The Ordination from Above

We are highlighting Leadership Journal's Top 40, the best articles of the journal's 36-year history. We will be presenting them in chronological order. Today we present #35, from 1983. Walt Wangerin originally delivered "The Ordination from Above" as an address to graduating seminarians.

My face burned when I was ordained. This is historical truth, no image, nor metaphor: this face became bright red and burned.

I suppose the people might have said, "Walt's excited. Look at him blush." It was the end of my two year's education at Redeemer Church in Evansville, Indiana, under a man named David Wacker. That church had been my school, that man my teacher, and here was the ceremony of endings and beginnings, with music and preaching, lights, flowers, rites, noise, my seat center front, my self the single purpose of the gathering. "Walt's excited … "

But I knew my facial fire was more than a blush. Rather, the burning came of this: for once in my long and vigorous struggle with the Lord Jesus Christ, the struggle itself had ceased; for a moment the relationship had reached a certain purity. At that instant my faith was not being torn between yes-and-no, nor my calling torn between yes-and-no, as both had been, bloodily, for years. My Lord was both mine and Lord; my calling exquisitely clear; my face bright red. For YES and YES ALONE demands its manifestation and had it in the heat of my countenance.

My faith, you see, was the flame in my face.

And the burning came of this: I sat in the midst of a people with whom I had learned and laughed, talked, failed, and cried; a people against whom I had sinned, from whom experienced forgiveness, among whom had roared, lived, and loved. And in that instant our fellowship had reached a certain purity, a quiescence of joy. There stood Joselyn Fields, a woman of deep, dark, penetrable skin and flashing white eyes, directing the choir in "Isaiah, Mighty Seer in Days of Old." By her music, by her love and her solemnity, she touched my lips with hot coals from the altar.

My face burned, you see, with the vital love of the people around me.

And the burning came of this: my learning had come to a certain climax; my knowledge was being validated, made manifest in a ceremony. My mind had been opened to the Scriptures, and the teacher who had accomplished much of the opening was at that moment grinning down upon his charge. To David Wacker, when my vows had been pronounced–to Wacker, six-foot-four, broad-shouldered, hulking at the right of the chancel–to Wacker I walked, and we fell into each other's arms, and we wept, and my face burned.

Three loves brightened my face. The love of my Lord so near. The love of the people so dear. And the love of the knowledge of Christ in words, in Word, and in the holy frame of my teacher.

And still there was more. Somehow I took that facial heat as a sign from God that he would send his Spirit into my ministry. This is the truth. I said to myself, "I will remember that my face burned. I'll save this as a sign." Though I didn't use the words, I was conscious that God had woven three loves into a single braided promise: "I will be with you." The promise of power from on high! I was content.

But then came Monday, and the ceremony passed, and the music, the moment, the light, and the brightness of my face all passed away, resolving themselves into memory alone. I began my ministry at little Grace Church.

It was a good thing I had promised to remember the promise. I was about to need it, because instead of experiencing power, I experienced, more than anything else, The City.

My first sermons seemed to me to be possessed of a certain nascent power. I preached, I thought, with vigor. And I was particularly gratified to note that Sunday after Sunday Joselyn Fields would bow her head behind the organ, nodding, nodding, rubbing her chin and meditating. This was a lady of stark determinations, strong will, and forthright honesty. What she did not like, she did not pretend to like. What she liked received her nod and her attention. And if I had captured her-the organist!-with my preaching, why then there was no one I had not captured.

Yet, curiously, she never mentioned my sermons to me when the service was done.

There came the Sunday, then, when I chose to direct my preaching altogether to her. I mean, I looked at her, nodding behind the organ. I moved toward her while I preached. And I peeped over the top of the organ. Behold! She was reading organ music-nodding, nodding, and meditating.

Preachers can feel very lonely for want of an ear.

"Mrs. Fields," I said, when the service was over. "Do you have some thoughts on the sermon today?"

"Yes!" she said straightway. I smiled. I beamed.

"Previous preachers," she said, "lifted up their voices in a joyful noise unto the Lord. Would you do the same? I can't hear you."

I was in The City.

Grace Church was then an all-black congregation. During the first summer of my ministry, racial tensions rose with the temperatures until a riot broke out around the church. After some anguish I decided it was my duty to be there, to pastor the people in distress, to speak some word of peace-something! But before I sallied from the house, the telephone rang. It was Joselyn Fields. She said, "Stay home."

