Preached at the Installation of My Friend

Installation of the Rev’d Mr. David Halt as Rector of St.Matthew’s Church, Springfield

Joshua 1:7-9
Psalm 43
Romans 12:1-18
John 15:9-16

The Scripture Lessons appointed for today are most instructive, and they are echoed and affirmed by Saints throughout the ages. Be humble. Love one another. Be faithful and obedient to the Word of God written. Acknowledge and appreciate and enable one another’s gifts. Stand with courage and steadfastness for that which is right, whatever the cost may be; and together you will model for this city and this diocese the very nature of God.
Dave, we go back a long way. I remember taking our hummer deep into the woods at Camp Grayling to find a quiet place to read Morning Prayer, and running the ridge line at the east end of Camp Atterbury to the old settlers graveyard to do the same. I remember when we broke away from the convoy on the way to Fort Knox so that you could meet Bishop Thompson. He stood us up, but treated us to a wonderful meal at his club in downtown Cincinnati. I think it was on that trip that we had the tire blow out somewhere around Louisville. We were young then, and you were Methodist, and I used to be. We both loved God and our families. Our hearts burned with a desire to serve him and the Republic, and we shared so many things, tears and joys and fine and gentlemanly things, and dreams of what the future held.
Now I am on the downhill side of my active life as a Priest of our Lord, and you, you are at a grand new beginning. The people to whom God has called you come to this place faithfully every week after they have toiled in the workplace and sought to build their families and relationships in times which are often so very, very difficult. Honour them, and the vast majority of them will honour you virtually all of the time. After all, you are God’s gift to each other. Forget most of what you learned in school about being a good pastor. Go back and re-read Gregory’s Pastoral Care, and Herbert’s Country Parson, and Baxter’s Reformed Pastor, and throw in a bit of Bishop Grafton for Good measure. Don’t forget Archbishop Ramsay’s Christian Priest Today, and remember the godly examples of Mr. Harding and Father Tim. Buy a little farm and mabey even burial plots, and write your name in the soil of this place. Become one with this people. Share their dreams and visions. Baptize their children and bury their honoured dead. Weep with them and laugh with them. Rejoice with them when their children win the state championship, and be by their side when those same children go off to war, or college, or to a new love. Serve them faithfully in Word and Sacrament, and guide them in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic faith; for that is your primary task here. Programs are fine, and sometimes are even helpful, but your primary purpose is to preside in Word and Sacrament, that the people of God at this place might come to know themselves, and God and each other, with an ever deepening intimacy…an intimacy which ravishes their souls and leads them to that peace which passes all understanding. It will never do for you to be a professional priest or sacramentarian. You must be one with this people, “wallowing in the midst of their daily affairs.”.. loving them and thereby proving your amateur status, remembering that amo, amare- is the latin root for love, which ought to motivate everything you do here. Bind yourself to them with an holy co-dependence, and thus demonstrate to this entire county the true nature of the Holy and Blessed Trinity. As we cannot imagine the Father without the Son and the Spirit; or the Son without the Father and the Spirit; or the Spirit without the Father and the Son—So may the people of saint Matthew’s be bound so closely in love that none of you can imagine what your church would be like if any one of you were absent.
This will not be an easy task. There will be times when your own humanity and that of others here will show its ugly possibilities, and you will think the worst of each other’s motives. You will disagree with vigor over agendas and programs and prerogatives. You will release arrows you wish could be recalled, and perhaps for a time even think their release fully justified. And this is where the admonition of today’s Scriptures becomes so important. Always conduct yourself with humility, preferring others before yourself. Be willing to listen, and covenant with your people to hear one another. Teach them that the Word of God written is the rule and guide of our faith, that it contains all things necessary to salvation, and that no Christian man ought to be required to do or believe anything that is not clearly taught therein; and that we ought to submit to the clear teachings of the Bible, even when we do not agree with them. Questions are good things, but at the end of the day, obedience must be our goal. Such obedience grows not out of coercion or slavish worship of laws or precepts, but out of an absolute confidence in the character of Him who loves us, and who gave himself for us. Because he has always been so constant in seeking our best, we can follow with confidence where He leads the way, even when we do not understand His grand strategy.
Dave, my friend, you will make many mistakes, as will every member of your vestry, and of every committee, and as do all of us here. There will be those who will hold onto the mistakes of others with a seemingly eternal memory. But if your life is holy; If you live according to the ways of God taught in the Bible; if your attitudes and demeanour give evidence that the love of God is spread abroad in your life; if you are a man of good will; the people here will gain such confidence in your character that they will work with you in spite of your shortcomings. And if you seek to see that same holiness and evidence of the Holy Spirit in their lives, your love and acceptance and understanding will be mutual- an empirical evidence of the efficacy of Holy Baptism in the lives of all here.
And so in closing, I would say to you, my friend, and to all here:” Be strong and of a good courage, be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.” AMEN and AMEN