Hooray for Sue and David, Tim, Elliot and Alison: they’ve made it! Huge thanks to them for staying the course and to all those of you who have supported them on the journey But it’s only just begun. They come here now as what our Old Testament reading called messengers of peace, to be ordained as priests to take the good news of that peace to a world in need. And in a few moments we’ll hear Bishop Richard address them as “messengers, watchmen, and stewards of the Lord.” Later we will welcome them as newly-appointed ambassadors for Christ.

Now that’s a demanding and even dangerous place to be. Demanding to try to speak faithfully for someone else, and dangerous if we betray that faith. Where can we look for help – not just our priests-to be but all of us, because we prayed earlier in the Collect that each of us would instruments of God’s love.

Let me come at that sideways. Some of you may know that as well as a bishop I am a mediaevalist. And I am working with others on a new edition of the writings of Robert Grosseteste, who was on the bishop’s staff in this diocese at the end of the twelfth century, being generally useful to the bish but also teaching the arts and sciences, the IME and CME of his day we might say. His work on things like sound, light and cosmology was so good that he is sometimes called the first modern physicist, and he went on to be one of Lincoln’s most famous bishops.

Now some of his sermons have survived, and as I was browsing through them the other day, I came across one that compared preachers to clouds. Ho ho, you say. Too true, they just get between us and God and blot out the light. Well no, actually. Grosseteste is much more interesting and indeed helpful than that. Remember that he was a good physicist, and he knew as well as you and I do how clouds and rain work. And surprisingly, he managed to use them as an analogy to show what priestly preachers need to do to keep faith with their calling and keep going too.

Just as the sun’s heat lifts moisture from the earth to form the clouds, so – Grosseteste said – Christian ministers need to let the fire of the Spirit warm them and draw their desires away from worldly things to heavenly ones. As their spirits are so lifted, so they will be warmed more and more by God and grow in the divine desire that we see in the character of Christ, as well as being joined with others who are being so grown, just as the individual drops of moisture congregate to become clouds.

Then, formed by the character of Christ, they – just like Christ did as we heard in the reading from Ephesians – are inspired to return what they have been given to the earth as a gift, raining down the refreshment of learning and love, and growing the church. And as they do, they will let themselves be blown by the Spirit, just as clouds are blown by the wind, to the places God wants them to be.

Grosseteste is making three points here that are really helpful for us as we think about our ministry. One is to do with our relationship to God, one to do with our relationship with others, and one to do with how we are sent out in mission, our relationship with the world.

First, the whole life of a minister and indeed any Christian has to begin with our own drawing close to God and being formed and inspired by him. This will give our life and ministry its authenticity, as not ours but God’s, and also sustain us in it through the constant work of the Spirit and support of our fellows. Significantly, in describing what is necessarily a life of self-giving, Grosseteste is careful to also to speak of the sustaining that goes alongside it, even explicitly breaking his analogy to do so, because the cloud is totally lost as it gives out its rain, but we as ministers by contrast can grow as we serve.

The most important aspect of both that forming and that sustaining has to be what we call prayer, though by that I mean rather more than the formal saying of our prayers. Those matter, and letting them grow as good habits matters. But they’re just the outside shell, a tried and tested way of giving us the opportunity to dwell and abide in the presence of God. And it may be episcopal heresy to say so, but I am far more interested in whether we – and that’s all of us - do the abiding, than in the form of words, or silence for that matter, that we use. The motto has to be, pray as you can, not as you can’t, in the way that works for you – whether that is propped in bed with a cup of tea; in church; or like Susanna Wesley with your outer skirt pulled over your head trying to find some peace in a household full of children. It’s changed for me as the seasons of life have changed, and if I’m honest I’ve only clung on sometimes by the skin of my teeth, so if it’s difficult don’t be discouraged, but do try another way and see if you can find what works for you now. Pray as you can, not as you can’t; but pray.

As the prayer deepens, so something deeper can start to happen too, that I’ll call the purification of our desire. To be human is to be full of desires, and in practical living all motives are mixed, but if we are not to be blown around by winds other than the Spirit, we need to take the time and have the desire to have the desire – perhaps no more than that – to be formed more like Christ by the work of his Spirit. It’s about virtue and character – remembering that character was the New Testament word for an image stamped on a coin, and for a Christian the image of Christ stamped into our lives. So the fundamental mark of this formation is that we start to live more like Christ, with others on our heart, not because we are particularly good or particularly special but because in his pure grace Christ has come to live in us and has invited us to live in him. 

So in this way the first of our points, our relationship with God, leads naturally into the second, our relationship with others,which for most of us is in the society of the world. Much of prayer’s effect comes from the way our own lives are transformed and energy released in new and better ways. Just as a candle in giving out light gives itself away,  so we as lights for Christ in the world will be involved in a lot of giving away. We will watch for the needs of others and be ready to respond to them, just as the Psalmist says servants look to the hand of the master. 

We live in a world that is obsessed with doing, and calculating outcomes. But Grosseteste’s guidance to us in seeking to be fruitful as servants would be to first look to the heart, the affectusas he called it, and see if that is in the right place, is conformed not to the world’s way of doing things (which is driven by self-interest) but to Christ. Then our action – and he was a great activist – will stand some chance of not just being the reflex of our own desires and fears, ambitions and passions, but be a genuine participating in the giving and using of our gifts. As St Paul put it when writing to the Romans, the work of the Spirit will lead to the renewing of our mind and so of our actions, as we discern the gifts God is giving us and put them to work. We will not be like the woman that C S Lewis described who lived for others – others you could tell by the hunted look in their eyes. We will instead be naturally part of a team, a body, on the hand that is valuing and drawing on the many and varied gifts of all its members, and on the other hand building up each other in love. I hardly need to emphasis the urgency of this for the church today, as we learn the difficult lesson that our ministry and life together has not always been welcoming and kind to others, and has sometimes hurt them deeply.

Imagine a church where deep prayer, visible growth in the character of Christ, the renewig power of the Spirit, and the building of a community of love and care for all were the rule of the day. But why just imagine it? Aren’t the signs already there to see, however delicate the shoots and gross the weeds, and just waiting to be tended and grown? Isn’t the Spirit of Christ already rising in your spirit, whether you are here to ordain or be ordained, to start on a new adventure or reinvigorate an old one?

And – and this is Grosseteste’s third point, are we not all now, beingsent out in mission to do just that, to take the rain of Christ’s blessing to a world in desperate need. We will end our service with the words,  “Go, in the peace of Christ”. This service is full of words, and I’ve just added about another 1500 to them. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. “Little children,” St John said,  “let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” When we get to those final words the gauntlet is thrown down. As we go out of the cathedral and start to meet people, known and unknown, welcome and unwelcome, feeling affable or feeling stressed, with time to talk or an appointment to keep, will we be meeting them as people of peace; will we be open to whatever the Spirit asks of you there; and will we give them not just the words of our lips, but with the love of our hearts?

Sue and David, Tim, Elliot and Alison: go where God sends you, where the Spirit leads you, and give yourselves in love to the world that God himself loves so much, that he gave himself for it in Jesus, and gives himself to it in the Spirit now. Amen.