Big Easy

This year on Shrove Tuesday, the Episcopal Church we attend installed an associate pastor.

It wasn't just any installation.

This person was ordained a Lutheran minister and this is his first call - meaning he's fresh out of Lutheran seminary and this is his first church to serve in.  It was a monumental cooperative effort on the part of the Lutheran Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the Episcopal Church.

Three of the of the four members of the clergy performing the installation were women.

And oh, by the way - he's gay.

Now, in my fundamentalist life, every part of this event would have been, literally, anathema.  Every denomination involved is considered apostate by all but the very liberal fringes of fundamentalism (and even they have a lot of reservations).  Not to mention that female clergy or the ordination of a gay priest are utterly unthinkable.

And yet...

And yet, my husband and I could not stop talking that night about how present the Holy Spirit was during that service.

I can't explain it.  I wasn't expecting it or looking for it.  But God was most certainly in it.

Thanks be to God.