Texts: Num 11:16-17, 24-25a; Ps 84; Eph 4:7, 11-16; Jn 15:9-17

When one is invited to preach at an induction, there is always the temptation to offer good advice to the new incumbent. While that may or may not be necessary for Fr. Don, it seems to me to go against what we should be about as a church.

The church is the body of Christ, the herald of God’s kingdom, the stewards of the Gospel. Our first calling is to proclaim the Good News. But, as the priest who mentored me through the ordination process once said, "All too often the church has turned the Good News into good advice."

So, for Don, there will be no good advice tonight. We’ve spent many hours in recent years doing that for each other. Tonight is truly a night for Good News.

The headline item for tonight’s "Good Newscast" is that St. Mary’s, St. Mark’s, and St. Luke’s are formally celebrating the beginning of a new relationship with a priest. New beginnings of any kind are exciting and joyous events, filled with anticipation for what might be coming—in a word, hope!

I am sure many if not most of you have very specific hopes about how Don’s ministry among you will take shape, and about what results you will see in your church’s life. However, the hope that brings us together and unites us in the church is more than any one parish’s aspirations, and far more than any one individual’s desires.

We gather here tonight united in the hope that the church proclaims—the Good News of God in Christ—the hope of eternal life.

That is what we are about tonight, and that is what Don’s ministry is to be about, and that is what the life of these three parish churches should be about.

We are all called through our baptisms—bishop, priests, and laity alike—to the proclamation of the Good News. The ministry we celebrate tonight is the ministry of the whole church, within which Don is assuming a special and important role.

The scripture readings said some crucial things about ministry and leadership within the people of God. I particularly wish to draw your attention to the little story from the Book of Numbers.

Let’s set the scene: the people of Israel have been encamped at Mount Sinai, where the Lord gave the law through Moses. Now they have broken camp and moved on towards the Promised Land. Life has been stressful for Moses, and things are getting no better. The people had complained about having no food, so God sent them manna. Now they’re getting bored with their diet, and longingly recall their former life in Egypt. They may have been slaves, but they had fish and onions and melons to eat. Moses can’t bear all the whining and grumbling, so he in turn complains to God, "Why have you treated your servant so badly? … I am not able to carry all this people alone…" And he asks to die: "…do not let me see my misery."

How does the Lord respond? He tells Moses to gather seventy elders who will bear the burden of the people along with him. When Moses does so, he puts some of the spirit that was on Moses on the seventy.

What do we learn from this little story? I see two things:

First and foremost: no one person can bear the responsibility for God’s people alone—not Moses, not Bishop Jim, not Fr. Don—no one. Everyone in leadership in the church can only shoulder the burden insofar as God has provided others with whom to share it. Don can not—and ought not—do everything himself.

That is not healthy for him.

It is not healthy for his family.

And especially it is not healthy for the church.

Don is called into a special ministry of leadership, but like Moses, he is only one man. The church’s ministry is far more than one man’s vocation.

There are other people—sitting here in these pews—who have different gifts, as Paul pointed out in the Letter to the Ephesians. Don’s task as your priest is to call forth those gifts of Christ, providing the means and the opportunity for them to be used for the building up of the church. The gifts are from God for the glory of God.

And there is the second lesson of the story from Numbers. It is not Moses who gives the spirit to the seventy, but God. The leadership and ministry of the church is given by God and empowered by the Holy Spirit. The church—the people of God—differs from other human institutions in being a group of people gathered and equipped for ministry by God.

I have been around the church long enough and in enough places to be fully aware that we have an all-too-human tendency to import the ways of the world into our life.

We can get possessive about our church.

We often want the church to do the things that we like.

And sometimes we can be needlessly cruel to people who don’t quite see things our way.

Friends, this is not Christ’s desire for his church.

Rather, we are called to build up the church in love—love for God, love for one another, love for our neighbour. Don’s calling as a priest is to help the church realize Christ’s desire for a church united in love, empowered by the spirit, and bearing one another’s burdens.

That is what God desires for the church, and through us, for all humankind—to be a people so filled with love that it overflows from every one, to fill this earth with God’s goodness.

God has given us countless ministers of his holy love. Tonight we celebrate God’s special gift of Don to the people of these three congregations, the beginning of a new phase in your life as the people of God. We give thanks for the gifts that have brought Don to this place, and we pray that through his ministry the Holy Spirit may lift up and empower many people to proclaim the Good News in Christ by word and deed.

Thanks be to God for his indescribable love!

Give glory and praise to his Holy Name!

Amen.