Sermons by Harry T. Cook April 27, 2008

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To read this week’s sermon “Forty Years, More Or Less,” just scroll down. I was ordained 40 years ago April 27. I thought I knew everything then. My Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek were firmly fixed in my head along with plenty of philosophy and theology. Yet I knew nothing of what priesthood really took. Moreover, as magnificent as the ordination liturgy was, it didn’t make me a priest. See what did.

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Harry T. Cook

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Forty years, more or less

By Harry T. Cook

The legend is that the children of Israel wandered for 40 years in the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land – 40 being a familiar biblical marker, as in 40 days and 40 nights of Noah’s floating menagerie and 40 days and 40 nights of Jesus’ sojourn in his own wilderness.

This Sunday, April 27, 2008, is the 40th anniversary of my first step into the wilderness of being a priest of the Episcopal Church. Even with my writer’s imagination, I could not have predicted what I would encounter on the way to this moment, what quite unexpected things I would learn along the way.

I cannot tell you that I am one of those persons who experienced some kind of mystic call to the priesthood – a voice as if from the great deep choosing me. That kind of thing always makes me suspicious.

I was attracted to the priesthood first from the aesthetic angle. The Episcopal liturgy, when done rightly and well, has about it a quality similar to that of grand opera. The costumes, the drama, the scenery and the score can be truly engaging, even if the libretti are a little lame. But if a given libretto is a text, say, from the pages of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer with its Elizabethan diction and cadences, then a good Anglican liturgy can rank right up there with a sterling performance of La Boheme or Aida.

The second attraction to the vocation was that of scholar and teacher. I am a born academician and always took to learning and research. The ancient biblical texts interested me more than anything, and in those days one studied such literature in graduate schools of theology whence came persons headed for ordination. Since that plus my advanced degree would provide me with instant students in congregations and built-in opportunities for continued research and publishing, I made the leap.

The third attraction to the priesthood was the sense that a priest can be an advocate to whom attention must be paid. The countless opportunities I have had over 40 years to advocate for individuals who had no access to other advocates – and couldn’t have afforded them if they had – have made these 480 months and 14,611 days (but who’s counting?) as interesting a life as any I might have chosen.

Okay, here’s what I didn’t know going into this. I didn’t know that all the pomp of an ordination mass with a vested bishop intoning ancient words over my kneeling figure, with the hands of a dozen or more priests placed upon my head and finally standing up arrayed in shining new vestments to the consequent applause of a congregation – that none of that really made me a priest.

What made me a priest three times over has been the affectionate trust and authority granted me by the three congregations I have been privileged to serve. Yes, I had been ordained already 20 years when I arrived at St. Andrew’s 20 years ago. But I did not become your priest until, after the passage of time, you learned to trust me, let me into your lives and listened to what I had to say. I learned that humbling knowledge on top of everything else I learned in graduate school.

And here’s another thing I learned, only because I have spent my entire priesthood in a major metropolitan area within 15 miles of where I was ordained – some of it working at a daily newspaper and becoming to a degree prominent in the community because of my by-line. I’ve got connections. I’ve gotten to know almost anybody who was anybody – all the way from United States senators to state governors to judges to lawyers by the gross, people who could and would cut through red-tape and so on and so on.

Next to my prayer book and Greek New Testament, my Rolodex is my most valuable possession. I have the names, addresses, telephone numbers (office AND home) and e-mails of just about any type of person anyone of you would ever need in a crisis. And I have used my status as a priest – if it can be said that priests have status – to keep in touch with them so that when I had to reach out to them on behalf of a parishioner I could do so.

I never imagined that such a thing would be so central to being a priest, but it has been, is and will be.

The pursuit of truth through scholarship, through the reporting and writing of news for the sake of informing the public and through the opportunity to advocate for justice on both the retail and wholesale levels have turned out to be significant aspects of priesthood.

As crazy as it has all been, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Have I had moments, even weeks and months, when I thought it was all for naught? I have, indeed. Why, I often wondered, had I been prepared to be a scholar when the church wanted anything but the fruits of scholarship, when it wanted to be reassured rather than challenged?

Have my 40 years’ journey in a clerical collar gotten me to the Promised Land? No, but Moses didn’t make it to his. Am I greater or more deserving than Moses? Even his flock fought him every step of the way: Sure, you brought us out of Egypt, but there at least we had soft bread to eat. Never mind the Promised Land. My goal is to be able to say, as did Cardinal Richelieu on his deathbed when asked by his confessor if he forgave his enemies, There are none left.

 © Copyright 2008, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.

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