February 25, 2025
St. John’s Cathedral, Knoxville
Installation of Chris Hackett as Dean
John 21:19b-24
The Right Rev. Brian L. Cole
St. John the Evangelist, whose name this cathedral bears, is thought to be the only apostle who did not die a martyr. He was exiled, for a season, on the isle of Patmos. But as far as places to be exiled go, an island in the Aegean Sea is not a bad assignment.
We believe, then, that John lived a long life. As a young man, John knew Jesus and his earthly ministry. He and his brother James were insiders with Peter amongst the first 12. In all the accounts of the crucifixion, John is identified as the only male apostle not to have run away, instead remaining at the foot of the cross with the faithful women.
The New Testament tradition credits the apostle John with recording the revelation given to him on the island of Patmos and writing letters to the early Church that focused on love, giving us that powerful phrase that perfect love can cast out fear.
To bear the name of St. John is to be marked with the story of Jesus and the story of the Church, both days of glory and grief, days of healing and hurt. If you can write that perfect love casts out fear, I think it is only because you have known just how powerful and paralyzing fear can be.
I think we too often assume saints became saints because of some otherworldly piety. I believe true sainthood comes to those who have known great pain, but a pain which they invited the Spirit of God to touch and transform.
In Christian liturgies, we spend a great deal of time naming things, and we also spend time saying that this thing is now that thing. The child is named and the priest, using that name, also tells us that the child is Christ’s own forever. The bread, which we can see, now also becomes the body of Christ, which we consume.
This evening, we will say that Chris Hackett is now something new. Chris will take on a new role and bear a new name. Dean of this cathedral.
But tonight is not simply one person crossing one threshold and bearing one new name. In this cathedral this evening, I would invite you to let the story of St. John the Evangelist touch you, in order that all our ministries here might be renewed.
John was called to follow Jesus by letting go of something he knew. And this process of being called was in the moment, now, let’s go from fishing for fish to fishing for humanity.
This evening, how might you be called, now, to go from what you know to what you do not know? When we are called by Jesus to something new, the only certainty is our trust in God. In being called to something new, we cannot rest with the knowledge that we are already expert in the new vocation. We are beginners. So much of the Christian life, particularly the life lived in an abiding community is of beginning and beginning and beginning.
Like all the early apostles, John was equipped with the good news and sent to proclaim the good news and perform acts of mercy and healing from the good news without grasping wholly what the good news meant.
This is how Jesus sends out ministers of the gospel. If we waited until we were ready, we would never leave this place. We go, not fully grasping all the content. And we go not fully prepared to know what to say.
Again, Jesus tells his disciples not to worry about what they are to say. When you are in that place of conflict, facing the powers of this world that would destroy the least of these in our midst, Jesus tells us the Spirit will give you the words. He just needs us to show up so the words of the Spirit can find us there.
John and his brother James, when they realized they had been called and equipped, well their egos got the best of them. Give us the best places, Jesus. Make us special because we must be special.
This is where Jesus teaches James and John that we do not grasp for the power of God. We receive the power of God by emptying ourselves of the need to be powerful and controlling.
If you are called to lead, you begin by serving. If you are called to lead, you continue by serving. If you are called to lead, serve others, not yourself. Whenever we see leadership that bullies and demeans and distorts, we see the false self on full display.
We are called to something different. And we are called to be wise to where we say yes and give allegiance and where we say no and keep our dignity and the dignity of others we have been called to serve.
John, who was called to the unknown, ended up following Jesus all the way to the cross. He stood with the women; he stood while the mob around him jeered and ridiculed Jesus. Before John had a vision of Jesus in glory while exiled on Patmos, he first knew what it was to see the death of God in this world. Before the glory, there was pain unspeakable. From the place where the Empire did its best to kill the love of God, the women and John did not abandon Jesus for they knew they had nowhere else to go.
You and I, with a new dean, are called to the unknown. To go into the unknown, at some point, the path takes us back to the cross. We go with the saving belief that the cross is not the end, but rather the place of deepest transformation and reconciliation. But it still requires courage and a willingness to see and bear hard things.
At the end of his days, John had visions of glory and shared that vision with the Church. It was a vision that the Church, even in times of great persecution and crisis, would not be overcome by the world. John’s vision from Patmos is intended to give us hope.
In calling a dean, St. John’s continues to bear the name and the call of a cathedral. A cathedral is one of those peculiar institutions that belongs, not simply to its members, but to everyone. You belong to the city, you belong to the diocese, you belong to the people who might even reject the very idea that you are for them.
In this new day, when institutions both great and small are under assault, support your new dean as he stewards this place, working with me and you to go deeper into the call to be a house of prayer for all people.
Be a big house. Open all the rooms. Open all the doors. Discover new places to pray. Discover new prayers to pray. Discover new persons to lead us in prayer. Add everyone you know to the prayer list. Add people you do not know to the prayer list.
In an age of disinformation and conspiracy theories which seem to win the day, may we renew our call to be a people of the truth which we have discovered in Christ Jesus. The way of Jesus and the life of Jesus grounds us in the truth of the gospel.
I would ask that you join me and the diocese in becoming a contemplative people, grounded in the full awareness that we are children of God, and therefore siblings to each other in Christ Jesus. From that deep place of prayer and full communion with God, we are called to be ministers of the gospel in this upside-down time.
You are a place named after the apostle who lived a long life, abiding with the living Christ in every season. From that place of full communion, the aging apostle kept offering renewing words to the young Church.
I commend your call as Chris to be your next dean. I ask that you go deeper in your call to be a cathedral, a house of prayer for all people. May your prayers here be both wide and deep. May your presence in the heart of this city renew the heart of this community and this region and this land.
In closing, as I consider St. John and our call now to become a more contemplative people, let me leave you with the wisdom of Martin Laird, a Catholic priest who teaches at Villanova, where he guides young undergraduates into the contemplative life. At the beginning of his book, Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation, Laird writes the following—
“We are built for contemplation…Communion with God in the silence of the heart is a God-given capacity, like the rhododendron’s capacity to flower, the fledging’s for flight, and the child’s for self-forgetful abandon and joy. If the grace of God that suffuses and simplifies the vital generosity of our lives does not consummate this capacity while we live, then the very arms of God that embrace us as we enter the transforming mystery of death will surely do so. This self-giving God, the Being of our being, the Life of our life, has joined to Himself two givens of human life: we are built to commune with God and we will all meet death.”
Friends, for the days you will be given, until you meet your deaths, join with your new dean in proclaiming this truth to God’s broken and beautiful world.