30 Summoned: REFLECTION, Friday, May 29th

It was that summer that my long-simmering sense of summons to pursue ordination as a priest unfolded with compelling power. The varying factors of that emergent discernment are difficult to untangle. I felt useful in a way a suburban young-man had never previously experienced utility. Pere Deir took a brotherly interest in me, instructing me in Creole, on how to harvest whelks and urchin fresh from the sea, and taking me to my first voodoo ceremonies. But I think it was the hardship of the summer that sealed the deal. With that rooster, I never slept past 3am. I travelled often alone by tap-tap for supplies to Port-au-Prince, landing in some harrowing situations in unspeakable slums, and I was more than once dreadfully sick and hallucinating.

“I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my Name,” the Lord said to hesitant Ananias about Saul when the Lord commissioned Ananias to go lay his hands upon Saul, newly recruited to the cause of Christ (Acts 9: 16).

The Lord proved true to his word. Saul-now-Paul has often been in mortal danger, suffered many beatings and stonings, and three attempts on his life in Jerusalem alone (21:31, 36; 23: 12 – 15; 25:3). In our reading today a group of would-be assassins have fasted, thereby sealing their oath to murder Paul.

Paul has borne witness to Christ to Jew and Greek, male and female, in Aramaic, Hebrew and Koine. He has traveled extraordinary distances, and lived, as did our Lord, as one who had no home or place to lay his head. Now he is proclaiming the Gospel to Claudius Lysias, his Excellency Felix and his wife Drusilla, before his accuser the high priest Ananias, King Agrippa and his wife Bernice, Festus, and many more.

Paul is wily as ever. Having presented himself under certain circumstance as a Hebrew of Hebrews, he now adopts Greek and Roman manners in discourse, and plays two Jewish strands, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, against one another. Paul is whip-smart in his impudence. Having defied the courts of Judaism and conservative forces in the emerging Christian movement; he now calls out the Roman State, playing up his family influence (his nephew greases a few palms) and effectively weighting his Roman citizenship.

Paul suffered greatly in his calling to Christ, his witness to Christ, and in the marshaling of every privilege and personal asset at his disposal in service to the cause of Christ.

Humbled? I am.

My vague intent when I entered my first seminary had been to return to Haiti. By the time I ventured my second Masters at Seabury-Western, I thought perhaps God was rather calling me to pursue a Ph.D. in Philosophical Theology. As it happened, my first cure out of seminary was All Saints’-by-the-Sea in Montecito (Santa Barbara) California, and profound personal hardship has not proven to be a characteristic feature of my ministry.

In what ways have you been summoned to the cause of Christ? Has it challenged you or cost you in measurable ways? Have you risen in witness to the Faith and Hope that is in you? Have you marshalled your privilege and your resources in service to the Living Church still emerging? Reading the Book of the Acts of the Apostles raises poignant questions for each of us.

My second summer in Haiti I lived in Port-au-Prince in an actual house, and conducted TB inoculation from that more comfortable locale. At the conclusion of my first summer in Montrouis, as I broke the news to Madame and Samuel Cassius that it was, actually, quite impossible for me to adopt their 5-year-old daughter Widling and return with her to the States, the family still insisted on a grand send-off fiesta. They killed that damned rooster, and, with some relish, I ate.

I never saw Pere Desir again after my second summer in Haiti. He died in Port-au-Prince last year, his wife wrote.

Grace and peace,
The Reverend Canon George F. Woodward III

FOR THE POOR AND NEGLECTED
“Almighty and most merciful God, we remember before you all poor and neglected persons whom it would be easy for us to forget: the homeless and the destitute, the old and the sick, and all who have none to care for them. Help us to heal those who are broken in body or spirit, and to turn their sorrow into joy. Grant this, Father, for the love of your Son, who for our sake became poor, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” The Book of Common Prayer page 826