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Sisk Makes a Memorable Debut During Consecration as Bishop Coadjutor of New York

Episcopal News Service. May 8, 1998 [98-2158]

Debra Wagner, Editor of the New York Episcopalian

(ENS) On the Feast of St. Mark, April 25, nearly 5,000 people assembled in the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Manhattan as the Very Rev. Mark Sean Sisk became the Rt. Rev. Sisk, bishop coadjutor of the Diocese of New York.

Glorious sunshine greeted the crowds as they began to stream into the cathedral where the morning light illuminated the Tiffany stained glass windows in a magnificent splash of color. Seven buses that began their journey at 6 am arrived from the Mid-Hudson region where Bishop Sisk will have jurisdiction until he automatically becomes diocesan bishop when the Rt. Rev. Richard F. Grein retires.

Even though the service lasted nearly three hours, the audience was mesmerized by the talents of the guest choirs (including a Mid-Hudson region-wide choir), colorful processions, and the dramatic laying on of hands by 23 visiting bishops. It was indeed liturgy on a grand scale coordinated to near perfection by the Rev. Sr. Jean Campbell, chair of the Mid-Hudson Regional Assembly and the cathedral's liturgy expert, the Rev. Canon Jay Wegman.

Bishop-elect Sisk wanted a "simple" service, but the demands of diversity created a complicated cultural montage. African-Dominican drummers in native costume led the opening procession. Two Chinese dancers under the colorful bigger than life-size Chinese lion costume/puppet created a stirring procession at the Offertory. Scripture was read in Japanese, Spanish, French, and English. A Scottish bagpiper led Bishop Sisk out the cathedral's massive bronze front doors. The reception on the cathedral's lawn offered cuisine from the cultures of the 12 languages that you can hear at Episcopal services every Sunday in the diocese.

As if the service itself was not dramatic enough, when Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold, who presided over the service, asked if there were objections to the consecration, a voice answered from the area near the front doors of the cathedral. An itinerant, homeless street preacher, who is seen frequently on the cathedral grounds, demanded to be heard. The presiding bishop called her to come forward as he descended the altar steps to meet her.

As she defiantly strode up the long aisle, many people wondered what would happen next. Griswold listened to her objection that there were not enough women on the ballot that elected Sisk. Satisfied with Griswold's response, she went back to her seat. When he announced, "We shall proceed," the audience began to applaud, but the presiding bishop said, "No applause," in an effort to maintain respect for the objector. The liturgy continued.

The presiding bishop began a sermon on Mark the Evangelist and Mark the new bishop by recalling that, "Having spent the last 13 years with Mark Sisk in Chicago where I was bishop and he was dean of Seabury-Western Seminary, and remembering one of our last in a series of regular breakfasts at which we mused whether or not one ofus or both of us would find ourselves translated to New York by virtue of two impending elections, I can only begin by saying, 'Well, Mark here we are -- colleagues once again much to my joy and profit and, I pray, the good of both this diocese and the larger Episcopal Church of which it is such a significant part.'"

Following his sermon, Episcopal bishops from around the United States joined the presiding bishop at the steps to consecrate the church's newest bishop "in the American succession."

Mezzo soprano Yun Deng of the Metropolitan Opera began the haunting call for the Holy Spirit in the ancient ordination hymn, "Veni Sancti Spiritus." The entire cathedral responded with the same call. Hands were laid on the bishop-elect who knelt in a simple white robe. He rose as bishop coadjutor and was greeted for several minutes with a thunderous applause. Bishop Sisk was then vested with his new robes and presented with the signs of the episcopal office: a pectoral cross, a ring, and a miter.

Bishop Grein welcomed Sisk to the diocese. "A bishop is given this great treasure and great responsibility. The task is to build the diocese, nourish it, and strengthen it. I feel like Moses looking out from Mt. Ebo, seeing the Promised Land, but never quite getting there but turning it over to a waiting Joshua. It's always a process."

"It was a glorious day," recalled Bishop Sisk "I am so very grateful to all those who worked so hard and so long to make it such a memorable day." Sisk will work on diocesan-wide projects from his New York City office and will conduct Mid-Hudson business from the Regional Office in Kingston.

[thumbnail: New York consecrates Mark...]