A Scepter for Natalie: Pastor Gessert's Ordination

[Note: This sermon was preached at Natalie Gessert's ordination at Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church in Fairfax, VA, tonight.]

Allow me to bring in a topic that is of a holiness suitable to this sacred event, that is, suitable to the setting apart of an actual sinner to word and sacrament ministry. The holy thing I want to tell you about is truly a sacred realm: World of Warcraft. In case you’re not one of the 11 and a half million subscribers worldwide, World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role playing game, or MMORPG. You get to pretend you’re in an alternate world with giants, orcs, dwarves and the like. You maneuver through the world, gaining skills, encountering other players and, when necessary, going into battle.

In WoW it’s always helpful to gain an arsenal of weapons should you need to fight. Along with such things as the Arcanite Steam-Pistol and the Smashing Star of Arcane Wrath, one of the many weapons available to you is the Royal Diplomatic Scepter, which you can get from the Dark Iron Ambassador. You use it one-handed and it inflicts damage in the 37-69 range.

Of course, I really know nothing about World of Warcraft and the Royal Diplomatic Scepter. I’m more of a Candyland kind of guy and leave the online role playing games to my college students. But I do know about biblical scepters. A scepter is a crucial prop in the story of Queen Esther’s rescue of the Hebrew people from certain death. In our first reading tonight, Esther could not help her adopted father Mordecai, because she hadn’t been invited into the presence of the king. It would not do to enter the royal chambers uninvited, without being pointed at by the king’s golden scepter. To cross the threshold into King Ahasuerus’ inner court and go where you didn’t belong meant certain death. Esther told Mordecai that was the one law. It all depended on that single rule, on the royal and arbitrary whim of a king who may or may not look upon you with favor.

Scepters regularly appear in ancient stories as the symbol of royal power. They represent the king’s will. In The Iliad, the weak king Agamemnon sends Odysseus off to treat with the Achaeans. He lends his ambassador his royal scepter, so that Odysseus carries with him the authority of the throne. In Esther, to receive a point of the golden scepter is equal to the king speaking a word of welcome. It indicates the king’s will.

Natalie, I have brought you a glorious plastic royal scepter from our local party good store. Treasure it always, for it required an arduous quest through miles of Halloween paraphernalia-stocked aisles to find it. Come up here and get it, but be careful with it, because this is the equal to Ahasuerus’ golden scepter. It’s a scepter designed for wielding power. This is a scepter that makes demands on the one it points to. It’s a scepter of glory, of required and active righteousness.

Ah, yes – righteousness, it’s a fine, fine thing. As the Israelites in Deuteronomy say, “The LORD commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the LORD our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today. And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.” (Deut. 6:24-25) And as Micah asks, “What does the LORD require of you, but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God” (6:8). In order to get the nod, the flick of the divine scepter, you must, must fulfill all righteousness. All righteousness? All. You don’t just get to do a bit o’ honey-flavored justice, or kinda, sorta like kindness, or act humble. No. God requires it all. You want entry into God’s inner chambers? Then love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind.

Go ahead. Choose to do that, okay? We’ve got some time here. I won’t make you come up for an altar call (it’s a Lutheran worship service, after all). Go ahead; say it with Joshua and his family in the Promised Land: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” That’s better, isn’t it? You’ll eat your Powdermilk Biscuits and do what the medieval Scholastic theologians said, “Facere quod in te est” (or, as Larry the Cable Guy translated it, “Git ‘er done”). Will you? Yes, I will.

And there’s the rub, right there in those four little letters, w-i-l-l. Will. Will you? Will you be righteous? Will you be the one your heavenly king requires you to be? In just a few moments, Natalie will be asked four times about her intentions, about what her will is in carrying out the ministry to which she’s called. My guess is that, when you say you’ll love God, do justice and git ‘er done for God, your intentions are not much better than Natalie’s. And I know her intentions are about as strong and durable as a square of Charmin hanging on the spindle in my bathroom at home.

If you are to gain the scepter’s nod, the good graces of your Lord and God, it will take something more than your flimsy assertions of a good will. When you and Natalie say, “I will,” sinners that you are, your will will last about as long as it takes to get that last lingual “L” to roll off your tongue. And then it’s back to the more pressing business of building of your own Disneyfied kingdom where you need not worry about other royal whims or the slings and arrows of outrageous divine fortune. When you’re the one with all the glory, you can be the flicker of scepters.

Natalie, the temptation to pick up that scepter is a strong one for pastors. As you know from putting countless second-year seminarians through their paces on the Lutheran Confessions mid-term, Philip Melanchthon devoted an entire long article in the Augsburg Confession to the temptation of this scepter. It’s titled, “On the Power of Bishops.” Lest anyone think, I’m going to go after present company here, please know Melanchthon was talking about the power God grants to all public proclaimers of his Word. The Confessions are clear. The power of bishops, pastors, preachers and popes lies not in wielding the rod of the Law, not in civil power, worldly might or organizational acumen, much less in winsome charm or psychotherapeutic chops. It lies solely in the one, little, devil-subduing thing that we Lutherans sing with such fervor whenever “A Mighty Fortress” is trotted out on Reformation Sunday.

