Things Asked While In a Clerical Collar

I think God may be paying forward all the impossible questions I have asked clergy people in my life. I wore a clerical collar for the first time a few weeks ago, and right off the bat had one of those “things heard in a clergy collar” moments.

So there I was, standing awkwardly by the coffee pot after service in a button-down black shirt (which I had accidentally ironed a huge wrinkle into); my new clerical collar fastened tightly around my neck—a little too tightly, I kept fidgeting with it—trying desperately to look older and not as uncomfortable as I felt, when one of the parishioners approached me. I smiled, we exchanged brief pleasantries, and then, she asked me a question.

“Since you have earned a collar,” she started; I felt my heart starting to pound. “I wondered if I could ask you a deep, theological question?”

‘Earned the collar!’ I wanted to laugh. ‘I am a second year seminarian, I have in no way earned this collar.’ Instead I weakly stammered, “um, sure. I don’t know that I will know the answer, but we can talk about it.”

“I was just wondering how you, as a Protestant, interpret James 2?”

At that, I really had to force myself not to take a step backwards. My mind was racing. What even is James 2?!? Oh, this morning’s lectionary text. What were the readings? ‘Faith without works is dead’! How do I address that?! I have no idea! I haven’t taken a James class! I wanted to run or protest or defer to one of the multitude of other seminary-educated people in the room. But in that moment, I was the one in the collar, I was the one who was “pastor,” so instead, I took a deep breath and employed what I later learned is a classic pastoral stall tactic.

“That’s a great question,” I replied calmly. “Let’s grab a cup of coffee, sit down and talk about that.” This bought me a full three minutes to get my thoughts in order and my heart rate back in check.

And you know what, the conversation went great. It was not the most articulate explanation of James, but it did the job. We talked about grace, we talked about faith, we talked about the freedom of being adopted into God’s family. We even talked about Luther and Galatians a little bit. And most importantly, we talked about the good news that is Jesus Christ, coming into the world for us, no matter who we are or what we do or how articulately we can explain theology, or how much we may screw up sometimes. Yay for God who loves us just as we are. I think I kind of like this pastor thing.