A Sermon for the Institution and Induction of the Rev. Walter Smedley as Rector of Holy Cross, Dunn Loring, Virginia.
The Rev. Timothy B. Safford, Rector, Christ Church in Philadelphia.
March 12, 2006
After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you."  Genesis 22
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 8

Jesus called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.  Mark 8

On this night of great joy, our readings are a bit grim.  Wes wanted those appointed for the second Sunday of Lent.  It is quite the challenge to the preacher.  First, we have God’s horrifying test of Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac.  Paul does encourage us that “nothing can separate us from the love of Christ,” but the list of calamity is daunting; we face eventual and likely “hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril and the sword.”  And then Mark succinctly recounts Jesus’ mission statement to those who want to follow him:  “Deny yourself. Take up your cross and follow me.”  Simply stated, Jesus expects faithfulness even to death, and death for the follower of Jesus is a real possibility, as history has proven.  
Last night I lamented to Wes the struggle to find a message of joy amidst these tough scriptures for this great night, and he said, with clear joy in his voice, “but those are my absolute favorite readings.  They are the best ones of the entire year!”
Sisters and brothers of Holy Cross, Dunn Loring, and Bishop Jones, you no doubt have already figured out that if Wes Smedley were in that group of would-be but weak-kneed disciples, and Jesus asked them to die to self, and to take up a cross and follow him, probably to death, Wes would not hesitate to tear the limbs from the trees and bind them together and carry them down the road to Jerusalem.  Wes, in every moment and molecule of his life knows that the one in whose footprints he trods will never abandon him, or separate him from his pure, sweet love no matter the hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril or sword that awaits. Wes understands, almost eerily, what most of us struggle our lives to comprehend, that in God, we must lose our life to gain it, and that the treasures of heaven freely given by God are far greater than any earthly ones we feebly try to gather here.
Brothers and sisters of Holy Cross, the challenge tonight to you is this:  will you live out these truths with Wes?  Will you, as a community of faith strive to deny yourself and take up the cross?
I was quite impressed with the invitation to this event.  It read:  You are invited to the celebration of our new ministry with the Rev. Walter Smedley.  So often the mistake is made to think that the new ministry inaugurated tonight is the Rector’s, when really, his ministry—priesthood—is the same.  However, you, Holy Cross Dunn Loring, are to sing the new song.  That doesn’t mean you are to abandon the old song, just to begin singing in a new way.  We are about ready to sing “Jesus loves Me,” which is an old song indeed, but can be sung in a new way.
If you are willing to start a new ministry with Wes, I urge you to understand that Wes considers the instructions, “Deny yourself, and take up the cross,” to be the most important that Jesus gives.  But it is not easy to understand how a congregation can deny itself, so this journey may be a bit of struggle.  But Wes can take you there, if you allow him.  One of his most favorite theologians is Soren Kierkegaard—not exactly a household name but you best get used to him—who said, “Christianity is not the doctrine of denying oneself.  Christianity is denying oneself.”   Wes will push you hard on this, both individually and as a community.  It will not be enough to agree that self-denial is a good thing; Wes wants to see you, and all of Holy Cross, live self-denial.
But how do you do that?  There is no simple answer, but I urge you to allow Wes to lead you down that road less traveled.  For Wes has taught me that which he now will try to teach you, that there is only a deep faith in Jesus Christ through the journey of actual self denial.
Wes has always used the language of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “to die to self.”  An act of theological hospitality for you all would be to study with Wes Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship.  He’s going to bore you stiff with this book, so you might as well start reading it.  But really, you just need to memorize this small part where Bonhoeffer writes:  “To die to self is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self. . . .  Only when we have become completely oblivious of self are we ready to bear the cross for Christ’s sake.”
I think you should print that up on refrigerator magnets, so you see it all the time.  I don’t know if I would hand it out to newcomers on their first Sunday.  But if you learn to live out those words, if you sing out that new song, Holy Cross will not be known for its warm welcome and open spirit, but for its radical discipleship and transformative power for the Gospel.
Now, we must we careful here, for the last thing you want is a Rector without a sense of self, without an ego.  The last thing Lori needs is Wes selfless.  I am sure Bishop Jones’s list of headaches is full of clergy who think they are selfless for the sake of the Gospel, but that claim only shrouds an egotism and hunger for power that is destructive to the Body of Christ.  But there is a balanced way, a healthy way, to deny self.  To state with some obvious paradox, to die to self so that Christ can be raised within is a form of self, of ego, that can be liberation.  Allow Wes to lead you here, to show you that to deny yourself to take up the cross of human suffering is indeed a yoke that is easy, a burden that is light.
And the way to protect Wes from the destruction that toxic self-less-ness can become is to only allow him to be as self-less as you are willing to be as a community.
