The conversation on my recent post about the sin of adultery stirred a thought about ordination. (I realize this is not the leap that many people would make, but there is a little peek inside my brain for you.)
On the adultery post, we had some conversation about covenants and covenant keeping.
So, this question occurs: If ordination is a covenant who is it a covenant with?
Is it with the church?
Is it with God?
I often hear people speak of their calling from God, but isn’t our ordination through the church? And aren’t the vows taken at ordination similar to marriage vows?
In the adultery post, Taylor Burton-Edwards argued that people in a marriage cannot change the terms of the covenant once it is sealed. If that is true, then should it not be the same for ordained clergy?
Just for readers who may not be used to writing on the Internet: All those question marks in this post are actual question marks, not arguments or assertions masquerading as questions. I’m interested in your thoughts, especially those who — unlike me — have taken the vows of ordination.
John Meunier 
Ordination, like Christian marriage, is indeed a covenant ceremony in which vows are taken which further specify how those taking the vows will live out the baptismal covenant as disciples of Jesus Christ and members of his body.
That is why the ordination service begins, explicitly, with an act of remembrance of baptism.
It is likewise true that the vows of this covenant, as the vows of marriage and baptism, are intended to be kept for life. They are a “rule of life and service” that further specify how we will live out the baptismal covenant faithfully. Individuals who enter into this covenant do not change the vows. We simply live them faithfully, or we do not.
From time to time and from place to place, of course, as for marriage and even for baptism (though actually with the fewest variances here, historically), churches or denominations have revised the language of the vows of ordination, and sometimes the vows themselves. When they do so, it is generally understood that the new vows are what now apply for all who have entered the same order of form of covenant (deacon, elder, bishop, etc).
The vows of ordination, and indeed for us as for nearly every church I can think of, are altered only by the church’s highest authority (in our case, General Conference) and not by individual pastors, bishops, conferences, or other entities. Ordination in nearly all churches and denominations grants recognition of the availability of the person ordained to fulfill the duties of the office to which she or he is ordained across that entire church or denomination. That is why the Book of Discipline insists (with the word “shall”!) that the texts and rubrics of ordinal as provided and adopted by General Conference are to be used exactly as presented, with only the alterations it itself authorizes, throughout the entire denomination. (See Para 415.6).
Ordination is from God to serve God through the role of pastor/deacon/elder in the Church. Though our ordination may be through a specific church our ordination is for the Church (big C). Therefore though one may be ordained through one church, one may not live out one’s entire lifetime vow to God only through that one church. Or one’s membership may be in one denomination/church but one’s ordination is to God in the Kingdom. Of course, I may be wrong and I’m sure someone smarter can correct me.
Chris,
In ideal terms, and maybe even theologically, you might be correct that ordination is toward ministry in THE Church, rather than a particular church.
However, that is simply not how ordination actually functions in reality in most churches since the Protestant Reformation– and before that, since the East/West Schism in 1054.
To be sure, The United Methodist Church has approached ordination at least a BIT more ecumenically since the 1996 Book of Discipline. For the most part, we no longer “re-ordain” persons from other denominations to become “full” elders or deacons and full members of the conference in the UMC. Until that time, however, we did. For example, when I entered the UMC process from the American Baptist Churches USA, I was first “recognized” as an Other Denomination elder (rather than, at the time, being ordained as a UMC deacon) and then, after a few years and some more process, ordained as a UMC elder.
When my wife transferred during the last decade from the American Baptist Churches USA to The Episcopal Church, everything (except her seminary education) started over. So she was actually ordained first as a deacon and then later as a priest.
This is a fairly common reality when switching between many denominations to this day. Ordination is in fact NOT transferred from place to place for the most part, but done again– except in those cases where one denomination may have a “full communion agreement” with the other. For that reason, at this point, if I or my wife were to seek to function as ordained ministers in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, neither of us would need to be re-ordained at all. There would be other requirements we would be expected to meet, to be sure, but since both of our churches have full communion agreements with ELCA, ordination per se would not be one of them.
There remains a second element of ordination that needs to be discussed further, here. And that is that in our rite in the UMC– as indeed historically in many Christian rites of ordination– there are actually TWO actions involved. One is the laying of the hands by the bishop on the head of the candidate with a prayer for the Holy Spirit to be poured out upon the candidate for the gifts needed for the office and work of whichever order into which that person is being ordained.
And there is a second action– the laying of hands by the bishop on the hands of the candidate– and the words “Take authority as an elder/a deacon.” This is the act of authorization by the church to function in the ordained office.
In most churches, both ordination AND authorization are needed for someone actually to “use” one’s ordination. The ordination itself, as a gift of the Holy Spirit through the church, is (at least theologically) irrevocable– as are all gifts of the Holy Spirit. But the authorization to use that gift in a particular church or denomination (in our case) always rests with the supervisory authorities of that church or denomination. So while I may be ordained, unless I am also authorized, I am not permitted to (or I am “inhibited from”, to use Anglican and Roman language here) using those gifts or acting in that office. And such withdrawal of permission or imposition of inhibition can be made by the supervisory authorities at their choosing, within the authority and procedures their particular denomination gives them for making that decision.
