I’m a priest and a person part 2

When I wrote about being a priest and a person last week, I didn't realize there was going to be a Part 2, but here it is. One of the things I said was, "I'm never pointed out because I'm a man," and frankly that continues to be true. Something else I said, though, was "I vehemently oppose people with a 'priest' profile and a 'real' profile — the priesthood is part of my real life, and everything I post on Facebook is a reflection of my priesthood." I stand by that, and I want to elaborate on it a little bit more than I did last week. Rationale later in the post.

If one scrolls through my Facebook feed, this week's news — Fisher, Shelby County, Windsor, and Perry, along with Wendy Davis — are pretty prominent. (It's been a busy news week which is why I haven't written the blog series that I will write next week about transformational change and the Good News as I've lived it. It will elaborate on some other thoughts in this piece.) So this week's news has been high on my agenda on Facebook, and that's clear.

What's also clear, usually, is that I'm a priest. It's front and center on my "About" section that I'm a priest associate at a parish in the Diocese of California. I post musings from a Christian perspective often. The pictures of me in vestments or a clerical collar are legion. My liberalism is unabashed, as are my Episcopalianism and gayness. These things are all part of how I live as a priest-person.

I try to keep these things integrated online for a few reasons, some of which have only come to me after the fact. My learning about myself and discovering myself has largely happened online. At my bachelor party the clear theme was that people from all over the country I'd either met online or maintained a friendship over years and distance with online. I am a digital person. I realized much after the fact that not splitting myself up like horcruxes online better enabled me to be myself in person. That is, I'm much more comfortable saying "I'm a priest" at a party with boldness and no discomfort because I've engaged so many other aspects of my life alongside my vocation online. 

I think that having one online presence can help fight clericalism, too. Someone on Episcopal Cafe commented that clergy haven't been made any more holy or something. That commenter may believe that, but as long as clergy let themselves be boxed off — and collude with the boxing — they have an additional burden placed on them as Professional Christians. Nothing says "Holier than thou" like having a Facebook page devoted entirely to one's sermons and God-dy blog entries while keeping a secret one for your friends where you tell dirty jokes about college. Online integration keeps standards of appropriate behavior consistent, I think.

So in my online integration I don't face being pointed out because I'm a man. When I'm with the gays, as I said, I often get a lot of questions about being religious. While in my last entry I noted that my parish, cat, and husband all know that I'm gay and a priest, this week has crystalized for me that there's another group watching — southern Christians who tangentially know me. They may have gone to church with me when I was in the fourth grade; may be friends with extended family; may just see some of my comments on a mutual friend's posting.

This is where I understand the exhaustion of not wearing a collar to the grocery store, and yet on I go. Twice this week, at least two other times in the last six months, I have gotten Facebook messages asking me about being a cleric and gay. Most of them have actually been pretty open to discussion or are just asking. Using the word "justify" is a bad start, but asking out of curiosity is something I'll engage. I make clear that I'm not interested in debate or argument or trying to be converted. I'm past that point.

So I try to be happy to answer those questions. But like comments from people about being a woman cleric (I imagine) it gets to be exhausting. I want to give a "let me google that for you" link with their exact question or just reply with a link to something from SoulForce. I often do include a link to something from SoulForce as a resource, but I don't let it stop there — because Jesus didn't stop at referencing the rabbis' commentaries or the text it self, he told stories.

I'm a priest and a person, and I have stories about the Good News of coming out to God and to others. I have Good News about being set free of bondage that held me, not as those on the right say to my sexuality, but bondage of lying to myself, shaming myself, and feeling guilty. I get tired of telling my stories, but we're a story-telling people as Christians. I've taken vows to proclaim by word, deed, and example the Good News of God in Christ and to make Christ and his redemptive love known, by your word and example, to those among whom you live, and work, and worship.

I'm not the token woman cleric in a small town, but I'm realizing I'm the only gay cleric — or even Christian — that many people from much earlier in my life are even tangentially acquainted with, and they're curious. More to come next week on how much grace was a part of my coming out (or maybe I'll write it tomorrow for pride). 

Without the personhood of my priesthood I would not be able to share the Good News; I wouldn't be able to talk about how I know God's love. It is exhausting. Dear Jesus does saying the same thing to people I barely know get exhausting. I have boundaries around it, too. It happens on my schedule and I'm upfront about what is and isn't okay. Only six months in and I'm thankful for the grace to boldly proclaim the gospel of salvation. I know the importance of this office and believe I have been called — and strengthened in ordination and the sacraments — to do this proclamating among all with whom I work...which means telling stories to people on Facebook and in the grocery store and the bar.

Lying in Ordination Vows

Over the last few weeks (a month or so) I've participated in conversations about the diaconate. Many of my seminary classmates have said that at their ordinations to the diaconate they would have to lie in their ordination vows. A professor said that many people have to. One said his bishop said he could cross his fingers. Where would people be lying in their ordination vows? And why? The vow in question is the first question of The Examination (BCP 543), "My brother, do you believe that you are truly called by God and his Church to the life and work of a deacon?"

As these conversations have been happening, others have been as well, and a big event has, too. On December 21 I knelt before my bishop and he prayed, "Therefore, Father, through Jesus Christ your Son, give your Holy Spirit to Joseph; fill him with grace and power, and make him a transitional deacon in your Church." I was ordained as a transitional deacon, it's in the prayer.

Actually it's not. The constant references to my being a transitional deacon or to the transitional diaconate have annoyed me the last few weeks. I don't want to get into the idea of cumulative orders where they stack up like nesting dolls. or talk about direct ordination to then presbyterate. I'm not an advocate of that. I am, however, an advocate of deacons, their work, their lives, and their ministries.

