I’ve just finished reading a recent book called: Managing Clergy Lives – Obedience, Sacrifice, Intimacy. There is much in the book that strikes a chord with my experience of life as a full time minister in the Church of England. There is a reminder of the issues caused by the blurred boundaries between the public and the private that all ministers struggle with. The book raises issues that come from living in a vicarage which very few who haven’t lived in tied accommodation have any real understanding of. It also looks at the financial sacrifice that is willingly and knowingly made by church ministers, but particularly by Church of England ministers who have no option about living in the vicarage that is provided for them and therefore many struggle with accommodation for retirement.
There is however one area that I find myself at odds with in this book, and possibly with some of my colleagues. This is summed up in the introduction to chapter 3:
“The ordination of a priest disciplines and governs body and soul during every waking hour from the moment of ordination, until death. Throughout this life, clergy believe that their physical, intellectual and emotional selves are permanently claimed for the service of God. Ordination is thus life-changing for all priests because it entails an enduring commitment to promises made to God. These promises require life-long and whole-hearted personal and embodied obedience to God’s service, as well as an adherence to the doctrine and governance of the Church. Put simply, in the words of parish priest Linda, ordination offers no ‘opt out clause’.”
“Clergy in the sample expressed and ontological understanding of the ‘indelible character change’ brought about sacramentally in ordination.”
I remember that at my ordination someone from the church we were part of, unhelpfully(!), said to Bella that I was now married to the church. The notion of being married to the church, or to God, in ordination is reported in this book alongside the notion that, like marriage, ordination is a life-long and life-changing sacrament that can only be broken by death.
Looking back before my ordination I can clearly remember being asked at my selection conference what difference I thought being ordained would make to me in my workplace and day to day life? (I was applying for Non-Stipendiary ministry or what is now called Self-Supporting ministry). My response was that I hoped it would not make any difference whatsoever! I should already be living my life as a Christian to the fullest extent possible in my workplace and it was my commitment to Jesus, not my ordination, that should determine how I lived.
This may sound shocking to some – but I don’t feel called by God to Anglican Priesthood! I believe God has called and gifted me as a leader within his church and in the Anglican church the way that is outworked is through being ordained as a priest.I believe strongly and wholeheartedly in the priesthood of all believers both in practice as well as in theology. I struggle with the very thing that some of my colleagues feel called to and fulfilled by – being an ordained priest.
I am ontologically (definition: of or relating to essence or the nature of being) no different to any other christian. We are all created by God, saved by God and called by God, as his children, to be a Royal Priesthood. All of us, not a few, not those selected for ordination, but every single christian believer, are called as Priests to serve God, each other and God’s world.
That is why I struggle with wearing robes in services. I’d be happy to wear robes if everyone else did (or as someone said to me recently is everyone came in suit and tie as happened 30-50 years ago!). Wearing robes, for me, sets me apart as being different, and as I understand the Bible that’s not true. If you attend services that I lead it is also why I often pronounce the absolution and the blessing using ‘us’ not ‘you’ because I don’t Biblically believe I have any more right to forgive sins or bless others than any other christian.
For me my commitment to serve God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength comes from my baptism. It is a commitment that will last until the day I die and beyond that into eternity. Like all of us I have my struggles, but I am utterly committed to living as a Christian until the day I die. That commitment affects every part of my life, the work I do, where I live, how I use my time, money and the possessions that God so generously gives. It affects my ethics, my morality and every other part of my life.
For me that is the commitment of every christian. You can’t take some of the bits of the christian faith and not others, it’s all or nothing. It’s far, far more than living a moral life (which is what so many in our society see as the definition of Christianity).
Most importantly however it’s a commitment that has it’s foundation and strength in my love for Jesus and my day by day relationship with God as his beloved and precious son. Out of our identity as children of God we are called to obedience and we do that willingly because we know Almighty God as our loving father.