Loading..."What does a brilliant white woman from a strong Episcopalian upbringing in the deep South and a dark-skinned Sudanese man, who still has his tribal scars, have in common?" Bishop Ted Gulick asked in his sermon at the ordination service for the Rev. Suzanne Warner and Daniel Kuol.
"They are both on a journey—and have been—all their lives, and on their remarkable journeys, they have had the very
same companion, a companion who would remind them, not just once but over and over again, to have their belts cinched tight and lamps lit!" the bishop answered, alluding to the opening line of the gospel reading (Luke 12: 35-38) in which Jesus tells his disciples to be ready to serve.
Their ordinations on July 7 at Christ Church Cathedral in Louisville was the last Bishop Gulick would do in the diocese before his retirement in September. About 200 family members and friends came to see Kuol ordained a vocational deacon and Warner a priest.
As the bishop noted, the ordinands took vastly different journeys to that shared moment of ordination in the Episcopal Church.
As Gulick noted, Kuol's journey began in his homeland, torn by Civil War, "running for his very life along with thousands of other young men who traveled through the southern Sudan and Ethiopia to make it to safety in Kenya." From there, he traveled to Australia and Canada before ultimately arriving in 2001 in Louisville, where re he obtained his GED and began working for the Home of the Innocents.
A member of the Sudanese congregation at Resurrection Church, Kuol has been the leader of its Sudanese choir, and he was among the first cohort of students in the diocese's School of Ministry. He and the four other class members were graduated in 2009, and Kuol is the last of the five to be ordained since this spring. [They are the first vocational deacons ordained in the diocese in six years.]
Warner, a native of Little Rock, Ark., came to Louisville by way of Memphis in 1959. Since then, she became a lawyer,
raised a family, began to advocate for social justice and worked in Washington D.C. for a while, returned to Louisville and became an active lay leader in the diocese. For several years she chaired the diocese's Jubilee Ministries division and then the reformed Department of Justice and Jubilee. Ultimately, she felt the call to the priesthood and went to the seminary at the University of South in Sewanee, Tenn., completing her work there this spring.
Their separate journeys meet at Resurrection Church in Louisville, where Warner will serve as the priest in charge and Daniel has been assigned as a deacon.
Now "traveling together in ordained ministry," the bishop said, they must "tighten their belts once more" for "the Lord has a new adventure in mind." Pointing out they are not on "a different pilgrimage than lay people," he told the ordinands that they "are to be living signs of hope and encouragement to those on the road with you-—those whose energy is depleted, whose hope seems to evaporate in the heat of the journey, who are hungry and empty and alone."
Keep "your lamps lit," he added, "so that there will be enough light that your fellow refugees – the Saints in pilgrimage from Burma or the elderly folks facing death – have enough light to take the next steps into the future that God has prepared."
Observing that they already know "how dark the pathway can seem" and how essential is "their companion with the capital C," the bishop also advised them to "never ever forget that as you are tightening yours belts your companion, the living, loving Lord Jesus Christ is putting on his apron, getting ready to serve both of you. This ministry of serving love will never be just your duty. It is also your destiny!"
Photos by Donald Vish
