On Saturday, May 4, Bishop Brian Cole preached at the ordination of the Rev. Austin Rios as the bishop coadjutor of the Diocese of California. You may watch the service here. Included on that page is the video, bulletin, and transcription into Spanish. The reading of the Gospel and the Sermon begin at 1:29:43.
Sermon Text
Diocese of California Bishop Consecration of Austin K. Rios
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco
May 4th, 2024
First Corinthians 12:12-31
John 21:1-19
The Right Rev. Brian L. Cole
Nineteen years ago, at Grace Episcopal Church in Asheville, North Carolina, Austin Keith Rios was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church. The Right Reverend Porter Taylor was the ordaining bishop and I served as the preacher for the liturgy.
The week before the ordination, I was at home in Black Mountain, working on the sermon. My son, Jess, was nine years old. Seeing me at work in my study, Jess asked what I was doing. I told him I was writing a sermon, and I was to preach that sermon at Austin Rios’s ordination to the priesthood. Jess knew Austin as a good friend of our family.
Jess looked at me, his father, a priest, and said, “Austin’s too cool to be a priest.”
Nineteen years later, at another place called Grace, here we are, Austin. It is not a matter anymore of cool or not cool. Now, it is a matter of you being called, chosen to serve as shepherd and chief pastor with the good people of the Episcopal Diocese of California.
You, along with Phil and Augusta, were open to what might be next for the people of this diocese. They only had good and faithful priests to choose from. They chose you.
Remember that.
On days without pomp and circumstance, on days without a place called Grace overflowing with people and possibility, remember that you were called to come here and serve and inhabit the work of a bishop.
Austin, from the day of your priesthood ordination to this very day and every day in between, remember that God has always seen you and your vocation centered in a place of Grace. With God’s help, you are and will be what this diocese needs next as a bishop.
To the people of the Diocese of California, the Episcopal Church, through Standing Committees and Bishops consenting, through all matter of excitement and joy from family and friends who know Austin and Maleah and their love for God’s Church and God’s people, has affirmed your choice. You made a very wise choice.
So, with a joyful heart and a prayerful vocation open to discernment, with a people praying and pondering before voting and choosing, here we are. At a place called Grace, with pomp and circumstance, with people and possibility, with Spirit descending and ascending and swirling and doing her thing, here we are. We are here, on the verge of what’s next.
So, what is next?
Well, reality is next.
Wait, that’s a good thing.
It means this is happening. This is real. We are real. We are here, God’s Spirit is here.
A part of that reality is that this is not the VERY beginning. This is A beginning. Austin’s story did not just commence. The Diocese of California is not a shiny, brand-new diocese. You both have a history, a time before this time.
Archbishop Rowan Williams once wrote that theologians are always beginning in the middle of things. In epic poetry, the story often begins in the middle. So, it is also with the Christian life and the Christian life lived in community.
In this Easter season, we confess that the Christian life is lived in the aftermath of the cross and the empty tomb. What life is possible for us after the humiliating cross and the broken tomb? After disappointment and trauma, after running away from Easter morning, what is next for all of us?
In this morning’s lesson from St. John’s Gospel, we are all situated in the aftermath of cross and tomb. A group of disciples, led by Peter, decide to go fishing. In the aftermath, Peter goes back to what he knows, possibly seeking a return to his own beginning.
Peter, who overpromised and underdelivered, knows that even now with the good news of the Resurrection, there is a story before this new story. Can he still be a follower of Jesus after failing so publicly? It is good to see his friend, but does seeing Jesus also come with the pain of remembering that he denied him?
And, if you are Jesus, wouldn’t you want better disciples? In the aftermath, wouldn’t you seek a new people? When you asked these folk to stay with you and pray, they slept, and when they woke up, they ran. Jesus, you can do better than this.
This is where it is important to remember that Jesus, in the aftermath of cross and tomb, returned to his first followers, after they had failed him, and called them again. I have heard it said that Jesus is in the salvage business.
He might be doing a new thing, but he chooses to do a new thing with people who have a story, who have known both joy and loss, grace and hurt, hope and failure. Jesus keeps beginning again, in the aftermath, with us.
In preparing to be with you, I have read about the flag of the City of San Francisco. The symbol of the Phoenix, rising from the ashes of a fiery blaze is front and center. You are a city and a region which has known throughout history what fire can do. It can destroy and devastate.