These words of Bonhoeffer capture Wes down to the deepest part of his soul:  “To endure the cross is not a tragedy, it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.”
Even though Wes is fairly young to be a Rector, he understands far better than most Christians do in a lifetime that to deny self and take up the cross is to confront suffering and death from the very perspective of that suffering and death.  Now, this is thick theology, a little thicker than I can deal with here, but Wes will work with this a lot in his time here.  He knows this struggle with suffering personally.  He has learned, in a way that few of us do, that death to self is really the freedom from suffering that Christ provides.  Death to self leads to the inseparable love of Christ.  Wes knows in his own struggle that when we are full of ‘self,’ we flee from suffering, be it in ourselves, or in others, or in the creation itself.  But when we deny self, we confront suffering, as Christ did, so that suffering can be transformed, conquered, and we who suffer under its oppression can be unshackled.
To accept those challenging words of Jesus is to deny your collective identity as the parish of Holy Cross and to commit to the ministry of the Holy Cross.  And I think that is not easy, for first you must be willing to give up your strong sense of identity as the parish of Holy Cross:  the beautiful church, the warm welcome, the open and affirming community, the pride of moving from being a small mission to a growing parish, the relief of settling on a Rector you believe will lead you, the plans for music and education, and on and on.  There is nothing wrong with all that, so I say this softly:  Your new ministry is to sing the new song, built on the old song.  But the gospel does not change.  Take up the cross, and confront the terrible and unbearable reality of pain and suffering in yourselves, your neighbors and your world.  That is why God has called you: to be the body of Christ in this place at this time.  You cannot discern what this means right now with a strong sense of self as the guide.
Trust me, I know this is hard work.  I serve a parish where its sense of self is too wrapped up in its sense of history that spans 310 years, in its pride of being a church that contributed greatly to the Revolution, the founding of our government, and the starting of the Episcopal Church.  Further, we have the most glorious building imaginable, which requires constant attention.  But that is all “self.”  And we must admit it is hard to deny.  I pray for you to be about it!
Christ calls you, Holy Cross, to take up his holy cross and enter into the pain of the world.  If you do this faithfully, you share with Christ the wounds of the cross, and, as Peter tells us, “by Christ’s wounds we are healed.”  But you become the agent of the healing of the world’s wounds.  How?  Because Christ is raised in you.  The Risen Christ, transforms pain into healing, suffering into peace, injustice into justice, swords into ploughshares and water into wine.  We, the church, the body of Christ, the risen body of Christ, has work to do: namely to enter into the suffering of the world, denying the myth that the pain and problems are beyond healing.  This ministry is where Wes draws his hope, his exuberance, his accessibility.  For Wes, his faith in Christ crucified makes his life full of meaning, and life’s suffering and its cruelty bearable.  The cross speaks to him and inspires, comforts and transforms.  He happily will deny himself for the sake of its holiness.  For Wes, the cross is a holy cross, that he will happily carry along Gallows Road.  But he cannot carry it alone.  This cross carrying is a team sport, requiring all of the members of the body—the team—to bear the weight.
Wes has taught me a powerful aspect of the Gospel I never understood.  You know there at the end of Matthew, the Risen Christ commends those who have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, housed the homeless, unshackled the oppressed, given water to the thirsty, and the clear message—the call to us—is that we are to do the same, so I have always understood that I go out with food, give it away, and then retreat.  I drop off clothes, and then retreat.  I work a Habitat project, and then retreat.  Wes understands this differently, and in a way that might be frightening, or threatening.  You take food to the hungry not in charity, but in solidarity.  You take water to the thirsty and clothes to the naked so that their suffering can be embraced by the arms of the Risen Christ.  You don’t go alone, you go as Church to where the hunger lives, carrying the cross, denying the interests of your church’s desire for success and growth, and take God into the suffering of the hungry, the naked, the oppressed.  It makes perfect sense that Wes was called Rector of Holy Cross on Gallows Road.  The cross is the gallows, and I learned from Wes that you must see the world from the perspective of the gallows for this is where God saw the world and felt the world’s pain.  This ministry is not sadness, it is hope and joy and promise.  Wes knows by heart this prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms on the hard wood of the cross that every one might come within the reach of your saving embrace. . . . 
Brothers and sisters of Holy Cross, tonight you celebrate the re-new-ed ministry of the Holy Cross.  Tonight, in this Gospel, in this induction, you are called to bear that Holy Cross, but the burden of that cross will feel light, for you have a shepherd who understands to deny oneself to carry it is freedom, that separates the ordinary human life from the life committed to Christ.
Wes, bear this cross.  Wes, show us the way!  If you follow Christ, I suspect a few of us might, too.