I said, "Why?" My ministry, don't you see? My ministry was at stake–yea, though I sacrifice myself to perform it!

"You'll get cut," she said.

"Why?" I asked foolishly.

"Why?" she said. "You're asking why? Man, because you're white!"

I was in The City. I was in the common lives of common people. That is The City. And I had not yet earned the right to speak an effectual, respected word to the people in their communities, according to their most worldly affairs: that was a higher degree yet to be earned, and it took time.

Neither had I learned the language of The City or its laws, its history, its traditions, the triggers of its power, its manner of marketing not only goods but goodly emotions, ideas, anger, love, complaints, and compliments. That was an education yet to be obtained, and it took time.

But The City was a cold shock for one whose face had burned; for The City reduces the witness. No longer glorying in a fellowship, the witness is one alone. No longer glorying in knowledge, the exegete of The City is dumb. And The City shows a singular lack of the manifestations of faith; the presence of the Lord is a dim thing there. In a word, the witness feels most power-less.

How terribly, terribly important, then, that the witness sent into The City remember the promise of power to come!

Then he said to them, "These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high." Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them, and was carried up into heaven. And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God (Luke 24:44-53).

The disciples had, before their Lord's ascension, one moment of burning purity; and a gift; and a command.

Pure, for once, was their immediate relationship with Jesus, who stood face to face with them one final time. The long struggle of that relationship had come to a sort of climax; hereafter they would not so much witness as be witnesses.

Pure, before departure, was the fellowship of those who had learned under the Lord's bright, demanding tutelage. They were yet they in the moment; but in the days to come they would scatter as preachers of assorted names, vocations, histories, and deaths.

Pure, too–finally–was the conclusion of their education; for now their minds were opened to the Scriptures and to the Christ and to his deeds and to the purpose of the preaching. Exegetes on the edge, they were. Well, it was a sort of graduation.

And then the Lord gave them a gift. Please be careful that you distinguish clearly the gift then given. It was not the power from on high; rather, it was the promise of power from on high. The promise they might then take with them; by the promise they might comfort themselves; in the promise they might boldly begin to act, because it assured them of the power's coming in its own right time.

Oh, and where they would go-to stay and to wait in weakness-was also made clear by the Lord, for that was his command: in the city. After the moment of purity, and even before the power, wait in the city. …

And now you.

This is a blessed night, a right holy ceremony, a graduation.

Glory is warm in this place. I don't know whether any of your faces are burning; yet there is a glory here, palpable, hot, and accountable; and you are not wrong to smile a bit, to laugh lightheaded in the occasion, to glow!

Three loves have come, tonight, to a certain climax and to a moment of unwonted purity.

Your minds have been opened to the Scriptures, to the acts of God in his Christ, to an understanding of the drama of repentance and forgiveness. Your education is at plateau and, judged by this very ceremony, "Good!" Your teachers sit behind me smiling. The whole process of learning stands still for a moment in purity. It is a glorious thing.

And you sit center-front among a fine fellowship: classmates among classmates, who have suffered, studied, laughed, talked, and grown together, who have hurt and healed one another; graduates among family and friends, a vast, supporting fellowship of the saints. Pure are all relationships in this peculiar moment. It is a glory to make a face to burn!

And your faith! After so much rising and falling in the past; after so much struggle with your Christ, denying him and crying after him; after the days when the only thing certain about your calling was that it was uncertain, now comes a moment of sweet truce and unalloyed purity. Jesus sits beside you, and you by him most confident.

So lovely is the moment that you want to bark with laughter. Do! Go ahead! It is the response to glory in this place.

And then, remember it.

For these three loves-the education, the fellowship, and your faith-all met in purity are strings. And God himself doth play upon those strings sweet music. He strums them now, right now, to sing to you a song; and by the song he whispers you a gift, a thing most blessed and profound. Not power! That is not yet the gift. But the promise of power; the promise that power will come, in its own right time.

Please remember that it is but the promise of power to come, so that when, by the Lord's direction you enter The City tomorrow, you shall not despair over a sudden sense of powerlessness. Rather, you will say, "This is right. This was to be expected." For the glory of this evening shall tomorrow seem no brighter than a match flame in the common light of day.

