On the Red Carpet

Post Author: Sarah Lamming

After a few deep breaths, I slowly walked up the four red carpeted steps, up to the pulpit, which for so many years had been out of bounds. With each step, I could recall the different people—my mum, the vicar’s wife, the little old dears—who had said to each kid who tried to get up to the pulpit, “You cannot go up there, that’s for the preacher.” Well, after six years of ministry, it was time for me to preach to the congregation that had seen me grow from a crawling baby into a priest.

At the end of the service came the usual standing at the door, shaking everyone’s hand, and hearing the little comments. Instead of the typical “good sermon”, “that was a lovely sermon”, or “good job”, I got thirty people saying, “You’ve lost your accent” or “Good sermon, but what has happened to your accent?” Later that week, I bumped into my old Sunday school teacher.  She had not been at church, but she said to me, “You are the talk of the village.  Your accent has changed.  And how confident you have become!  You didn’t preach with any notes.” It was clear from the conversation that very few people were able to hear the message I preached that day, because they were thinking of who I was: the little farmer’s daughter, who had sung in the choir, who had gone through a difficult illness, then managed to go to college, and had moved to America.

A few weeks later, I had returned to the United States and was standing on a similar red carpet reading the Gospel for the day: Mark 6:1-6. The fourth verse hit home. “Then Jesus said to them, ‘Prophets are not without honor, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.’”  I was standing in the midst of a community that loves and supports me, but they see a priest, not a little choir girl.

I had dreamed of the day when I would preach, and perhaps preside, at the church where I grew up.  I had dreamed of being a priest for that community (but not their vicar).  When it actually happened, however, it was not at all what I expected. The truth is, in the same way the community was looking at me as that little girl, while I was looking at them thinking, “They haven’t changed.”  They may have aged a little, but they were sitting in the same places.  I was remembering my interaction with them as a relationship of a child to adults.  My ego wanted this community to see that I had grown into a priest, and that there are young female priests in the world, but they did not need me to preach to them to understand that.

When you are called to a parish, you get to live and breathe with that community. You have a specific role, where you are charged to serve, to minister to the sick and dying, to administer the sacraments, and to preach the good news.  I love church on a Sunday morning, as I walk past the font and down the standard red carpet, exchanging a wave, wink, or smile with the different congregants.  I know I am a priest who has been called to this church, for this moment in time, and that the church and I are flourishing.

Every priest, however, needs to be refreshed.  On the Sundays I have off, I want nothing more than to fly across the ocean and go to the church in which I grew up. That is the community where I can just be a member, where I can simply be loved. They know I am a priest, and that is enough.  They don’t want me to be their priest, and I don’t need to be in that role with them, either.