Over the last year, I have tried to sort through what believe about the church. I have tried to find my own heart in all of the hurt. At this time last year, the shit was hitting the fan with the church at which I was a member. Just a few weeks from now, I would leave the church. I used to say I was "kicked out" or "asked to leave," but that is not entirely accurate. You see, I was not the one on the payroll. Though I was teaching, though I was writing curriculum, though I was singing in the praise band, I was invisible. So when my friend was forced to resign, it fell on me to remove myself. The church couldn't even see me well enough to kick me out. So I kicked myself out.
At this time last year, I was preparing for the the National Academy of Young Preachers conference in Atlanta, GA. I had just finished a semester of preaching class, one of the most terrifying, crisis-inducing tasks that had ever been put before me. As a young woman (the only one in the class) who had never preached before (the only one in the class), I struggled. How do I preach the Gospel? What does that mean? What does it mean for me to do it? Where does my authority come from to preach? I preached my first sermon in class. I preached my second sermon in chapel. I preached my first public sermon at the Academy of Young Preachers.
Over the summer, I did my hospital chaplaincy. Alongside preaching, it was the element of the M. Div program that had caused me to change my major at one point. What could I say to someone who was dying? How could I comfort a family who had just experienced a loss? I learned a lot about silence last summer. I learned a lot about presence. I was asked to continue my ministry there after the end of the course.
Just before school started, a bump in a dear relationship forced me to take my questions to a new level. Who am I? Where am I? What do I want? What do I need? What do I think? The painful experience of seemingly losing myself when a relationship changed has been pushing me to locate myself.
And a few months ago, my childhood best friend asked me to officiate her wedding. A question that caught me off guard and threw all sorts of new possibilities into view. I was being asked to serve in a pastoral role. Despite 5 years of seminary, the shock of this proposal is almost indescribable. Who am I that I could do this?
And really, hasn't that been the question in every challenge this year? Who am I that I could do these things I'm being asked to do? And that's just it. While I don't have a congregation that I call home at this point in my life, I do have a community. And my community, scattered though they are, is helping me to answer that question. They hold up a mirror for me. They show me what they see. They ask me to preach. They encourage me to be present with the sick. They come to me for counsel and to confess. And now, I've been asked to perform a public, pastoral role.
Ordained. Set apart for ministry. Ordination. Ordo. Marching orders. My community has been showing me what they see, holding up a mirror for me, even as I've struggled, diverting my gaze and covering my eyes. But they have been gentle. They have been persistent. And they have shown me what they see.
Who do I choose to be? How do I respond? I choose to receive the vision of me that my community brings. I choose to take on the responsibilities that come with it. I choose to stop fighting that I have been gifted by God for ministry. So I'm choosing to respond. I'm choosing to embrace my ordo, my set-apartness, my marching orders, that have already been perceived by my community.
I am choosing, at the urging of my community, to respond by accepting ordination.
