Twenty Years of Ordained Life

From the Rector
I was ordained in the third week of Advent in 1985, on a Thursday evening.

As is often the case looking back, years seem to have flown. At the same time, I know very deeply how transformative these years have been.

On one hand, life continues to be ordinary, human - with my chief distinctive identification being as one of the baptized - a sharer in Christ's priesthood with the whole body of the faithful. Especially as I understand the calling of the Church to be in the world, I do not hold myself aloof from everyday life and culture.

At the same time, I know that in all contexts, I am a priest - that I have a particular calling and reason for being. I don't have a sense of "owning" this form of ministry or in any sense mastering it. It has simply come to me as an expression of the community of faith, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, and as a revelation of who I am - including the generations that have gone before me and my particular experiences.

I realized early on (by grace) that I needed to accept the priesthood that had come to me - to allow it life despite any reservations or insecurities (of which I could have many, though they would have only undermined others and me were I to have entertained them anything but fleetingly).

If it were not true, it would be a cliche to say that I am most at home presiding at the Eucharist, particularly leading the sacramental prayer of the community at the altar. It has been a profound gift to have been given this opportunity - a life-changing experience that has been both demanding and fulfilling at once.

My life has been turned more and more outward year by year.

There is a psychological inventory called the MBTI (Myer-Briggs Typology Indicator) that notes, among other things, one's level of introversion (tendency to draw energy from an inner world of thoughts, feelings, and reflections requiring substantial time alone) and one's level of extroversion (tendency to engage the things, people, places and activities going on in the outside world for one's life force, rarely feeling drained by interaction with the outside world and other people).

When I was in seminary more than 20 years ago I was in a balance between introversion and extroversion on the MBTI. Recently, I did the inventory again and am decidedly extoverted. In reflection, I feel I have been drawn into extoversion by the ministry of priesthood - identifying my work and life as being for others. My focus is necessarily beyond myself to what God is doing in the world and to what God desires for others in any given situation (mundane or substantial).

I realize that it is in living out a ministry of priesthood that God has continued to convert me in Christ. Conversion for all people is a life-long process of growing more and more into who Christ is and who Christ desires to be in the world.

At this 20-year mark, I am aware that this conversion is meant to continue in new ways . . . This is not a startling revelation, but I cannot be complacent or settled, a tendency that seems typical of the human condition. God is a constantly changing and renewing Being (Source of all that is) and calls us into this persistently active process of growth and movement. Much as any of us may wish, we simply do not "arrive" at a final point. In God's life, there is always more; the journey continues.

I am grateful for a very full and rich life. I am thankful that I can die tomorrow knowing how substantially I have been able to live, by God's grace.

My friend Nancy Cox says a priest should always be ready to preach, pray, and die. At this anniversary (and it has taken all this time), I think I am ready.

Thanks be to God.