And typically, if a supervisory body in one church or denomination “inhibits” you, or, in our case in the UMC, determines you are not “in good standing,” most other bodies will tend to honor that determination. Hence, if I were to be determined to be not in good standing in the UMC for some reason, the fact that I am ordained itself would typically not be enough for me to be authorized to use my ordination in another denomination, such as ELCA, even if I had met their other requirements to be “rostered” (or, as we would say, a full member of conference in good standing). They would expect me to resolve any outstanding issues with the UMC, very likely, before they would even consider allowing me to start their process for rostering.
If we were in fact one church, one “ecclesial body politic”– and not in fact a plethora of “competing polities”– ordination likely would be simply recognized, and authorization, perhaps, more easily granted from place to place. We are not. We are closer than perhaps we have been at some points in our histories, but we are still a long, long way away from matching the theological ideal of ordination to “Christ’s Holy Church” and the practice of our actual churches.
“The ordination itself, as a gift of the Holy Spirit through the church, is (at least theologically) irrevocable– as are all gifts of the Holy Spirit.”
Could you unpack that statement further? Obviously, people can and do surrender their formal credentials with some regularity, and the church strips some people of ordination for failing to keep the covenant. Has the gift been revoked? And calling it a gift strikes me as a little confusing. Ordination is a strange “gift” when those individuals ordained work incredibly hard to receive the formal recognition from the church of God’s gift. I don’t mean that they necessarily merit it, but then again perhaps they do – the UMC now looks for evidence of fruitfulness in ministry (whatever that means) before ordination. I don’t think its a “gift” in the sacramental sense of the Roman Church, with the accompanying ontological assumptions (as I understand them) regarding what happens in ordination.
Perhaps I am not following you exactly here – do you mean that ordination is God’s gift to the church as the way of designating certain individuals for the pastoral role? Or is ordination a gift to the individual recipient?
I’ll give a shot at this. The covenant of marriage is something that happens before it is named. When I stand before a couple at a wedding I often find myself talking about the marriage that I believe has begun well before that moment. That moment is what I think the liturgy calls “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” To me the covenant is not captured in a particular set of rules. I like for example the vows that are made public before the gathered congregation “in sickness and in health…” for example – there’s a lot of wiggle room in that. What does it mean? It has to be worked out in the relationship between the two people. I suppose that’s why I love Jesus summing up the law and prophets by saying that (paraphrasing here – off the top of my head) “…love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength and with all your might. And your neighbor as yourself.” Such a covenant is a lot tougher (in my mind) to keep to – than the 10 commandments (hey, I didn’t give false testimony – guess I’m good to go!)…If I’m going to keep what I believe is the marriage covenant (or even the “love God and love your neighbor” rule above) it’s going to have to be worked out daily, in our lives, in our care, in our failing and in our succeeding together. If I ever start thinking “whew…didn’t commit adultery today, guess I’m keeping my marriage covenant” I believe I am not even in the right ballpark of the covenant of what a marriage it (it’s not that committing adultery is a good thing – it’s that it’s the wrong question – ie. the question as to whether i’m keeping the marriage covenant or not is not “did i or did i not commit adultery today.”)
I entirely parenthetical note which may really muddy the waters, but it’s something I’ve recently come to in thinking about the married folks I have talked with – and that is that the people I have met who are most (as a cohort or sociological group) consistent with constantly working on the covenant of their marriages are gay and lesbian couples. I think that is perhaps because it is something that is not just slipped into because it is the norm of the society but that it is very cautiously and carefully chosen. It is why, in my experience, that break ups among gay and lesbian couples I have known are much kinder and gentler than break ups among heterosexual couples. The persons in gay and lesbian marriages I have known have talked about both the practical and spiritual dimensions of their relationship at a much deeper level (on the whole, there are or course exceptions in both directions on this) from the beginning than most of the heterosexual couples I have talked with…
I really think – in my experience in my own marriage (32 years so far) and in 27 years of talking with people about their marriages as a pastor in congregations – it strikes me that a covenant of marriage cannot be defined or captured by assent to a set of behaviors. (while that may be nice – I don’t know – my experience of humanity is a little more complex than that) I certainly don’t have any problem believing that others may have had a different experience. This has simply been mine.
So – as to the question regarding the ordination covenant – I feel pretty much the same way about it. (Perhaps it’s kind of a I Corinthians 13 questions “if it has not love it is a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal” for me – perhaps not for you). If keeping the ordination covenant is about making sure I check the boxes off of teaching the rubrics and rules exactly as presented I think that every last person I know with any label (conservative, liberal, progressive, fundamentalist, etc…) has fallen short. Yet I know many people of each of those labels who I believe strives to keep the covenant of their ordination by actually thinking, praying and working it out in fear and trembling. They are the people I like to hang out with talk with, pray with, and with whom I strive to understand the meaning of my ordination. My final thing I will say to this is that the thing I have read which best describes the way I think of my ordination covenant is a chapter in William Carlos William’s autobiography. The chapter is called “The Practice” and in his talking about his work as a physician I felt I knew my ordination better and more challengingly (if that’s a word).
I don’t have any answers, but I asked myself that very question when I was ordained. It felt more like getting married to the church than to God because I already consider myself a child of God.
But I actually take my ordination vows as seriously as my marriage vows. You could argue more, since I don’t review my marriage vows and I do review my ordination vows. I’m pretty much the kind of person who doesn’t make promises I have no intention of keeping.
I try to be that kind of person as well, Pam.