Chrism Mass 2025

In the five years I have served as your bishop, it seems like the world has handed us one crisis after another. The early COVID shut downs were followed quickly by the murder of George Floyd, which was followed quickly by the political chaos and violence around the 2020 election, which was then followed by COVID: The Extended Cut, and just when we were starting to recover, a new round of political strife has given us whatever this thing we’re living through right now is. It has been, a lot. 

It’s hard, and we all get to have our feelings about it, but of course none of it is original in the arc of human history. Ever since our first parents traded being with God in order to be like God, creation’s breathtaking beauty has always been commingled with its heart-wrenching pain. All of this has happened before, and if the Lord tarries, all of it will happen again. 

I have found that vocation, the topic at hand today, is basically about looking at the shape the world’s pain takes in any given season and pondering: what is being asked of me? When I was discerning a vocation to be your bishop, I struggled mightily to figure out whether or not I should be considered, right up to the day I gave my consent to be on the ballot. What clarified things for me was not my desires, and not even what I thought God was telling me to do. The breakthrough came when it dawned on me that I was being asked to do this. From that moment I had absolute clarity. 

So facing the present shape of the darkness, on a day we remember our call, what is being asked of us According to the scriptures we have heard, two things: to not lose heart, and to send laborers into the harvest. 

“Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart.” I know everyone likes to hate on Paul, but our brother in Christ knew what it was to face painful and impossible times, and he knew what it felt like to have nothing to cling to but the power of Jesus, crucified and risen. When he urges the disciples in Corinth to keep heart, he knows what a big thing he is asking. But as we face the mountain of this moment, how do we not lose heart?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a person who knew a thing or two about suffering and heart, would regularly address the apartheid government in South Africa by saying to them: “You may have all the guns and all the power, but you have already lost. Come on over to the winning side.” Despite all the evidence, despite all the suffering, despite the daily indignities he was hit with, he did not lose heart because he knew that the  resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead was the decisive victory of God’s love over the worst the world can be or do. He knew that true liberation doesn’t come from dominating political enemies through force, but from throwing ourselves fully on the power of Jesus. That’s how he did not lose heart.

So my beloved deacons and priests, remember that this week Jesus really dies–a brutal, humiliating, painful death at the hands of an oppressive regime, and that he really lives, not as a nice idea or an interesting metaphor, but he lives as surely as I’m standing right here. Remember, in the face of all the bluster and strutting evil does in the world, that it has already lost. We don’t save the world, we just point to how God has already done it. 

“Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart.”

These vocations are hard. If you lead and serve you are going to take some shots on the chin. And it hurts. The shots we take, from the petty gripes that are always around to the pandemics and politics that are always washing over us, make us want to guard our hearts. And I have been around long enough now to see so many deacons, priests, and bishops guard their hearts so closely that they lose them. Keep throwing yourself on the mercy of God, and do not lose heart.

And then, we use the heart we keep to join God in sending laborers into the harvest. When we hear this gospel, especially on an occasion like this, we tend to imagine Jesus is asking us to pray for more clergy. I don’t actually know if we need loads more clergy or not. But what I do know the church and the world need more than anything is for the whole people of God to be fully consumed by the fire of the Holy Spirit. What the church and the world need most is the whole people of God who have come fully alive in love. What the church and the world need most is people who will join Archbishop Tutu in saying to the principalities and powers: don’t you know you have already lost? The laborers God needs are the whole people of God. Your primary job and mine is not to be smart. It’s not to be entertaining. It’s not to make people happy. Your job and mine is to help light people up with the power of God’s love, and send them out to harvest the lush abundance that only God can grow in a desert like the world as we know it. 

Social psychologists talk about something called emotional contagion, which is exactly what it sounds like. Human communities behave the way they do because we catch emotions from each other. In every interaction, we subconsciously mimic and mirror each other, catching turns of phrase or physical tics. We do it because we’re wired to desperately crave connection in every moment. Leaders, like clergy, are (and you’ll have to excuse the metaphor) emotional superspreaders. Everyone is always, at least subconciously, watching the leader for cues. How we keep our hearts, it turns out, is precisely how we send out laborers for the harvest. There is no more important work you or I have to do than not losing heart. 

So, beloved, in these days of great challenge, in these days of deep darkness, how’s your heart? What are your people catching from you? As you take up the immense privilege of walking to the cross and the tomb, bring your whole heart, throw your whole self on the mercy of Jesus, that you might be fully overcome by the irresistible force of God’s life, and lit up with the unquenchable fire of God’s love, and together, Christ’s Church might join the Spirit in setting the whole world free. Amen.