The Rev. Julie Hutson
Isaiah 52: 7-10 + Romans 12: 9-16b + Luke 1: 39-56
Grace and peace to you from the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Dear people of God at First Lutheran Church, Pastor Hansen, Britt, Bishop Wee, and all who are here to show their love and support and delight how good it is to be here for this occasion. This celebration of a new ministry as Pastor Hansen is installed as your pastor. I bring you greetings and many good wishes from the people of God at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Olympia, among whom I serve as pastor.
This is a new thing you are doing, Pastor Hansen. Oh, not being a pastor, you know how to do that and how to do it well. But it is a new thing here, in this beautiful space in this beautiful part of West Seattle. And what we know is that God is a God of new things. Sometimes unexpected things. Sometimes surprising things. Sometimes things that are answers to prayers we did not know how to pray. But God, God is a God of new things.
This evening as we gather we hear the wondrous story of the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, which the Church universal remembers tomorrow. If ever there was an example of God doing new and unexpected things, Mary and Elizabeth both have stories to tell. Elizabeth in that she is, well, as Gabriel so bluntly put it just a few verses earlier “in her old age and said to be barren”. And Mary, who had not known a man…both are unexpectedly and inexplicably pregnant. Not only that, but Mary is carrying the son of God, the Messiah. Having learned this news and offered her ascent, the Gospel story picks up with our reading for this night and for this occasion.
The author of Luke’s Gospel gives us a familiar and beautiful story, but we are left, in many ways, to fill in the blanks – to give meaning to what we read – to read within the reading. We are told that Mary sets out with haste, to the hillside country home of Elizabeth and Zechariah. We are told of the delight that illumined the space around them as the two women greeted one another and as Elizabeth acknowledged that both she and her unborn child were visited by the Messiah in Mary’s womb.
And then Mary sings a lullaby of revolution in response, a song that perhaps first articulated to the unborn Jesus what his ministry would encompass.
That hymn, the Magnificat, has echoed throughout time and filled us with its words. More than that, Pastor Hansen and dear people of God, it serves to remind us what it means, exactly, to follow a God who does new things.
You know as a new ministry begins, it is good and right to revel in the joys of discovering the gifts and skills your new pastor brings. And he brings many. In him you will find a faithful steward of the mysteries of God. You will find a thoughtful and reflective listener with the heart of a pastor. You will find someone who teaches and preaches and leads worship with care and faithfulness and skill and humility. You will find someone who makes room for the wide love of God that is for all people.
In time, you will learn how you do ministry together, because ministry is never a one person show. Your pastor, like all pastors, is called to many things, but “doing it all” is not one of them. Pastor Hansen will serve and work and worship and teach and learn and care for others and pray and sing alongside each of you. It’s not a solo, it’s not even a duet, it’s something like a beautiful hymn sung in good, Lutheran, four part harmony.
And dear siblings in Christ, the work of the Gospel, to which we are all called is not always easy. Often it is messy and hard and discouraging and complicated. Hear again the words of Mary’s song: he has scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. These can be challenging words for us to remember about what it means to follow Jesus. That the good news is first for the lowly and the hungry and the poor and the “other” just as it is for us, challenges us in a culture that lifts up power and wealth and encourages the hoarding of what we have so that we do not dare risk not having enough for ourselves in the process of serving those Jesus loves.
It is a counter cultural God we serve, a God born to a young girl who sings songs of revolution into the world.
Of course there will be messy moments and days and seasons. And this is what I want you to know about your new pastor – he will hear you when you bring your questions and concerns and troubles to him. But dear ones, you must bring them to him. Trust one another enough to know that you can sit together and talk about what is on your mind and heart. How lucky for you that you called someone with such a capacity for listening and hearing.
When there are days that you forget how to be community together, or it’s hard, or you have questions, or you are curious, don’t forget Paul’s words to the early believers in Rome in the Epistle reading: Let love be genuine, hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another with mutual affection, outdo one another in showing honor.
Pastor Hansen/Bryon….this is also a good word for you. You and I and every pastor who tells the truth know that this holy vocation can also break your heart. It breaks them with the relentless desire to share the Good News of the Gospel in a world whose ears are itching for a different word. It breaks them with the people we will love and lose through death and betrayal and the changes and chances of life. But it mostly breaks them with the incredible, holy, wondrous gift that is the charge entrusted to you here this night. To love and serve and pray for God’s people at First Lutheran Church. To nourish them with the sacraments. To lead them by your own example in faithful service and holy living. To be sure, you will preach and teach and serve in accordance with all of the things the Church demands, but you will always lead with love. This I know to be true.
Dear friends in Christ, gathered here on this night to witness and bless this new beginning, God is doing a new thing!
Like Isaiah may we break forth together into singing!
Like the believers in Rome may we do so trusting that in the daily ordinariness of our ministry and life together we can do the holy work that has been entrusted to all of us when we hold fast to the good things that God has given to us, to the love and honor and respect we show one another.
Like Elizabeth and the unborn John the Baptist, may we always honor and recognize the light of Christ inside one another and may our delight and blessing be our response.
And friends like Mary, oh like Mary, may we sing our song of the wide love of God, birthed in Jesus the Christ, for the sake of the world that God so loves.
To God be the glory and let the Church say…Amen.