What's it like being a Reverend - Part 2

In last week's musing I begun reflecting on the question people have been asking me, whether I feel any different now that I've been made a Reverend. I noted that yes it is different, though not in the way people might expect. I begun sharing what the Anglican Church meant for me as a kid - irrelevance, unpopularity, embarrassment and unsuccessful - it fed a wound of rejection, and thus had seriously negative connotations as I grew up. For me then, the journey towards being made a leader and an ordained representative of our Church has been really painful.Have you ever been to a psychologist, or even just had one of those hard, raw deeply personal conversations with your spouse or a close friend, whereby you have to face up to who you are; and it’s not that pretty? This is what much of my journey has been like. A relentless, continuing, growing realisation that deep down, in my heart, it's just not that pretty. I shared some of that in my testimony a couple of weeks ago.You know how when stuff goes wrong people blame God, even if they claimed just last week not to even believe in Him? It's called scapegoat-ing! It is really one’s own sin and brokenness that one lays upon someone or something else so that one avoids facing what is actually in them. Well, I didn't use God, I used the Church. God was cool, the Church was bad.In the Gospels, does Jesus meet with the found or the lost? (c.f. the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lepers, the social outcasts etc.) Does Jesus fellowship with me in my relevance or my irrelevance? My popularity or my unpopularity, my success or my failure?My journey has brought me to some really embarrassing and unpretty realisations about who I am... In this society, I am irrelevant and growing more so - having the title Reverend, which means Revere-ed is a mockery in a time where the church, let alone clergy, are not socially revered at all!! How many church people encourage their kids to go into ministry? I am, for most people in Western Society, of no use at all; I'm not needed and my seven years of study and ministry have no value to most!However what I've been finding, or who I've been finding, at every step of the way, is Jesus who deeply loves me and finds me and fellowships with me. In Him, I wouldn't say I'm discovering relevant-ness... but I think I'm discovering that I can be fully loved and accepted by One Who matters in that place. The One I'm discovering is the One who comes not to the found but the lost, the last and the least. And because of this I'm not so afraid anymore of being me, and of being with others who don't matter in society. In fact, I'm finding that as I embrace my last-ness, lost-ness and least-ness; my irrelevance, my unpopularity and my failure  - Jesus is healing my wounded-ness of rejection - so now I'm not as afraid and I don't reject people anywhere near as much.So, becoming a Reverend has meant that life is now different for me, not in the way many would expect, but profoundly different. I've forgiven my nemeses and am, in fact, now grateful for allowing Jesus to become who He is in my life. And for that I Revere Him.