As a child I was aware of the role that pastors played in our church, our family, and our community. The pastor was the person (sometimes male, sometimes female) who led worship, who visited our home, who prayed, who seemed to appear, suddenly, at those heavy moments of grief or loss. Back then, I had no way to articulate why the pastor was particular, or peculiar, or even afforded certain privileges. Who else but the pastor could gain access to the hospital emergency room, for example, or pray for us when my grandfather died?

Now, after thirty years as an ordained pastor myself, I still have my questions—and it is a good and decent thing to reflect on the meaning of ordination. Not all people who do ministry—not even all pastors—are, after all, ordained.

What is the significance of ordination?

As a United Methodist, I am aware that every tradition receives or views ordination in a differing light. In Catholic and Orthodox traditions ordination is a sacrament—a rite invested and imbued with God’s visible and palpable grace. A mystery, yes—but also an outward sign declaring that the ordained person (priest) is set apart by God, made holy through the grace of Christ, and invested with certain authority and sacramental privilege to lead the church.

In most other Protestant traditions, however, ordination can be viewed as anything from a local affirmation of a pastor’s service and leadership to a life-long status of specialized ministry among the priesthood of all believers. And in recent years, as ordination has been questioned, scrutinized, changed, and amended to reflect a more Americanized view of privilege and power (or suspicion thereof), ordination has, I feel, fallen on tougher times.

Talking to some pastors recently, I became aware of these difficulties—and the changing value of, and respect for, ordination. Few pastors any more recommend young people for ordained ministry, and many I know spend more time trying to counsel people out of ordination than into it. In fact, the ordination “process” in the church has become so cumbersome, so heavy, so lengthy, and so expensive . . . few there be that find the narrow path or would even dare to walk it. Ordination? Why bother when one can become an attorney, a tax accountant, or even a physician with far less emotional or relational investment and economic stress?

Perhaps my own ordination is far more informative to me than The Discipline of The United Methodist Church, but there are reasons. On the evening of my ordination at our annual conference, I received word that a young man in the parish I served had attempted suicide. His family was distraught and requested that I return home to minister to their needs. But I was distraught, too. How could I miss the bishop’s “laying on of hands”—my ordination that evening? I immediately (and sheepishly) approached our bishop backstage at the annual conference session and he told me, “There are people who need you. That’s where you should be. You should go back home. So, I’ll ordain you now.”

Bishop Leroy Hodapp escorted me into a small broom closet adjacent to the backstage bathroom. There, among the smelly mop pail and a bucket filled with vomit deodorizer, he asked me the historic questions posed by John Wesley. The space was so small, we were nearly pressed nose-to-nose. And then he reached up, placed his hands on my head, and said, “Take thou authority . . . .” And that was that.

After thirty years and this inauspicious beginning, I’m still contemplating the meaning of this ordination.

What is authority? Is it privilege? Is it power? Is it some secret handshake shared by those who are in the club?

We have our symbols: the wash basin and towel. The yoke of the servant represented by the stole. Pulpit and prophet. The office door. Head of the board room table. Altar and flame, bread and chalice. Baptismal font.

After thirty years as an ordained person I am still contemplating the meaning, still trying to navigate the significance of that authority. Authority, perhaps of God, or of some human origin, or some amalgam of the two that lands me squarely between the vision of the celestial city and the flesh-and-blood realities of the earthly one.

Conclusions have been hard to come by—but they have emerged.

Ordination is service. The symbols that surrounded me at my ordination—mop, bucket, and broom—are more telling than I knew. And after all of these years I have rediscovered that this is the heart of the work I do. Ordination is sweeping floors, cleaning toilets, shoveling snow from the sidewalks. Ordination is example—without which many others cannot respond to the gospel call to serve. Ordination is an invitation for others to break their backs, to groan under the strain, to break a sweat. And if the ordained aren’t willing to do it . . . then why should the congregation?

Ordination is visibility. Someone must break the bread. Bless the water. Visit the sick. Address the multitudes. Row the boat. Secure the lines. Ordination is about leading the pack through the jungle, even if the leader doesn’t know the way or doesn’t have a clue about the destination. Ordination might also lead to the ultimate visibility, which is crucifixion and, hopefully, resurrection. Ordination is the invitation to die and to place oneself, one’s lifeless self, into the hands of God.

Ordination is recognition. Recognition of one’s sins and weaknesses. Ordination is not about perfection, or an exemplary model, or even about relevancy to the prevailing cultural winds. Ordination, as far as the world is concerned, is irrelevant. Ordination is about God’s grace. To be ordained is to be accepted despite one’s limitations, sins and failures. Ordination declares to the church, “You must love in spite of . . . .”, “You must live in God’s grace, celebrate it, claim it . . . in spite of your sins and this person’s sins.”

Ordination is the gospel in a nutshell.

Ordination is allowing for failure, a willingness to let life unfold in the paradox, the fine line between strength and weakness, between care and apathy. In one gospel episode (Luke 12:13-14) two people bring their personal and work-related disputes to Jesus, but he responds, “Friend, who set me up as a judge or arbitrator over you?” The ordained, then, always walk the fine line between micro-manager and the visionary. Ordination doesn’t answer. Ordination asks the question.

To be ordained is to suffer in real and imaginary ways. There is also elation and sweltering hope. Ordination is a relationship with people and with God. It is holding the door but also entering through it. Ordination is advocating and interceding for people—but also casting aside the burdens that other people would lay upon us. Not all burdens are worth carrying, and the ordained are those who seek the lightness of being, the inexpressible freedom that comes from the new creation and from remembering the old, old story.

The ordained know they can die gracefully and grace-filled, that they do not have to live on for the attractions and values that others would wrest upon them. They are free to go at any time, to itinerate to the far country of Abraham or fly away into the nether reaches of the ozone. The ordained answer to all—but are not beholden to anyone but God.

By the end, the ordained have lived, and hopefully, lived well. They are like dust in the wind and if they are fortunate they have been blown like tumbleweeds through the nether regions of the human heart, or have found themselves walking the dusty lanes of Galilee or the crusty pavement of a steel city. And yet they are still searching for that home that gleams, like alabaster, in that distant horizon which they have spoken of so fondly, but never seen.