Making God known in our times
The Ordinal states that to serve the royal priesthood of his people, God has given a variety of ministries. Deacons are ordained ‘so that the people of God may be better equipped to make God known’; the specific and distinctive marks of the deacon’s ministry are as ‘agents of God’s purposes of love’, serving the community in which they are set, and ‘bringing to the Church the needs and hopes of all the people’. (Stephen Cottrell, On Priesthood, page 44)
The distinctive marks of a deacon’s ministry serve this overarching purpose of equipping the people of God in a variety of ways, whose overall purpose is to make God known in the world. In this time of waiting between Ascension and Pentecost, the Church of England’s morning service of Daily Prayer reminded me of the Bishop’s words in the Ordination service, that deacons cannot bear the weight of our calling in our own strength, but only by the grace and power of God. In the same service, the whole assembly invokes the aid of the Holy Spirit in the words of the ancient chant dating to the 8th or 9th century:
Come Holy Ghost, our souls inspire,
And lighten with celestial fire;
Thou the anointing Spirit art,
Who dost thy sevenfold gifts impart.
(John Cosin 1594-1672) based on Veni, Creator Spiritus
In these days of waiting and eager expectation for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we are called even more fervently to pray that our hearts may daily be enlarged and our understanding of the Scriptures enlightened, that we may be filled with the Spirit, and empowered once more to take the good news out again to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8)
Ascensiontide is a time of waiting. The (rhetorical) question posed by two men in white, as the risen Jesus disappears from view, captures the tension between contemplation and action, as the disciples suddenly find themselves charged to go out into the world without their Lord and Saviour:
“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11)
At the same time, the disciples are assured that Jesus will return, as ‘one like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven’ (Daniel 7:13). Like the disciples, we inhabit that same liminal space, sometimes referred to as the “in-between times”, following the inauguration of the kingdom by Jesus and its fulfilment at the end of time. And just as the Great Commission must have suddenly look like an awesome prospect to the disciples, so we know that we cannot do it alone, but that with God, nothing is impossible.
It is in this space that the deacon is summoned to “stand in the breach” between God and his people. Deacons are tasked with equipping others to make God known in the world and to remind the Church of its apostolic calling to reform the royal priesthood of God in the image of Christ. Deacons can take heart from the knowledge that it is after Pentecost, following the breaking down of barriers of language and culture by the Holy Spirit, that the Seven are appointed to advocate in a case of discrimination against Hellenistic widows (Acts 6).
So as deacons prepare to equip the royal priesthood of God to serve God the Father (Revelation 1:5-6), let us pray that the Holy Spirit will once more fill us, and give us ears to hear how God reveals himself to the Church and in the world today:
Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your people and kindle in us the fire of your love. Renew the face of your creation, Lord, pouring on us the gifts of your love.
Deacon Jonathan Halliwell (member of CENDD steering group)
CofE Network of Distinctive Deacons 