So, your flag is grounded in reality. Fire destroys. But in the aftermath, something new emerges. We could fool ourselves and tell ourselves a story which acts as if this has always been here. That nothing was lost before.
But, oh what freedom there can be when you tell the story about the fire, about the earthquake, and what was destroyed. For then, when you tell the story, the whole story, including the aftermath and what rose from those ashes, the joy of what is next is so much sweeter. So, with time, with trust, tell each other the story of your times before.
When Jesus stands before Peter, he stands before a person who had been on fire for him. Peter was there from the beginning. Peter was all in. Peter was aflame.
But then all that fire became too much. He was scorched by it. Why would his friend call him again? Are there any embers in him or is Peter all empty and void?
Jesus calls Peter again. He calls him by asking him a question that he knows he can answer. Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?
Jesus did not say, did you always get it right? He did not ask a shaming question. He asked a healing question. He asked a question that allowed the old story to make room for the new story.
In this gospel lesson, like so many stories from scripture, the writer goes to great pains to name people, but also ends up not naming people. The writer names Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James, and John. But then the writer also states that two other disciples were there.
Not named, but there.
We know there is a power in being named. And we know there can be real hurt in not being named, in being there but not noticed. In showing up, doing the work, and no one ever catches your name, or works hard enough to remember it.
When Jesus, in the Gospel of Luke, sent out 72 disciples, he sent them out two by two. 72 disciples, unnamed and unknown. But we do know that these unnamed disciples held authority over the demonic and distorted things of this world.
Austin, never forget most of the gospel work is done by unnamed disciples. It is as George Eliot wrote—“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
There is no way to learn all the names of the people of the Diocese of California. Austin, each week, the people of this diocese will pray for you, by name. Find a way, as their bishop, to pray for them, both with the names you know, and more importantly, keep a space in your daily prayers for the unnamed disciples, who in their hidden lives, embody the divine love of the Risen and Revealed Christ.
A bishop once said to me that a bishop, upon entering the office, is given a spotlight. The key was, she said, to be sure to shine it on others.
Shine that spotlight on the unnamed disciples. Celebrate that it takes the whole body, especially the parts of the body we think of as weaker or hidden, for the full witness of the Risen and Revealed Christ to be known, both from the altar and in the street.
Share the episcopate with the body. Never forget the episcopate is not yours to possess alone. The people of this diocese have chosen you. Now choose them. Choose to hold this work with others, both named and unnamed, for the good of the whole body. And before you lead, listen, to the people, to the Spirit, to your true self.
Jesus calls Peter twice in the Gospel of John. At the beginning and at the end, he calls him. Before and after the cross, he calls him. At the beginning of a public ministry and in the aftermath of the Empire’s attempt to destroy the Jesus movement, he calls him.
This diocese was first called in the 19th century. Today, in the 21st century, you all are being called again. All of us, in the Episcopal Church, in the aftermath of our complicated stories, both with each other and Jesus, are being called again. It is a call to follow Jesus. It is a call to feed what Jesus loves.
So, back to reality.
No doubt, there is much work for the Diocese of California to attend to now. Our world is on fire. The ground beneath our feet is shaking. Everything in front of us appears urgent.
But before we rush from this place called Grace, consider how it is you all will do the gospel work together for the long haul. Consider how it is you all will extend Grace far from this Cathedral to everywhere you go.
When Jesus asked Peter if he loved him, he asked him three times. The same question. Three times. Each time, same question.
Before we leave this Cathedral, recall how the Jesuit preacher, Walter Burghardt, defined contemplation. “Contemplation is the long, loving look at the Real.”
May your story from here out be a story of a people, grounded in the Real, looking together, over time, with love, at what is before you. From that contemplative posture, may you learn how to handle a fire that does not destroy, that does not harm.
From that contemplative posture, looking, over time, with love, may you hear Jesus asking again and again, “Do you love me?”
From that posture, from this place of Grace, looking, over time, with love, may you learn how to carry a gospel fire into the world, enlightening what is before you, healing what is hurt, restoring what is broken.
With that gospel fire taking you into the world, ask and learn the names of the unnamed.
Reality is next.
We will go there, together, looking, over time, with love, grounded and centered in the Real, at the Risen and Revealed Christ.
Photo Credit
Thank you to AJ Mayfield for capturing Bishop Cole’s preaching.