Emma Percy, What Clergy Do: Especially When it Looks like Nothing. London: SPCK, 2014.

Emma Percy’s What Clergy Do: Especially When it Looks like Nothing, brings the imagery of motherhood, the role of the parish priest, and “good enough” into dialogue. Every page felt like a good word reassuring that both my mothering and my priesting is “good enough” while reminding me that I cannot be all things to all people or can I mother and priest like all other people. Percy’s text highlights three important features of this human endeavor of priesthood inspired by God’s holy and gracious call: 1. The need to eradicate comparison and competitiveness; 2. Humble and substantial presence will carry one through the day in and day out; and 3. Neither care giving for children nor God’s beloved gathered in a parish is easy and comfortable. Overall, this text is a text that should be employed in seminary pastoral education classes due to its grammatical accessibility and practical application.

1. The need to eradicate comparison and competitiveness Percy’s bold approach to articulating concepts means that her sentences function as cleverly disguised scalpels. While reading I found myself intermittently getting frustrated and sometimes mad, feeling exposed and raw. Ugh! I’d say aloud This is all so much! How am I ever going to be good at this job! But that’s the point of the text (or at least one of the points I experienced). It’s not about being “good” or, rather, “the best…better than all the rest!” Percy exposed my persistent tendencies to intellectually and emotionally default to a competitive posture in the world of being a parish priest by which I would compare myself ruthlessly to other “more successful” and “killing it” priests. As a small parish pastor, I can lose myself in the deadly game of comparison that grows into competition; it is hard game to win when I feel dwarfed by the looming specter of failure always at my red, episcopal door. But yet, Percy’s constant refrain, “good enough” was a soothing balm to my exposed and raw situation; I can be “good enough” because it is God who works through me, it is about God’s good word in Christ Jesus, and because, at the end of the day, the Spirit is always with me and us as we—together as part of the body of Christ—bring God’s mission of the revolution of love, life, and liberation into the world. Percy’s text liberated me from myself to render me of (divine) use for my neighbor (both inside and outside the church).

2. Humble and substantial presence will carry one through the day-in and day-out Percy reminded me that even though removing myself from the game of comparison and competition is a good step, it can’t be the only step. Considering the scientific axiom, nature abhors a vacuum, the elimination of something demands filling that void with something substantial or anything could be sucked into that empty space. Here, Percy’s chapters provided me with access to what it looks like to come to terms with myself (who am I as a mom? As a Priest?) and then to be honest, really honest with myself—being willing to let the mythologies I present to the world and to my own mind about who and what I am and able to do be exposed by the light of truth and reality. In the theological world inspired by the reformational insights the Martin Luther, Percy asks her reader to “call a thing what it is” or, more pastorally, “to call yourself who you are” and then to work from that point. Being able to be honest with yourself is the first step of humble motherhood and priesthood. And in being honest, according to Percy, we will gain further access to the liberation of “Good enough” that bears the fruit of life, real, fleshy, messy, human-y life—the type of life that can go the distance because it gets back up when it falls, and it gets back down when it gets too high up. When we come to terms with who we are by being exposed by the cross of Christ, we are brought through that death into the new life of Christ’s resurrection. Percy’s text is founded on this gospel movement from and through death into the new life bathed in the light of Christ. Being a mom and being a priest is for the long haul, Percy points out, it is not easy to try to rush to a goal thus rendering all the people caught between you and the goal as the ground you are walking upon. Percy exhorts humble, substance filled, present tense being…for today we are good enough.

3. Neither caregiving for children nor God’s beloved gathered in a parish is easy and comfortable This speaks for itself. Percy’s book reveals the frank reality that parish life as well as home life isn’t easy, and it certainly isn’t comfortable. I believe Percy exposes that our church structure has gone too far the way of corporate thinking. As a priest, I am called to support my people, to encourage them toward the liberative word of God that is Christ and to make time and space for them to be nourished by the presence of the Spirit in word and deed, in the pews and at the table. This is an inverted corporate structure; I am not a religious tyrant with everyone having to serve me or needing to placate my bloated (narcissistic?) ego. I serve my congregation by teaching, preaching, and leading worship (i.e. making space regularly for each beloved to come into an encounter with God in the event of faith); my congregation doesn’t serve me. I think we’ve too frequently gotten it wrong and have harmed one too many of God’s fold while we’ve been in pursuit of what feeds me most, what is best for me, what keeps me most comfortable. Here the fruit of liberation that is love that first loves us comes to the surface; we are to love others as we have been so loved by God, and, often, as God has loved us. Luther exhorted preachers to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Percy’s text, What Clergy Do, is that good word that rattles the cushy seat of the priest and wakes them up, summons them out of comfortability, and prepares and equips them for the hard work of “good enough.” And therein Percy, after afflicting the comfortable, comforts the afflicted like the excellent teacher, scholar, and pastor she is.