Ordination (what is it? 3 or 4?)

The programs are at the printer, the close circuit is set, the lunch is catered, the music is set, we'll do seating Friday afternoon, what could go wrong?

Oh...did someone say snow on Saturday?

(Rowena, if you read this, ignore that last sentence. OK?)

I was ordained to the priesthood in May (you stayed a Deacon in West Virginia for almost a year) so there was no snow. I remember it clearly because I was calm as all get out, ready to remember it always.

I was ordained by the Right Reverend Robert Atkinson and the preacher was Bill Pregnell, a professor of mine from Virginia Seminary. I had prepared a tape of my favorite music that was 20 minutes long or so that served as the Prelude.

The last song on the tape was "Heavy Church" by Three Dog Night.

In case you're not listening to it regularly, here are the lyrics.

"Light my was with incensed candles ooh,
Rug so soft beneath my sandals, ooh.
I've never been in here before
Like to feel the glory.

Mercy, mercy on love defenders
Have pity on the pretenders
A little help from all life's losers
A little truth from the mind abusers
Ooh, I need them praying in the Heavy Church.

If you judge the way they're living ooh,
Try to see the truth they're giving you
They only want to touch your hand with understanding.

Mercy, mercy on the love defenders
Have pity on the pretenders
A little help from all life's losers
A little truth from the mind abusers
Ooh I need them praying in the Heavy Church.

Hear them, hear them, hear them, hear them
Run and see the truth they're giving you
Hear them, hear them
Run and see the truth they're giving you
Hear them, hear them
Run."

I crept down the hallway just before the processional to hear that song. Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Simon and Garfunkel and others were on the tape that provided the soundtrack for who I was on that day so long ago. I wish I still had the tape--but could I find something that would play it now???

Anyway, that tape summed up my theology in popular music, none more than "Heavy Church" which was why it was last. It all seems a bit silly now, but then it mattered--like MATTERED to me.

I still would stand up for the theology of Three Dog Night. I've always said, my whole priesthood, that 'the church exists for those who aren't here yet'. I've always thought it was the outsiders, the marginal, the unclean, the lame and halt and blind that Jesus reached out to. The 'Establishment' already 'had theirs'. Jesus came to those who 'had not'. "A little help from all life's losers" isn't bad advice to a priest. We, inside the church, need to listen to the 'truth they're giving you' from those outside the church.

And the 'have pity on the pretenders' would apply, as far as I can see, to all of us. We all--especially those on the inside, those who 'have theirs' are living in a pretense that is as wide as it is broad--that our 'having ours' is okay when others don't 'have theirs'.

That's why it's a Heavy Church.

The questions the church and the ordained should be dealing with are Heavy Questions: about equality and fairness and inclusion and hearing the voices of the marginal and the dispossessed  and the outcasts and the despised and the rejected.

Those who aren't here yet are the ones I mean.

Those are the ones we must "hear..run to see they truth they're giving you...."

Whenever I've done that in my ministry, I give God all the credit.

Whenever I haven't (and I can't even count the times) it is my fault, my own fault, my own most grievous fault....

God help me find the Heavy Church where I belong.