"Rise and walk"

From F. F. Bruce's commentary on today's reading from Acts:

According to Cornelius a Lapide, Thomas Aquinas once called on Pope Innocent II when the latter was counting out a large sum of money. "You see, Thomas," said the Pope, "the church can no longer say, 'Silver and gold have I none.'" "True, holy father," was the reply; "Neither can she now say, 'Rise and walk.'" The moral of this tale may be pondered by any Christian body that enjoys a fair degree of temporal prosperity.

Poor winners in the Episcopal Church

Some weeks ago I made a small gift to Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry. The circumstances of the gift need not detain us. The important point is that I am now on Trinity's mailing list, and this morning I received a short booklet concerning the present state of the Church from their Dean, the Very Rev'd Dr theol. Paul Zahl. I wish I had time to comment on detail on Dean Zahl's writing, which is a remarkably thoughtful and even-handed discussion from someone who must acknowledge that he is one of the "losers" (and he does not scruple to use that word) in the recent developments within the Episcopal Church. Since I do not, I will zero in on one particular charge that he makes repeatedly: that the "winners" in these struggles have been "poor winners."

I suppose I count as one of the winners, as a "practicing" gay man who is aiming at ordained ministry. (It should, however, be noted that -- to the great consternation of my parish discernment committee -- I steadfastly opposed General Convention's action in approving the election of Gene Robinson, on the grounds that it would impair the unity of the Church and would constitute a gross breach of the charity that we Christians ought always to show in our relations with one another.) As a winner I can speak out more firmly than Dean Zahl. To call the winners "poor winners" is altogether too mild. The unbridled expressions of contempt for conservatives in the Church that I have heard from people in my parish, including (perhaps preeminently) my Rector, have stunned me. There is no attempt at all to enter sympathetically into the minds of those who regard all homosexual activity as sinful, simply a reflexive and unthinking dismissal of them as bigots. The bishops who have persecuted conservative vestries and deposed conservative priests represent the kind of intolerance that we would expect from people who have pulled off a political coup. I suspect there would be even more bishops acting this way if they had the nerve, because many of the winners who are not in positions of ecclesial authority would gladly drive out conservatives if they could.

Dean Zahl proposes an "inside strategy," working within the Episcopal Church for change and renewal as long as that remains possible -- as long, in fact, as they are not driven out by the poor winners. I earnestly hope that as many traditionalists as possible follow that strategy. I do not want to be a part of a Church that has driven out people like Dean Zahl. Although I could not actually serve on the faculty of Trinity or Nashotah House, I am confident that apart from my sexuality I would be far more at home there than I would be at most of our seminaries. While I do know many "progressives" who are orthodox by the standards of Nicea and Chalcedon, I know many who are not. It is of paramount importance to me that the Word be preached and the Sacraments celebrated by those who truly know God as he is revealed in the person of the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, by those who know the Holy Scriptures as something more than a convenient jumping-off-point for enunciating secular liberal dogma. It is a relatively trivial matter to me if those people do not understand Scriptural teaching on sexual morality in quite the same way I do.

Can we, then, cultivate a disposition among the winners not merely to tolerate the losers but actively to love them, to encourage them, and to recognize in them the Spirit of Christ, who is not the Spirit of discord, but of union?

"This is the way; walk in it"

From this morning's Daily Office readings:

Though the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it." (Isaiah 30:20-21)

I needed to hear that. All I have to do is await the still, small voice; I have been assured that it will come.

Discernment and self-conception

One of the interesting challenges of discerning a call to ordained ministry is developing the ability to think of oneself in new and unfamiliar ways. For a long time there seemed to be a decided preference in the Episcopal Church for ordaining people who had already enjoyed substantial careers in some other field. Though I don't have the figures, I take it that we are returning to the ordination of younger people who have had only a short time in the secular work-world before seminary. In any event, I'm somewhere in between. I'm youngish by the standards that once prevailed. I got my Ph.D. in 1994 and have been employed as an academic every since. I have never had a part-time job outside the academy, and by now I am as well-entrenched in that sort of life as it is possible to be. I think of myself as a teacher and scholar, and I have tenure, which enables me to act on that self-conception as long as I care to.

So for those of us who envision the prospect of ordained ministry from an already well-established secular identity, the shift in self-understanding can be quite jarring. In my case, there is the additional issue of the different forms of priestly ministry that might be available to me. I could remain in my present job and just act as a supply priest in the area, or I could leave my comfortable academic life and enter full-time parish ministry. I have become increasingly convinced that I am called to parish ministry, but it is exceedingly difficult to envision what that very different life would look like.

