What do I do? Some people joke that well, you're a minister - so, that means that you only work on Sundays, right? These people clearly do not know any ministers. And definitely did not grow up with a minister, as a mother, like I did. No, the job entails more than Sundays.
Other people who are a bit more familiar with church lingo will ask if I'm ordained. Well, the answer is no. But then, they ask, what do you do? How can you be a minister, if you're not ordained? Excellent question - one that we debated often in classes on Methodism.
An inevitably, regardless of peoples' myriad understandings of what it means to be a minister, ordained or otherwise, after I finish explaining that I am commissioned, not ordained, but that I am a minister who does all of the same things that ordained ministers do, they will still look me up and down and proclaim knowingly: Well, you're awfully young to be a minister.
This happened to me just yesterday. And I suppose, in response to that conversation-deadening statement, I could attempt to describe my credentials and life experience, handing them a copy of my CV. But, I really want to tell them two other things, which I believe to be far more important.
First, is that I am in no way too young to be a minister because we don't become ministers. We are born as ministers, all of us. Not just the people who accept God's call to make ministry their vocation. It's not even that some are called to full time ministry while others are not. We are all called to full time ministry. The ministry that God has for me just may look different from the ministry God has for you, depending on what your gifts are or who you were made to be. The important part of what I do is not what I do at all but who I am - and that is a beloved child of God, someone that I have been since before I was born. And it is the same for everyone.
And so, people ask, what is the point of this commissioning - ordaining thing? Why do you need to sew a special collar onto your shirt?
On the way to the interviews that would decide whether, or not, I would be commissioned as a minister, my father and I drove past a place in rural Pennsylvania where there used to be a shirt-making operation. And my dad described to me the process of making a shirt, as he understood it from a woman he knew whose job it was to sew on the shirt collar. She told him that sewing on the collar is the last step to finishing a shirt.
It seems it is similar in life and ministry. Wearing a collar does set ministers apart, and being commissioned or ordained to that role sets ministers apart, as well. But putting on the collar doesn't make me who I am. It doesn't make a shirt a shirt. It simply reminds me of what I am supposed to look like. It reminds me of who I am, who I have always been, and who I am called to be.
Sewing on a collar only happens when the rest of the shirt has been fitted and shaped to a specific pattern that will fit your body. It only happens after sewing in different pieces and finding the perfect buttons to hold it together and matching the perfect threads to sew everything in place and create beautiful designs.
As I stood at the front of the congregation when I was commissioned, as a minister, I was excited, having anticipated that moment for a long time. It was a weighty moment, when I was quite aware that all of the papers I had written and interviews I had passed and prayers I had prayed were at a point of culmination when while I had done a lot of work, it was the huge, swooping dove of the Holy Spirit who had been working and continued to work in that moment in ways far beyond my understanding.
I was aware that the Spirit had been busily threading and sewing piece after piece of my life together, slowly helping me put on a new identity and leading me to that point. After the bishop prayed over us, we turned around to look out at the congregation. What looked like two thousand people all smiled back, and from out of the deepest part of me welled up a rushing, uncontrollable sob. It was a sob of sadness and of overwhelming gratitude. Because from where I stood, I could see person after person who had walked beside me, sewing and piecing me together. People from childhood camps and parents of friends. One of my own dearest friends and her mother. My dad, smiling and crying in the front. Friends and colleagues of my mother who had known me since before I was born. My family and mentors. And my mother was not there - and yet, she was. It was all too much, to see the threads and pieces of life coming together before your own eyes. To see the love of so many people whose love had sustained me, taught me, and reminded me who I was, who I am, and who I am called to be.
I am commissioned as a child of God who wears a collar that says I am committed to allowing the Holy Spirit to work through me, as it has worked in the past and as it will work in the future in extraordinary ways. It is a collar that says I am committed to being a part of God's work in piecing the world together through seeking justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God. It is a collar that says, I desire not just to look more like Jesus but to be more like Jesus - to fit the pattern and form of Christ. And I have discovered for myself, although I was told it before, that this is the greatest privilege and delight, but it is going to take more than a lifetime, and it often comes with great cost.
I was reminded of this joy and this sacrifice in the covenant prayer that we all prayed, as a church, this past Sunday, as we recommitted our lives - recommissioned one another - to the calling of Christ:
"I am no longer my own but yours.
Your will, not mine, be done in all things,
wherever you may place me, in all that I do
and in all that I may endure;
when there is work for me and when there is none;
when I am troubled and when I am at peace.
Your will be done
when I am valued and when I am disregarded;
when I find fulfilment and when it is lacking;
when I have all things, and when I have nothing.
I willingly offer
All I have and am
To serve you,
as and where you choose.
Glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
You are mine and I am yours.
May it be so for ever.
Let this covenant now made on earth
Be fulfilled in heaven. Amen”
(Adapted by John Cooper)
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