I'm the baby of the family, so by the time I turned 16, my older sisters were in college, and only my parents and I were left in the house. My sisters' absences left a social gap in the house, but it also left a more important gap that impacted me acutely as a junior in high school: when they went to college, they took my parents' hand-me-down cars with them.
And so, I always had to borrow one of my parent's cars to get around. They were very practical cars, the kind that had only ever heard NPR on the radio, so I didn't relish borrowing them, but a 16-year old beggar can't be a chooser. Each time I wanted to borrow one, I'd have to ask parental permission, get the key, and provide a checkout and checkin time for the car. Needless to say, I hitched rides with friends as often as practicable.
After about a year, I asked my father to borrow his car one day, and he handed me my very own set of keys to both cars. He gave them to me, telling me that they were my own set, and that I was old enough to make sure I used the cars responsibly, and I was mature enough to coordinate our three schedules and two cars, and that I'd been very responsible the last year in using the cars. They were my own set of keys, a jingling sign of my responsibility.
When they were given me, I did not suddenly become responsible because of them. They were conferred due to the recognition that I was already responsible, that I had been a responsible driver and car sharer for a while. It was recognition of what i already was, not an action that made me something to which i aspired.
Ordination works the same way: it recognizes something already present, always present, and ordination names that thing, names it deacon, and sanctifies it by binding that thing to the Church's life, by ordering it within the larger Body of Christ.
In the first Book of Common Prayer 1549, the ordinal published a year later in 1550 named the ordination rite for deacons as the ordering of deacons. The 1662 Prayer Book revision changed that title to the making of deacons. Not until 1979 would the American Prayer book restore the name of the service to the ordination of a deacon, rather than the making of a deacon, emphasizing the eternal and ontological nature of ordination to the diaconate: a candidate is ordained a deacon forever, for all time, outside of time, in life and in eternity.
Part of the gift of the diaconate in particular, and Holy Orders in general, is the grace given to the Church to celebrate and hallow the gifts of individuals, given not for their own glory, not for their own building up, not for their own pride, but for the glory, the building up, and the pride of the entire Body of Christ, the Church. In the ordination of deacons, we are reminded that the unique gifts and offerings of all, bishops, priests, deacons, and laity are needed in the body, and without those offerings, the Body is lessened.
Deacons are uniquely called to serve, to serve the Body of Christ through works of love, pity, and mercy, especially to the poor and downtrodden among us. Deacons are the Body of Christ's immune system, rushing in to seize and bind infection, to promote healing and wholeness, to protect and hold fast when pain and suffering are present. Without deacons, the Body suffers, cannot repair itself, and the weakest part spreads, causing the whole to fail.
But deacons are not the only ones called to service. We do not ordain for service, we baptize for it. Deacons are ordained to grow and develop servanthood among the other orders: deacons must nurture and encourage servanthood among the laity, among priests, among bishops. Deacons keep the body whole and healthy, reminding all of the orders that Christ came among us to serve, not to be served, that He came as physician to heal the sick, not the well. Deacons are ordained to see in others those eternal gifts that were seen in them and that were hallowed in their ordination. Just as deacons are recognized by ordination, not made, deacons must help the other orders to recognize the gifts Christ has given each one of them for the strengthening of the Body. Deacons are ordained to recognize gifts in others, to encourage the growth of others' gifts, and to serve others by helping to develop each person's gifts into ministry for the Body of Christ.
The English poet, Christina Rosetti authored the much-loved carol In the Bleak Midwinter, the last verse of which concludes:
What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
if I were a wise man, I would do my part.
Yet what I can I give him--give my heart.
Each of us, each shepherd, each wise man, each deacon, is given gifts to render in worship of our Creator and for the edification of our brethren. Deacons are the Church's midwives, given by Christ to His Church, to teach and assist others in the acknowledgment, growth, health, and delivery of the gifts Christ has given to each of us for our mutual growth in the life of grace.
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