight ? and neVer stop fighting
I find great truths in those words, and so at this time, I want to share with you how that battle has been going with me.
Some of my earliest memories confirm the rightness of EE Cummings’ words. It was then, and it is now, a hard battle to be oneself.
My father was a very successful trader on Wall Street. He had a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. And when he died at an early age, it was not surprising that I, as the only son, was constantly reminded of my destiny to be in finance.
However, two factors intruded themselves. First was my coming into the Church while I was in college. I can still remember the college chaplain saying, ”Gentlemen, either you bet your life entirely on Christ or it all doesn’t make sense. I think those words stuck in my mind more than any others because at the time, I felt as if I were on a conveyor belt, and it didn’t all make sense.
And so, with the chaplain’s statement, I began to look at my life, and for me that was one giant step along the way to becoming a searcher instead of a saluter – a searcher who bets his life on Christ.
The next crucial encounter in my vocational pilgrimage came the summer after graduating from college. I was working on the Lower East Side of New York for Kim Myers, who is now a retired bishop and, as I said, was to have been our preacher today. This was just a temporary job before finishing my time in the Air Force.
One night, Kim and I were talking about the future, and he asked, “What are you going to do with your life? I think I said something vague like “Who knows? or ‘Time will tell,’ and I can recall his saying, ‘You can put off making up your mind, but you can’t put off making up your life.” Suddenly, it dawned on me that I really should make a decision. As someone once said, ‘ You have to learn to fish or cut bait.” Right then and there, I knew, God willing, that I wanted to be a priest instead of a stockbroker, and I told Kim: I was ready for seminary.
I can still remember the disappointment that emanated from my mother. The decision seemed so quick, and about all she could mumble was, “Well, I hope you will be successful and, at least, soon become a bishop.
It is amazing how people react to this kind of news. An old friend, Frederick Buechner, had a similar experience. He grew up also in a household where organized religion was a low priority, and he, too, made a seemingly abrupt decision to’ enter seminary. In one of his books, he tells of going to a luncheon with one of his mother’s closest friends, a wealthy Boston matron. There was a long table of guests, and when a lull came in the conversation, the hostess said icily, ” I hear you are planning to enter the ministry. Is this your own idea or were you poorly advised?”
I can really identify with the feelings that that remark created in Buechner. For years, i sensed a spirit of disappointment; my family felt that I had been ill advised. I at least I could have become a bishop,” is it any wonder that I resonate with e.e.cummings when he says, “To be nothing but yourself in a world that is doing its best to make you like the hardest battle any human. The battle does not simply take on the outside.
It is not just a matter of resisting external demands. It is also an internal conflict. The transactional analysis people call it carrying around other people’s tapes within our minds. One of those tapes that I carried for many years said, “You have to be a success. You have to accomplish something, make something out of your life, be recognized if not a bishop, at least a great preacher, a brilliant counselor, or a noted theologian. And what a burden those tapes can be!
I can still remember one afternoon when I sought out a friend who was a psychiatrist as well as a committed Christian. I was feeling depressed and wondering whether I had gone into the right profession. And the deeper we probed, the less successful I felt. I was worried and anxious about my weaknesses, which were becoming more evident with every passing day.
My friend listened for a while and then said, ” You know, Roger, the wonderful part of the ministry, as I have always understood it, is that you don’t have to prove to anybody that you are a success. It comes with the territory. You only have to be you.” And then he really hooked me; he quoted the Bible. Just imagine a Congregational head shrinker handing out a Scriptural prescription to an Episcopal priest! He said, “Do you recall, in the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus told his disciples, You are the light of the world? “Yes, I nodded. “Well,” my friend said, it’s nearly as I understand Jesus, he never asked his disciples to be like Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, or Carl Rogers, in order to achieve light. Jesus simply declares, ‘You are light, ‘ and then he suggests that light should be used and not hidden under a bushel.
Here was one of the great freeing moments of my ministry. I began to see that whatever talents I had were not to be buried under feelings of inferiority, or wanting to be like other people, or living up to others expectations, or any of the other garbage that keeps us from being those specially created, uniquely fashioned, special people in God’s family.
Wasn’t it Martin Luther who said, “God can come the rotten wood and ride the lame horse? I needed to hear that message from my psychiatrist friend J on that day. e.e.curmnings said that the battle to be oneself is a never-ending battle, and I can confirm the truth of that statement.
But I also want to make an addendum to those words. The addition is that the battle need not — as a matter of fact, cannot– be fought alone. One needs a caring, loving, ac-‘ accepting community to fight that kind of battle.
And I have that, not only at home but in my larger family — the staff. They form that unique family. The other day I was saying to the Vestry and staff that if I have one talent, it is in surrounding myself with loving, caring people who have been able to accept me, warts and all.
Well, it has been 25 years, and today has been a sort of midlife look. In his Seasons of a Man’s Life Daniel Levinson said, “The great challenge in mid-career is to dare to see how good or bad a fit are the old choices to newly perceived realities.
I am happy to report that the old choices fit, and all of you are part of that fit. In the 50s and 60s I was much involved in those heady days of social turmoil and of expressing love in action. On more than one occasion, I heard Martin Luther King close an address with the words from an old slave prayer. It went like this :
“0 Lord, I ain’t what I ought’a be, and I ain’t what I’m gonna be. But thanks be to you, I ain’t what I used to be.”
Here, then, is where I am today — on the road, on the pilgrimage, on the journey, on the way not where I ought to be, right; not where I’m gonna be, true. But thank God, and thanks to you not where I used to be!
Let us pray:
The light of God surrounds us,
The love of God holds us,
The power of God protects us,
The presence of God watches over us. Wherever we are on the journey, God is.
Amen