My classmates have said that they will have to lie in their ordination vows, but I think that presents a problem. Rather, I should say I did not have to lie in my ordination vows. I do believe that right now I am truly called by God and the Church to the life and work as a deacon. Saying that I'm a transitional deacon betrays the importance of that life and work. While some people advocate ordaining people directly to the presbyterate, one of the reasons I pursued orders in The Episcopal Church was to serve time as an ordained deacon, called to a  special ministry of servanthood under my bishop modeling for all the baptized that servant ministry to which we are all called.

My understanding of my call to the priesthood is that the Church forms its priests by serving as ordained deacons first. I don't believe that I am called to be an ordained deacon for life, but I am a deacon right now. I am not a "transitional" deacon anymore than Bishops Harris, Robinson, Parsley, Gray-Reeves, or Curry were transitional presbyters. While some say that those called to the priesthood should be ordained right to that order, I think that instead we might discern as individuals and in community when people are called to be priests.

Rather than setting the date of an ordination to the priesthood six-twelve months to the day from the diaconal ordination, why not take the process of priestly ordination just as seriously as we do postulancy, and candidacy, and diaconal ordination? While people seem to hem and haw and build up loads of anxiety before their first meeting with the commission on ministry or for getting candidacy, it seems like skating from that point on, and no one seems to question if they will be ordained to the priesthood in an exact timeline per their diocese.

Apparently that I'm even saying these things could hold my process up in some dioceses, too! When discussing a GOE answer from this past week I told classmates of my intentional inclusion of a deacon in a liturgy and cited the diaconal ordinal. They were from the same diocese and almost both immediately said that in their diocese my advocacy for the ministry of the deacon would lead to questions among the committee if I might not be called to the vocational diaconate.

Throughout my seminary career I have been such an advocate, and I think it has to do with my formation about ordained ministry happening a)with vocational deacons around and b)such a strong teaching on the tradition of the church that I could never have thought about being ordained directly to the presbyterate - although one of my closest friends and mentors (in the tradition from which I came) was pursuing just such a process. During that time, however, she was on trial and discerned herself and in community when she would be ordained an elder.

Scott Gunn wrote tonight about Broken Things in the Church. I think one of the things broken in The Episcopal Church is not the diaconate, but our treatment of the diaconate. As Episcopalians we say that we firmly believe in the three-fold ordering of ministry. Our understanding of the ordering of ministry is important to us in ecumenical dialogue, but I think oftentimes we act like there are really only two orders of ministry: priests and bishops.

In a sermon at General Convention 2009 Bishop Barbara Harris implored the church to stop treating LGBT people called to ordained ministry as though they were "half-ass baptized." If we continue to treat vocational deacons as though they're half-ass ordained (limiting their use of the title "The Rev", disallowing them from wearing collars, making them wear grey clergy shirts to tell them apart, saying that "the clergy" follow "the deacons" in procession, etc.), while encouraging deacons pursuing the priesthood to act like priests in waiting, we devalue the ministry of all deacons.

Rather than celebrating our three-fold ordering of ministry we say that only people who want to be priests and people who can ordained are ordained. Those other people who've had the prayer prayed over them are just fixtures, regardless of the good work they do in prisons, with seafarers, in schools, and all the other places deacons go to serve. I love telling people in the subway that deacons taught me to knit and explaining the ministry of the deacon to random New Yorkers who just wanted a picture of me knitting.

I'm called to that ministry at this point in my life. Maybe it's easier for me to embrace this because I don't have an ordination date yet, and I don't know what the timeline is. There are a lot of variables that may need to be worked out. Maybe it's a good thing for me, though. I'm not a priest-in-waiting because I don't know when I'm waiting for! I am a deacon called "to make Christ and his redemptive love known, by [my] word and example, to those among whom [I] live, and work, and worship, ... [and] to interpret to the Church the needs, concerns, and hopes of the world." (BCP 543).

The Prayer Book knows nothing of transitional deacons, only deacons called to special ministries of service under their bishops, whether they are pursuing the presbyterate or not.

Sharing the Gospel is Dangerous

"If we say we want to translate the gospel with young people, this is what we are saying: we are willing to put the very power of the gospel itself -- the very power of the Word of God -- into the hands of teenagers, people who do not view culture the way we view culture, who do not hear God the way we hear God, who will not worship the way we worship, who will not 'do church' the way we want them to simply because they will be listening to Jesus and not to us.  Catechesis behind the wall is a mixed bag.  Yes, young people fortified by these conversations quickly puncture the flimsy spiritualities of Therapeutic Moralistic Deism as the on-the-wall conversation with culture begins to include them.  But what if they trust us?  What if they love the God we say we love?  What if they imitate Christ, share his wasteful grace, and embody his self-giving love in the world?  In short, what if they get their hands on the gospel?  Then where will we be?" - Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian


This kind of thing I love.  But it also scares me.  Dean is writing about youth ministry, but I read it as I am twenty-four and preparing for ordination...and I read it as just a young adult.  She's targeting youth ministers I'm thinking that a lot of what she is saying is applicable to me and people my age.  I don't want to say that I'll be listening to Jesus and not "adults" but I do get nervous sometimes about an Establishment shutting down ideas from me or my peers because its different.  Maybe they'll have other reasons, and maybe some of them will be valid.

But I've already encountered (not about me) push back from higher ups when people want to do something different.  And it's just that it's different.  They may've tried to say something else, but it was just words and they were scared of something different.  I hope that system doesn't chew me up and spit me out.

For the Ministry

Especially for those from the Central Gulf Coast meeting with the Commission on Ministry today (mostly via Skype!  Yeah CGC!):

O God, you led your holy apostles to ordain ministers in every place: Grant that your Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, may choose suitable persons for the ministry of Word and Sacrament, and may uphold them in their work for the extension of your kingdom; through him who is the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.