But also, please remember that you do have the promise, so that you may draw from it the motivation to do what must be done with your time in The City. For between the promise and the power shall certainly come the time in The City.

Use the time for two assignments, both of which shall prepare you for the coming power.

1. Learn The City. Learn the languages of its people, its secular means of communication, the flicker of eyes, the gesture of hands, the postures of contempt, servility, pride, protection, love. Learn The City. Learn the laws that shape it, both hidden in society and open in the books of government. Learn The City. Learn its hierarchy, the levels of its power. Learn to read what hurts are real and what their symptoms are. Discover first the human dramas already being enacted in The City before your arrival-for the Holy Spirit is ahead of you, already establishing his work, already directing his purposes. Learning The City, you begin to learn of him.

2. Earn your right to be heard by The City. This is not bequeathed you with your graduation nor even with an ordination. It comes of a very specific labor. It comes when you-to your own sacrifice-commit your ways to the people of The City and they shall believe the commitment only over a period of time. Stand with them in the courtroom, if that's where their lives take them; sit with them in hospitals, in jails, in the streets, in their places of business, in their bitter and their brighter moments. It's a hard thing to do, when you feel one and dumb and singularly lacking in the manifestations of faith, but it shall earn you the right to speak when that Spirit gives you power to speak.

It's a hard thing to do; but it is eased and enabled by the promise. You shall have the promise to support you; remember the promise of power from on high.

For it shall surely happen; by the grace of God, someone's hurt shall find healing in you. And someone's hunger shall, by God's good grace, be satisfied in you. And someone's need shall in you meet solution, all by the grace of God! That moment, that blinding, incandescent, and surprising moment shall be the power come, the Pentecost toward which a long, laborious ministry was tending all along. It shall be. I tell you, it shall be!

In the second year of my ministry at Grace, Joselyn Fields fell sick. In spring they diagnosed a cancer. In summer they discovered it had metastasized dramatically. By autumn she was dying. She was forty-seven years old.

Spring, summer, and autumn, I visited the woman.

For much of that time I was a fool and right fearful to sit beside her, but I visited her.

Well, I didn't know what to say, nor did I understand what I had the right to say. I wore out the Psalms; they were safe. I prayed often that the Lord's will be done, scared to tell him, or Joselyn, what his will ought to be; and scared of his will anyway.

One day when she awoke from surgery, I determined to be cheerful, to bring life unto her and surely to avoid the spectre that unsettled me-death.

I spoke brightly of the sunlight outside, vigorously of the tennis I had played that morning, sweetly of the flowers, hopefully of the day when she would sit again at the organ, reading music during the sermon. …

But Joselyn raised a black, bony finger, pointed squarely at my nose, and said, "Shut up!"

I learned so slowly in The City. Yet so patiently The City-and Joselyn Fields-taught me. I, who had thought to give her the world she didn't have, was in fact taking away the only world she did have. I had been canceling her serious, noble, faithful, and dignified dance with death.

I shut up. I learned. I kept visiting her. I earned my citizenship. And then the autumn whitened into winter, and Joselyn became no more than bones, her rich skin turning ashy, her breath filling the room with a close odor that ever thereafter has meant dying to my nostrils. And the day came when I had nothing, absolutely nothing to say to my Joselyn.

This is as true as the fact that once my face had burned.

I entered her room at noon, saying nothing. I sat beside her through the darkness, saying nothing. She lay awake, her eyelids paper-thin and closed, saying nothing. The evening took us, and with the evening came the Holy Spirit. For the words I finally said were not my own.

I turned to my Joselyn. I opened my mouth and spoke as a pastor. I spoke, too, as a human.

I said, "I love you."

And Joselyn opened her eyes. She put out her arms, and she hugged me. And I hugged those dying bones.

She whispered, "I love you, too."

And that was all we said. But that was the power from on high, cloaking both of us in astonished simplicity, even as Jesus had said it would! For in a word I did not know I knew, a need had found not only its expression but its solution, too!

Joselyn died. And I did not grieve.

For God's sake, when you find yourself in The City, know the promise! Remember it. It is true. Not always and always, but in the right moment, in the fullness of its own time, the power shall be given to you. Let this be peace in your weakness and purpose in your long routine; it shall be. It shall most surely be, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

At the time he wrote this article, Walter Wangerin was pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Evansville, Indiana.