spiritualityReflections on Ordination:
to The Reluctant Reverend So-and-So
editors's note: Recently I had a conversation with a friend, a newly-ordained minister, who was feeling uncomfortable with the title "The Rev." in front of her name. I had been addressing her as such and she finally asked me to cut it out. She said she hasn't come to terms with what her ministry means yet, or what it will be, and for now, she'd just rather keep the title under wraps. That got me thinking, from the perspective of one who is now a Catholic layperson, previoulsy a rather militant agnostic, and before that, an ordained protestant minister who was also uncomfortable with the ascription of "Reverend."
The conversation began when my friend said, "I see us all as sacred beings." The implication was clear. Ministers are no more sacred than anyone else, so why the title?
What follows is the response I sent my friend, what just seemed to flow out of me. I was probably more surprised than she was to see the result. It seemed good enough to share, for "the good of the order," as they used to say. (And by the way, please see my note at the bottom, about the propoer use of that term in reference to the clergy.)
Yes, we are all sacred beings..
I think I would say the role of the ordained minister (as the unique, professional practitioner of theology and spirituality-- which is how I would define the role) is to help illuminate that fact (our sacredness) for the unordained to see, as it applies to them, their neighbors, their enemies.
You can certainly enlighten people from various professional and clinical disciplines, but there is something unique about the ordained ministry that is both more theologically and spiritually focused and more worldly diverse than any other.
The other disciplines are more specialized and essentially problem focused. People get therapy to solve problems or heal wounds. Social services are definitely focused on problem solving. Medicine (Eastern or Western) is focused on healing, whether preventative or curative, symptom-focused or holistic. The ordained ministry is the one discipline that encompasses all of life, that is equally necessary at the high points: the rites of passage, the weddings, the births, etc. as it is in the low points: moral confrontation, crisis intervention, counseling, death bed ministry, and burial. It requires a tremendous amount of spiritual depth and theological sophistication (and education) but also requires its practitioners to be generalists-extraordinaire, to embrace and inhabit the entire world-- not only being in the world, but also of it.
The ordained person must be creative and methodical in equal parts. You must be able to interpret poetry if not also write it, but be equally fluent in metaphor and literal prose. You must be current on world events, well-versed in politics and also fully in tune with timeless truth. You are a mediator. You help the overly spiritual person to become more grounded, appreciate physical beauty, sensual pleasure, to roll around in the dirt. You help the overly material person to see the eternal and ethereal dimensions and implications in the vernacular and the mundane. You are the bridge between polar distortions, the mutual friend of the sinner and the saint, the person everyone wants at their parties because you accept everyone and offend no one. You can converse on any topic and can just as easily soften the edges of silence.
As a minister you may or may not be a preacher but you are a celebrant. (I love that word celebrant. I love the sound of it. The image it conjures up. A specialist in the art and sacred mysteries of.. celebration.) And you are also a teacher, an advisor, a confessor, but never a judge. You know you are called to your ministry because you cannot not do these things. You naturally are these things.You naturally do them, live them. You would die as quickly as a fish out of water if you were denied them.
Your greatest temptation is to be indiscriminate with things that claim to be good, or that appear to be evil. It is so much a part of your nature to affirm and endorse any movement or cause or message that comes to you in the name of Goodness that you are easily co-opted-- sometimes harmlessly, sometimes not so much.
At the same time, your own love of goodness, your sensitivity to the pain and death caused by evil, can make you just as susceptible to moral superiority, and just as slow to perceive moral ambiguity in the dark side as you are to detect oversimplification in apparent purity.
That being said, your greatest challenge is to hone the art of discernment, to respect and understand the limits of reason but also the necessity of reason in balance with the five senses and all other means of perception, including faith and vision.
And in your dealings with people, you must always listen but not always believe. You must always accept but not always admire. You must always empathize but not always emulate. You must always hope but not always trust. And... you must always model this for the unordained. Not because you are any more sacred or holy than they are but because your gifts are different.
And it is your gifts in which your ministry is grounded, from which your calling flows and to which "reverence" is given by your subjects and even yourself. In that sense, the term "Reverend" is as much a fact as it is an honor. It is an acknowledgement, an affirmation by the community to whom you minister, of a truth that has been inherent in you from birth or before. To shrink back from that honor is a betrayal of one's self, one's gifts, the Giver of all gifts, and those who receive them. Your subjects need to honor you with "Reverence" for their own good. They need to ascribe reverence.
It is the same reason we say "Doctor" or "Officer" or "Your Honor" to people who are imbued with other high roles in our society. We don't want "Tom" cut open our chest cavity. We want Doctor Smith. We don't want "Bill" to hear our case in court. We want Judge Jones. We don't entrust our safety to "Bud," but to Officer Wilson. And we don't want to receive The Spirit from Cindy, but The Rev. Johnson. Get used to it. --jwh--
And now a word from our sponsor about the use of the term Reverend. How many times do we all hear someone in the media or in personal conversation say of someone, He or she is "a Reverend?" Did you know the word reverend is not a noun, it's an adjective? Think about it. Would you say of a judge that he or she is a Your-Honor? The term reverend is best defined as a combination of the meanings of "holy," "sacred," and "respectable"-- attributes given to the clergy by virtue of the "orders" that have been conferred upon them by God and by the Community. (I feel much better now.)