At the moment the difficulty is a very urgent and practical one. I have a very good job offer at a university in another diocese, and it appears that there will be a job there for my partner as well. I would not be able to serve as a priest in that diocese were I to move there. (I asked the Bishop, just to be sure, and he confirmed what I already suspected -- very graciously, I should add, and with the assurance that I would be in his prayers. I assured him of the same thing, and I have made a point of praying for him at every liturgy in which we pray for bishops, and in my private prayers as well.) A decision to take that job would in effect be a decision to fix my present identity as an academic and to put my discernment on hold indefinitely. Having come this far, it is not an attractive possibility.

On the other hand, it is absolutely crucial to me that my partner and I continue to live and work in the same place, and this current job offer is the only such prospect we have. The thought of turning it down without any way of ensuring that the two of us can stay together seems utterly foolhardy. He, bless him, is insistent that I not take the job unless it's the right thing for me, irrespective of him.

Ideally what will happen is that my present employer will find a job for my partner in the meantime, while he looks for a job on his own and I continue with the ordination process. Then I'm called by a parish in the same city where he works. While I'm imagining the ideal situation, let me add that this parish has multiple priests, and I'm the one with primary responsibility for education, liturgy, and music.

And of course I'm mulling all this over without having yet met with the Bishop. In theory I'm supposed to accept or decline the job offer before my meeting with the Bishop. But we still don't have any definite information about my partner's job at the other university, or about what my own university might be able to do to keep us here. So it may be that I can get a few days' grace; then at least I could make the decision from a somewhat better-informed position. For now, however, every aspect of this decision is completely up in the air.

A good start to Eastertide

All things considered, the Vigil went beautifully. (The "all things" include the Rector's liturgical ineptitude, which can be maddeningly distracting but last night was decently contained and did not manage to turn my attention from God.) And what am I to make of the fact that multiple people took the occasion to comment on my vocation? One of the adult acolytes urged me repeatedly to hurry it along. "Don't pause, just get it done." (Would that it were up to me!) The Senior Warden told me afterwards that the friend sitting next to her commented after my reading, "He's already a priest." (That friend is herself bound for seminary.)

Since calls come through congregations and not just as a "bolt from the blue," I'm grateful to hear what I trust is the insistent voice of God's call coming through other folks in the parish. But oh, the temptation to draw attention to myself!

Two vigils

Tonight is the Great Vigil of Easter, in which we await and then celebrate the Resurrection. I know my part in that Vigil. I am the "understudy" for the Exsultet, since our Deacon (a fine singer) may not be able to make it. I am also serving as thurifer and reading one of the Old Testament Lessons. And I know how that Vigil will end: with the Blessed Sacrament and shouts of "Alleluia!"

I am observing another vigil, however, whose end is not so clear, and in which my role is rather less well-defined. I am awaiting my first meeting with the Bishop about my aspirancy for Holy Orders. Having been approved by my parish discernment committee and then the Vestry, I am eager to begin the finals steps before what I hope will be my admission to postulancy.

My Rector assures me that the Bishop is keen on moving me along, so it's not that I'm worried about being turned down or even made to wait, even though my expectation that I will be ordained a priest eventually is not yet a "sure and certain hope." I will admit to a certain trepidation about the event itself, along the lines of a good but diffident schoolboy awaiting a meeting with a kind but imposing headmaster. But I very much like our Bishop, and I have no reason to think things will go badly in that meeting, or in my interviews with the Commission on Ministry (assuming the Bishop gives the go-ahead for those). I found the probing and challenging questions of my discernment committee and Vestry invigorating rather than nerve-wracking, so I have every reason to expect that I will leave those meetings with renewed energy for the road ahead.

One looming uncertainty concerns the sort of training the Bishop will want for me. I am a tenured academic in a field related to theology, with a respectable list of publications of theological interest, so I am hopeful that he will not want much. I will be on sabbatical for the next academic year writing a book (on a pre-Reformation Archbishop of Canterbury, as it happens). To me this means that I will have ample to time to prepare to take the General Ordination Examination, do a quarter of Clinical Pastoral Education, and so forth. But I will spend most of that time outside the Diocese, so I can imagine that the Bishop may prefer to put me on hold for a while. As I told my Rector, now that I've been approved by the Vestry, I feel the eagerness of an athlete who is all suited up for the competition. I really hope I won't be told that the game has been postponed.

There are other uncertainties as well, which I will be blogging about over the next few days, until I actually meet with the Bishop. My hope is that the exercise of writing will help me sort through my thoughts and thus assist my discernment of God's will. And if anyone happens to stumble across this blog, perhaps it will be of interest to someone else who is discerning a call to ordained ministry or is interested in the formation of a priest in the Episcopal Church.