Bishops ordination charge 2000

This afternoon, I intend, if the Lord will, to admit you to the holy order of deacon in the Church of God, and I want to prepare for that by reminding you of some of the key features of the ministry to which you are about to be ordained.

The first point I want you to remember is that the diaconate is an order and not merely an office in the Church. Being an order means that it is part of the God-given structuring of the Church as a whole. In other words it tells us something about the nature of the Church and its very existence is one of the means by which God keeps the Church faithful. By extension, it means that we who have been brought into it, and "we" will shortly include you, are a sign of the Church and a sign to the Church.

This means that the diaconate is not the first rung on a ladder. Rather it is the very foundation of the threefold ministry of the church. It is the basis on which everything else rests.

Indeed, it is more than that, it is one of the permanent characteristics of the ministry. You will often hear it said that presbyters and bishops are still deacons. This is true and it is not special pleading. It does not of course that deacons are in some sense already presbyters and bishops. Rather it is to assert something about the essential character which will be impressed on you today. Everything that ordained ministry is as such is embodied in the diaconate, which then continues throughout the whole of the ministry like a message in a stick of rock - wherever you cut the rock, the message is the same.

None of this is an accident. The ordained ministry exists, and is called the ordained ministry, for this very reason: God is a God of order and not of disorder. This is not just true in the order of redemption. It has its roots in creation, and it is important to remember that the Jesus Christ, whose ministry we have been called to share is the incarnate Word of God, through whom all things were made. That at the very least should put us on our guard against seeing the ministry in any narrow religious or churchy terms.

In creating, God brought order out of chaos. Although the world through sin and weakness is always tending to fall back into chaos, God's purposes cannot ultimately fail. It is our faith as Christians that both through God's natural laws and the order of redemption God upholds creation and orders its path towards its true destiny.

Am I straying from my subject? I do not think so. The ministry of deacon is not a peculiar ecclesiastical invention but one of God's instruments for bringing the world - the world, mark you, not some privatised world of religion - to its true destiny: in the words of Ephesians, to bring everything together under Christ, as head, everything in the heavens and everything on earth.

The diaconate is thus not primarily an office in an ecclesiastical organisation but an order in the Church of God. As such it is one of the signs of God's kingdom and a means of disclosing it on earth.

And of course the orderliness of God has its roots even deeper than creation. Creation is the way it is because God is the way God is. And this brings us close to one of those permanent features of the Christian ministry which are highlighted by the diaconate.

One particular aspect of the orderliness focused in the diaconate is revealed by the name of the order. Although the precise signification of the word "deacon" is disputed, all agree that it is something to do with service. When Jesus came he declared, "I am among you as one who serves." The character of Jesus' earthly ministry showed the truth of what he said about himself. Service, mutual, loving, self sacrificial, obedient service.

This was not a way of speaking about his own humility as a thing in itself, or a unrooted personal quality, for, as we know "God was in Christ and in Christ there is no unGodlikeness whatsoever." Jesus' self-abasement, his self emptying for us is not merely a characteristic of Jesus' earthly life; Jesus was like that on earth because God is like that in heaven. The doctrine of the Trinity presupposes that the three divine persons live in, through and for each other, a constant mutual stream of self-abandoning love.

Do you see where this is leading? Being a deacon is to be Godlike in a very special way. When St Ignatius wrote his famous letters while on his journey in chains to martyrdom in Rome he wrote very beautifully about his special affection for deacons. This was because he saw them in them a particular manifestation of the character and ministry of Jesus Christ, who himself came to make the Father visible.

There will be many frustrations for you in the ministry as well as many joys and rewards. Sometimes indeed it will even be in the frustrations and disappointments rather than the joys and satisfactions that your best service will be offered. That is, however, only as it should be for the disciples of the one deacon, Jesus, who sealed his life of self-offering on the Cross.

This is not I hasten to add a commendation of a grinding and wretched martyrdom as somehow preferable to the light and life and joy we rightly associate with the Kingdom of God. It is a rather a reminder that the only way to exercise the ministry to which we have been called is the way of Jesus himself, which is in turn the way of God.

All this may sound heavy, but is this and not much else that being a deacon is about: a sign of the whole ordained ministry, which is itself a sign of the whole church, which is itself a sign to the whole world of the wonder of the servant God who revealed himself perfectly to us in Jesus Christ.

To him be glory and honour, might, majesty and dominion, now and to the ages of ages. Amen.

+John Hind - Brussels - 15.7.2000