We are excited to announce our newest deacon, the Rev. Beth Janney. The people of St. Peter’s and East Tennessee gathered with Bishop Brian Cole to celebrate her ordination on Saturday, September 21, 2024 at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Chattanooga. The Rev. Janney will head to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Chattanooga, to serve as their deacon. Please keep her and both parish communities in your prayers. Below is Bishop Brian Cole’s sermon from the celebration. A recording may be viewed here.
Bishop Brian Cole’s Sermon
The Ordination of Beth Janney to the Diaconate
September 21, 2024
St. Peter’s Chattanooga
Acts 6:2-7
The ministry of the diaconate began because people were forgotten. To remember them, the early Christian community said we need deacons. Do not forget those who tend to be forgotten.
In the Acts of the Apostles, people were being neglected when it came to fair distribution of food. The Hellenist widows were left out, forgotten, left to be hungry while others were full. So, the early Christian community said we need people to remember those who are forgotten. We need people with the gift of seeing and remembering and not forgetting.
Now when it comes to deacons, no matter how many deacons you have, and no matter how much they try to do, people still forget things. So, deacons stand watch, to notice what and who is being forgotten.
They remind us to remember the poor. Remember the sick. Remember the forgotten. Remember the Church’s call to true peace and deep justice. They remind us to remember we serve a God who remembers all of us. The God we serve does not forget us, even when we forget, both each other and our very selves.
Also, at the ordination of a deacon, there is a moment before the person to be ordained a deacon has been ordained a deacon, like this very moment now. Beth has not been ordained a deacon, yet. And this moment. Beth has still not been ordained a deacon.
But while she has not yet been ordained, do not confuse that detail by thinking she has yet to take on a diaconal ministry. Today, the Church is simply going to catch up with what the Spirit has already gifted Beth to do. Together, we will make Beth what she already is.
Beth is a nurse. She has for many years been called to care for the sick, the needy, the ones we tend to forget. A nurse is called to care, to check, and to check again, to remember, to record, to measure, to administer, to aid in the healing of those we forget.
We pray, when a nurse is effective, the forgotten one is returned to the community, restored, and if not restored wholly, then returned to us so we all can remember together to care. Nurses invite us to care.
Beth’s work as a nurse has taken her into the field of Memory Care. Now, Memory Care might be one of those terms that sounds new, a diplomatic way of speaking of cognitive decline, memory loss, dementia, Alzheimer’s.
Yet, if you read the Acts of the Apostles, those early deacons were given a ministry of Memory Care. Remember those who are forgotten. See to their care. Teach the whole gathered Christian community to see and to care for those who we do not see, who we forget.
“Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a tender and callow fellow
Try to remember and if you remember
Then follow, follow”
Whenever I hear that song, which is a song about nostalgia, I get nostalgic. So, the song does it work.
I remember being a child, leaving school, and walking to my Mother’s office, the small accounting firm just off the square in my hometown. I walk into the office, and my Mother is there, working on the tax returns for the cotton and soybean farmers. Even at the front door, I can smell the Juicy Fruit gum in her purse.
She is listening to Cleat Stanfill, the radio voice of KCRV, as he updates us on weather, local sports, and commodity prices, before playing the songs that folks have called in and requested. For several years, everyone wanted to try to remember September.
When we are young, when we are children, everything is remembered. What is forgetting? When we are young, when we are children, everything is new and remembered. You do not have to try to remember. You simply remember.
In the story of God, we encounter a people who have been found by God, chosen by God, and the story of God is placed in them. And God says, do not forget, remember who I am and who you are and what we have been through together. And the people promise to remember.
Until they don’t. They forget. So, God reminds them, or God sends messengers and prophets and teachers and seers to tell them again, to remind them what they have forgotten, to return and remember the God of the past and the future, who is present with them now. And they promise to remember. Until they forget again.
When we gather at the altar, to share in the Eucharistic feast, we hear a prayer about remembering and forgetting and being reminded again about God and God’s creating and reconciling and forgiving Spirit. It is a meal which we share with everyone, both those who remember the story of God in them and those who have forgotten.
Beth, it is worth remembering today that a deacon, when they stand at the altar, when the prayer of remembering is being prayed, will often point at the words being prayed. The pointing helps the priest not to lose their place. The pointing helps all of us to remember the story of God.
Beth is called to be a deacon among us, to help us all learn how best to care for those living with forgetting, who struggle to remember this September or any September. She is called to be a deacon to help us all learn how best to care for those who care for those who forget.
The story of God is a story of remembering. But it is not a nostalgic story. For we are not simply looking back, being reminded of the God of our ancestors, of some golden past.
The story of God is a story of remembering that God has acted and is still acting and still calling and still equipping and still moving and still seeing all of us as one. It is a living story.
So, Beth, in your diaconal ministry, help us remember the God who does not forget us, who has gone to great lengths to find us, to restore us, to make us one again and again despite our tendencies to divide and forget.
In the Acts of the Apostles, on the day of Pentecost, Peter preaches, and the world gathered before him responds and remembers and believes that God through the Christ has acted to make us one. It is a day you will never forget.
Yet, by the 6th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, the spirit of Pentecost is forgotten and the temptation to sort and separate and divide is on the menu that day. So, the diaconate is born.
The diaconal ministry of Beth Foster Janney is committed to helping us all see the ones forgotten because of their forgetting and the faithful ones who care for them. Through Beth, though not with Beth alone, they will have an advocate.
An advocate. One of the names we give to the Spirit of God is the Advocate, the one who is present when it appears no one else is present, to be with and for us and those who have no help. The Advocate is the help, calling the Church to see, to remember, to tell again the story of God by inhabiting the next chapter of God’s story being written through us.