Between the Upper Room and the Valley of Dry Bones

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

Aly, your priesthood will be lived out not only in the upper room but also in the valley of dry bones—and in the wide, uncertain frontier that lies between them. As a priest, you will be called both to the blessed and the cursed, the holy and the profane. Mostly, however, you’ll be bound to help those, like us, who are neither especially holy nor especially wicked. You will be called to the heavenly and the hellish—but also, most often, to the earthly.

The upper room. That’s where the disciples were gathered on Pentecost when suddenly—the very same suddenly Ezekiel witnessed—the Spirit fell on them in a firestorm of promise. And it is was also there, fifty-something days earlier, that Jesus washed the feet of his apostles—after overcoming Peter’s objections, of course—and shared his last meal with the Twelve. He also delivered a final teaching to them and prayed a last prayer over them.

That house and its upper room belonged to a woman named Mary, mother of John Mark and perhaps also the sister of Barnabas, Paul’s companion. Like other Marys in the Gospels—Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the Virgin Mary, Mother of God—she made room for Christ and those who gathered to him. She made her home his, providing sanctuary for him and those who needed him—including those, like her own son, who would flee from him, as well as those who would flee to him.

Your calling, Aly, requires you to be for us what those Marys were for Jesus and the first Christians. You must do this, first and foremost, mystically, holding space for the infinite in your heart, in your prayers, in your imagination. You must also do this liturgically, leading us both in the in-gathering and in the scattering-out. You must do it in your preaching, sharing not your wisdom but his, not good advice but the fiery promise of the Spirit. You must do it by presiding at the Table, by blessing our children and our homes, by forgiving our sins, by anointing the sick for healing, by casting out evil spirits.

As a priest, your life will not be your own. That is the burden you’re receiving tonight—and the lightness of that burden. 

•••

In a recent interview with Brad Jersak, David Goa draws crucial distinctions between the royal priesthood and the clergy on the one hand and the ekklesia and the institutional church on the other. Here’s how he defines the priesthood of all believers:

The royal priesthood is all of those human beings over time coming to us from the future who at any moment in their life have dwelt in grace, have expressed compassion and mercy, and have been present to other human beings and to creation… It’s anyone who dwells in the energy of God…

What, then, of the institutional church and its clergy? These exist, Goa says, to help the ekklesia, to cultivate priestliness in us, to provide the support and guidance necessary for us to flourish in our calling for the good of the world. The clergy, singled out from the laity, act primarily for the good of the church and her witness to the world.

To be ordained, then, is to take on a lesser, humbler work. It is to be constrained, constricted, hidden under the burden of the office. This peculiar glory is symbolized by the vesting:

We enter the royal priesthood symbolically as depicted in the baptismal garment… When somebody is called forth to be a deacon, presbyter, bishop that garment is covered up… and that is in a sense a sorrow. It’s why we pray for them in a special way. They have committed themselves to only being concerned with those that gather and to give structure and order and form to those that gather… It’s a restriction of what they can do… They tether themselves to the holy table, which is to say “I think God has called me to a lesser work, which is to serve God’s people so that they can serve God’s world.”

Alexander Schmemann says much the same, contending that the difference between the clergy and the laity is a matter of function. The laity are ordained, he says, in and by their baptism. The clergy, therefore, are doubly-ordained—precisely for the sake of the baptized and their share in the mission of the Spirit. In his words, “The clergy are ordained to make the Church the gift of God… The laity are ordained to make the Church the acceptance of that gift, the ‘Amen’ of mankind to God.” By saying Yes tonight to your calling, Aly, you’re agreeing to help us become that gift, that Amen. You’re agreeing to help us become the Eucharist, broken and blessed for the sake of the world.

•••

Your ministry will not be confined to the upper room, obviously. It will reach at times as far as the valley of dry bones, the stark and desolate place of Ezekiel’s exilic vision. You will stand, as Peter did, in the high places. But you will also stand in the lower depths, like Ezekiel, speaking words of life to those who by all accounts are hopeless. That means you will have to trust them and yourself to the God whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts, the God for whom nothing is impossible.

On the Day of Pentecost, outside the upper room, the gathering crowd, bewildered by what they saw and heard, asked "What does this mean?” Some were so skeptical they didn’t even bother to ask a question, certain the disciples were drunk. (There are worse things to be accused of, believe me, especially at nine o’clock in the morning.) In the valley of dry bones, however, God asks the question: "Can these bones live?" And there’s only one answer to give: “Lord, you know.”

The priest's responsibility is to be like Mary, a nurturing presence, a sanctuary for God, containing the uncontainable. And to be like Ezekiel, standing with those left for dead, speaking God’s Word to those who do not have ears to hear. You must help us, Aly, find our way again and again from the valley to the upper room. When no one else believes, believe for us, believe in us—even when you find you can’t believe for yourself. Your life is not your own, and neither is your faith. The life you live is his life happening in you, and the faith you have for us is his love for us finding root in your heart, despite everything. 

Now, don’t get me wrong: most of your ministry will happen in the no-man’s-land between the uproar of the upper room and the eerie silence of the valley. Priestly ministry, you won’t be surprised to hear, is rarely sexy, dramatic, glamorous, thrilling. It’s mostly humdrum. But boredom can, if offered to the Spirit, bore through the hardest heart. So, keep showing up, even when we don’t, and let us see from time to time that glimmer in your eye that reminds us how sweet God is, how good his gifts really are. If you are there, we will have all the room we need to come close—and suddenly the Spirit will fall on us, sparking up the flame of our heart, filling our mouths with unrehearsed praise.

•••

As I mentioned in this morning’s homily, life sometimes leads us off the map, into uncharted waters and pathless terrain. And truth be told, much of the territory ahead of us, as well as within us, is not only unmapped but out-and-out unmappable. And yet, we have no need to fear. Yes, there are dragons. But our God is the God who plays with monsters, who made the Leviathan for sport.

And there is even better news: Christ has not only already experienced for himself every dimension of our existence, tasting death for everyone, falling deeper than anyone else could ever fall, but has through the way that he died filled those dimensions with his own life-giving life. Thus, as Karl Rahner—himself a priest—said,

As this one who has died, Jesus is the one who comes… He comes by taking us away into the unfathomability of God by the passage through death; and he is the one who has come when the process of deadly transition into the power of his Spirit from the comprehensible and from our mastery into the happy unfathomability of God is perfected.

Thus, in Rahner’s words, to be led by the Spirit is to “allow ourselves to be drawn beyond everything conceivable and manageable into the untracked and unmapped unfathomability of God and his will; and we receive this measureless reality as our happiness.”

 So, finally, Aly, I pray over you what we need you to desire for us:

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:16-19)

May the Lord bless you and keep you in this sacred calling, Aly. May he make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May he lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace, now and always.

Amen.