Like a bride or groom before a wedding, up until yesterday John could have said, thanks but no thanks, I don’t think I’m going to go through with this. And there are stories told of those who have done just that and walked away.

But what happened yesterday was not John’s choice – it was of God’s choosing and the church’s affirmation. Yesterday John did not choose to become a deacon, any more than he chose to be gay when he first came out.

Yesterday the church affirmed what both God and John by now already knew: that John was created and will be forever loved by God, just as he is, and that he has been called by God, to whom all hearts are open and all desires known, and lifted up by the church to be an ordained minister in Christ’s Church. Yesterday John said, “Yes. This is who I am.”

Now it’s indelible. It can’t be taken back. It’s not a job; it’s who John is. John can’t ever wake up again on a Sunday morning and say, “it’s too rainy, I’m too tired, the bed is too warm, so I’m not going to church today. Maybe brunch, later, but not church.” Even the church itself can’t take back an ordination – at most we can inhibit a priest from every practicing the role of clergy again, but we can’t undo an ordination. It is indeed indelible.

The path to ordination is never an easy road to travel – this journey to Yes. I’m sure there have been several occasions along his path to ordination when John felt like the fig tree in today’s Gospel, when the orchard owner came and said: “For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ And John has known, too, the words of reprieve: ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it.”