Address by the Rev Bruce Ballantine-Jones at the Ordination Service - February 8, 2003
Introduction
We gather today to witness the ordination and commissioning of these people for the full time practice of the Christian ministry. This is a joyful occasion as it represents the culmination of years of preparation and training and also the outcome of a rigorous selection and verification process. For most of them it is like the starting pistol for a whole new kind of life and work.
All reasonable steps have been taken to ensure that these people are fit and worthy to be given the awesome responsibility to preach and to pastor in our churches and other ministry organisations.
We celebrate their willingness to give their lives to public and private proclamation of the gospel. Our prayers in this service are a token of our ongoing commitment to them as they embark on this noble and sometimes heart-breaking task.
In the light of our diocese’s great mission to reach and hold 10% of the population in bible based churches over the next ten years, we hope this quite large number will be joined by many hundreds more in the next few years as they, and all of us, face the great challenge of taking the gospel to our community in ways and with such intensity that has never been seen before.
These are certainly exciting times to be starting out, but the question is: Starting out to do what?
Recently this band of candidates and a few of us older ones spent a few days away on what is called a retreat. It was my pleasure to take the studies and to lead in some of the discussions on the practicalities of the ministry.
The second reading we just heard from 2 Corinthians 5:11-21 part of the New Testament passage we were looking at. I have chosen this section because it really does address the question what is it, in its core description, that these people are about to do with their lives?
I would describe it as, bringing people into friendship with God.
v.7 “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold the new has come. All this from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.”
v.20 “We are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us, we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”
Paul was a minister of this message of reconciliation. So were Timothy and Titus so was Epaphras who planted the church in Colossae and so are these today who are being ordained or commissioned.
Bottom line, they are to expend their energy and talents in helping people move from being alienated from God to being reconciled to him.
Now it may come as a surprise to some that there is any problem between us and God at all. They may feel that their life, though not perfect, is good enough, and they may think that their faults, though regrettable, are not so bad as to disqualify them from finding acceptance by God.
Really that is the great Australian religion. Even in the churches there are people who still feel that the way they live, even the way they regard God, is their best chance of acceptance.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Between us and God is a great gulf fixed. We created the gulf by our sin and rebellion and nothing we can do can ever bridge the gap.
But God can bridge it and he did when Jesus came into our world.
In reflecting on why he was involved in this great ministry, Paul says in v.14 of our passage: “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all.”
When Jesus died on the cross something was happening that enabled God to cross the divide and meet us in friendship and forgiveness; v.19 “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.”; v. 21 tells us what God was doing in the death of Jesus; “For our sake God made Jesus, one who knew no sin, to be sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
In effect Jesus took our place as guilty of sin and accepted the blame and the penalty so that we who are actually guilty are let off all our sins and reconciled to God. v.18 “All this is from God”. He has done what we could never do – and provided a means of escape. It is free, it is available and it is infallible.
How it works is that when people hear about what Jesus did, own up and repent of their sin and trust themselves to God’s mercy, – v19. “He does not count their trespasses against them.” He forgives them, he takes them in as his friend – his lost child – he reconciles with them.
Having been reconciled to God through Christ – now he commits to his people, and in a special way, to those who do it in a full time and public way what he calls in V18 “the ministry of reconciliation”. In v.20 he calls such people, “ambassadors for Christ”.
This is the same ministry these people before us today are being ordained and commissioned to do.
Certainly they will do other things in their busy lives but nothing will be more important or more central than this ministry of reconciliation.
Do you see that? Do you agree with that?
I remember when I told a loved one in my family that I intended to become a minister his reaction was not repeatable. What he saw was the possibilities of a career going down the drain. In his mind he had an image of the ministry more akin to a medieval priest than to a modern minister of the gospel. But more fundamentally, why he could not, at that time, appreciate why I had chosen to do this, was that he had not experienced what it is like to be reconciled to God.
How could he see the value of a ministry of reconciliation to a God he himself did not know? Later, before he died, that changed. But even on the day when he sat in this Cathedral and witnessed me going through the ceremony these people are about to go through, he still could not see it.
Which brings me to the most important thing I want to say today. As you sit here in this lovely place, as you sit here with pride and joy for the one close to you who is being set apart for ministry, are you comfortable in your own heart that what Jesus’ death was intended to achieve has happened to you?
Are you reconciled to God? Has Jesus taken away your trespasses and come to you in friendship and new life? If you cannot answer yes in your own heart to that question, why not take the opportunity of this great occasion to make peace with God and start afresh with him.
Not only will it be the most wonderful thing ever to happen to you but then you will be able to share in this great occasion with your whole heart and with a full appreciation of what is taking place today.
As I said, it was my pleasure to spend part of three days with these people. It is clear to me they are dedicated and focussed. As they get into the hurley burley of their busy lives, time will tell how well they do.
They need your support and prayers. They need the help of their senior ministers and the churches where they will serve. No one, on their own, is sufficient for these things, But God, can and does make people competent to be ministers of the new covenant of reconciliation and life.
Together you and they can share in this great task and by God’s mercy, they will proclaim, not themselves but Jesus Christ as Lord with themselves servants for Jesus’ sake.
That is their message, that is their task, may God give them all grace to fulfill this to his glory and the good of all they serve.
Bruce Ballantine-Jones
February 2003
The Rev Ballantine-Jones is the rector of Jannali Anglican Church
