The Feast of St. James (Fr. Robinson):

The Reception and Institution of Fr. Zachary Guiliano as Rector

“The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
 
The long-awaited day has arrived! When Emmanuel went into the process of searching for a new rector in 2022, the vestry and search committee had hoped it would take no more than a few months to find a new rector. It took a little longer, and you had to go to Oxford, England, to find just the right person, but you finally found the one God had chosen for Emmanuel. And so we’re here tonight to wrap the whole thing up and put a bow on it!

Two things are actually happening tonight. The first is the reception of Father Zack into the Episcopal Church from the Church of England and the second is his institution as rector to lead the spiritual and administrative affairs of Emmanuel Memorial Church. So this is a historic moment both for Emmanuel and for Father Zack.

But wait! There’s more! Today is a major feast of the church year: the Feast of Saint James the Apostle. James, and his brother John, whom Jesus gave the surname Boanerges, “Sons of Thunder,” were Galilean fishermen who were two of the first disciples called by Jesus to follow him.  

James was part of the inner circle of the 12. He was one of three that our Lord Jesus took with him to pray on the mountain. James and John along with Peter witnessed Jesus speaking with the two greatest figures of the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah. At that time they saw our Lord wonderfully transfigured, and they heard the voice of God saying, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” The same three disciples were with Jesus again in the Garden of Gethsemane, as Jesus prayed before he was to go through the ordeal of the cross. 

James and John annoyed the other disciples because of their ambition. Their mother asked Jesus on their behalf for them “to sit one on his left and the other on his right when he came into his glory,” as we heard in the Gospel.

And finally, James was present for the appearances of Christ after the resurrection. 

James became a martyr, as we heard in the reading from Acts. He was the first of the 12 disciples to be martyred and is the only one of the 12 whose martyrdom is recorded in the New Testament. He was put to death by the sword on the order of Herod Agrippa, who hoped in vain that, by disposing of the Christian leaders, he could stem the flow of those hearing the good news and becoming followers of Christ. James’s martyrdom is believed to have taken place in the year 44, only a little over a decade after the resurrection of Jesus.

And so, Fr. Zack has now been received into the Episcopal Church and instituted as rector of Emmanuel Memorial on this Feast of St. James the Apostle. While he comes to us from England, he and Melissa are actually natives of Illinois. He went to a Christian college, Evangel University in Missouri, for his undergraduate degree in biblical studies. And while it’s a disappointment to me that he didn’t go to Nashotah House for seminary, my alma mater, he does have a degree from a reputable seminary, Harvard is the name. After that, he went to Cambridge in England for his Ph.D. in Church history, was ordained a priest in the Church of England, and did post-doctoral work at Oxford, where he was also on the staff at Christ Church Cathedral.  

Thus, he has obviously been deeply rooted in the Christian faith for a long time, is a scholar of scholars, at the same time that he is very down to earth, and he has learned and inwardly digested Anglicanism from its very heart. Now he and Melissa have returned to where their roots are, to America’s heartland, not far from where they grew up in Peoria, and in a very short time, they have won their way into our hearts.

The Feast of Saint James is a perfect occasion for the institution of a rector. James was chosen by Jesus to have a special place in his kingdom, to be a person eventually of apostolic authority, and to experience very personal moments in Jesus’ earthly life that most of the other disciples were not a part of. For the average person, such experiences with the Son of God might suggest that his calling is to a position of privilege and perhaps even supremacy. Jesus disabused his disciples of any such idea. “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
 
Likewise, the rector of a parish is called by the vestry to a position of authority, both spiritual and temporal. The word rector comes to English directly from the Latin. The Latin word rector means ruler.  

So this position of rector, into which Fr. Zack has now been instituted, this position, which is one of authority and responsibility, granted by our bishop, successor to the apostles, to which Fr. Zack has been called by Almighty God, could be misconstrued to mean something entirely different from what it’s intended to be. And there have been clergy in the history of the Church, who have misunderstood their vocation, and have abused the authority given to them by God.

The late Robert Terwilliger, one time Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of Dallas, wrote that “vocation is not something we have. It is something that has us. We respond to vocation…” He goes on to say that “the consummation that comes in vocation, comes in the cross and the resurrection, and nowhere else. It does not mean some kind of fulfillment, which is, somehow, an ultimate manifestation of my essential ego. It means not I, but Christ.” Terwilliger continues, “This is the place of vocation. It means dealing with your vestry, with the neurotic on the telephone, with your bishop, with your prayers, with the tiredness and the weakness and the difficult decisions, and with the dangerous speaking of the Word of God, and the presence of your body, where the place of witness to justice must be.”

Joseph Bernardin, one-time Roman Archbishop of Chicago, wrote that “we should approach our ministry with humility. We are not better than others. Many of those we serve are actually closer to the Lord than we are…We need to strive for understanding and compassion in all our dealings with others.”

This way of understanding ministry isn’t new to Fr. Zack. In fact, from watching him over the last couple of months, I believe he embodies this understanding of ministry. He sees himself as a servant for Christ’s sake.

With my having been a rector in three parishes and an interim rector in two parishes over the last 43 years, you might expect me to give some advice during this brief sermon. Well, maybe you didn’t expect that, but I’m going to anyway.  

One of the prayers in the Book of Common Prayer refers to the Church as a fellowship of love and prayer. The two pieces of advice that I have for both Fr. Zack and for the parish have to do with love and prayer. First of all, pray for one another. Don’t let that be an empty promise. Fr. Zack, you are clearly a man of prayer. Pray fervently for your people every day. Emmanuel, pray for your rector every day, as well as for your parish. I pray for you both every day.

And second, this parish truly is a fellowship of love. Continue to work on that, and, by the grace of God, make it more and more reflective of love as we know love through our Lord Jesus Christ. Part of that Christ-like love is being intentional about communication. If you have a need, make it known to your rector.  If you have a hurt or a complaint, let the rector know. Never assume that your rector knows something just because everyone else in the parish knows it. Sometimes the rector is the last to know because everyone thinks he’s been told. Some people have the idea that the rector is clairvoyant and somehow knows things without ever being told. That’s not true!

Just as St. James was on the mountaintop with Jesus at his transfiguration, so we are on a kind of mountaintop tonight. This is a new beginning, one of great hope and expectation. Keep one another in your prayers. Remember to communicate. Love one another with a servant love, remembering that “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

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