The power that Natalie has in her hands, before, during and after the laying on of hands, with or without an historic episcopate, from the time that clear water flowed over her in baptism to the last shovel of dirt and “Ashes to Ashes” at her grave – this power is the Word of God and only the Word of God. So let’s get something straight. Your seminary’s mission statement notwithstanding, Natalie, you have not been called to be a leader in the church. You have been called instead to be a servant of the Word, this Word of whom John speaks in the glorious prelude to the Bach invention that is his gospel. It is the same Word who comes to do clean-up at the end of Revelation: the Word of God riding in on his white horse with a sword pointing at sinners from his mouth and his own name tattooed on his thigh (yes, Jesus has a tattoo – look it up in Revelation 19).

Unlike the scepter of Ahasuerus, the Word that God sends via Natalie’s (sometimes too active) mouth is a Word that brings life out of death. My dear and fellow sinner, you have been called out of the baptized to publicly bear this Word in a broken and fallen world. It is a Word who is the last thing we sinners would expect or want. The saving Word of God you will serve is no glorious Ahasuerus condemning the Jews in exile in Persia with little thought or care. This Word, Jesus Christ, present from the beginning, wasn’t even recognized by his own. The folks back home in Galilee wanted to toss him off a cliff. The fine upstanding righteous and religious ones in Jerusalem, who knew they were good enough to enter God’s inner chambers, took one look at him and said, “Crucify him. But take the cannoli.”

It’s an ignominious end. Hanging on a cross hardly makes Jesus look like he’s able to do anything for himself, much less for sinners. And yet… And yet, this cross is God’s very throne. As Hebrews (1:8) says, “Your throne…will last forever and ever, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom.” Everything changes in Jesus. No longer does the divine scepter demand your righteousness. Christ’s righteousness is the scepter that flings it your way. It’s the scepter of his righteousness that makes you worthy. No activity or deed or desire or intention of your own, but his work, his dirty, dying deed done dirt cheap, his cross. His crossbeam-bruised shoulders carry you into God’s holy of holies.

And Natalie tonight you are set apart to deliver those goods. I warn you, though; it’s not a shiny happy job for shiny happy people. It’s grunt work and often dispiriting to bring a Word that runs so counter to the world’s expectations of power. As we say on the prairies of South Dakota where I come from, a lot of times you’ll go home feeling like an excremental epithet. But it will happen way more often if you think you’ve been elevated to some vaunted position because you have a shiny scepter of glory.

So here’s the deal, and a heckuva a deal it is: Your real scepter is one no one would ever suspect. If you lined up all the scepters of the world’s kings and queens, monarchs and muckety-mucks, you’d never pick this one out as able to do the trick. It has neither gold nor silver, nor rubies and onyx. The scepter you are bestowed tonight is made of wood and rubber and little gold paint. As the psalmist says, this rod and staff brings sweet comfort. So come up here again and take this toilet plunger for your office to display alongside your framed copies of “Footprints in the Sand.” And let it be a reminder to you of where you will find ears ready to hear, who are hungering and horny for this living Word.

You’ll find those ears in the most fetid places, in the septic field of sin and brokenness. You will find these ears wherever the demands of life break your people down. You will find them scrambling to cobble together a life, managing calendars and shaky finances. You’ll see them popping zits and fretting about making the team, making the grade or making “it.” You will discover ears to hear when you enter into dark nights of the soul. The ends of the rope, the bottoms of glasses, the real-life versions of crash test dummies’ walls: These are all the places where we sinners come to know the truth: On my own I cannot attain the righteousness required. I believe I cannot by my own understanding or effort even do something as simple as believe.

So, Natalie, you are called to go where Ahasuerus’ legal scepter says, “Off with their heads!” You are called to point your new scepter, saying, “Sinner, the righteousness of our crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ is yours.” In fact, my young Padwan, at this very moment you are surrounded by these very sinners. Stand up and give that scepter a go. Point it at us, for we know our sin. And deliver the goods for we have ears to hear. We’re waiting for some absolution to come trippingly off your tongue. [Natalie speaks the absolution.]

And you my dear fellow forgiven sinners, do you believe this unlikely Word? The scepter of the Law says, “Do this, and it is never done.” But the scepter of the gospel says, “Believe this, and it is already done.” Your salvation is given you both this very night and whenever and wherever the Holy Spirit moves this newly minted pastor to point a plunger, open her sassy mouth and let fly with God’s promise in Christ Jesus. So get busy, Natalie. Fling. Flick. Point. Plunge. Forbear. Forgive. All in Christ’s name. You can count on our good Lord to help and guide you, for the King of Kings has opened his inner chambers just as the stone was rolled away from the tomb. Natalie, it’s time. The Word is given. Sinners await you. Bring us in. Please. Amen.