The Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem NPColumns

In my youth it was still common to speak of people of color who had service-oriented jobs as "boy" or "girl." When black men started saying "Who you callin' boy?" that was a serious challenge to an historic and systematic belittling of human dignity.

Because the church discovered during the early years of its existence that it could be unjust, it chose seven people of relentless fairness to keep watch - in the church and in the world - to make sure that at least in the church fair was in fact fair. They were deacons.

In the Roman Catholic and Episcopal tradition, deacons are to interpret the world for the church - saying the sometimes uncomfortable words that get us to attend to the suffering, evil and injustice of the world from the perspective of the Good News of God.

Our word, deacon, is from the Greek: being a servant, not to be confused with being servile.

The first known use of "your holiness" as a term of veneration was applied not to the Pope, but by Pope Leo the Great to his deacons. I want to believe this was because they made sure people got what they needed regardless of who they were.

I have been thinking about deacons because, on the last Saturday of May, I ordained three.

One serves as coordinator of a soup kitchen. One, a biblical scholar, teaches at a local college. One works with women and children in crisis. Their ministries of presence, wisdom, gentleness, boldness and transformation of minds and hearts are all ministries of service.

Servanthood, for Jesus, meant overturning the system. It meant calling people who did in fact love God to widen their perception of God's reign, who it includes and what it means. It meant giving outcast and downtrodden people new hope and dignity. Jesus was a servant of God's Good News.

Jesus boldly befriended those who were at the very edges of society for whatever reason - whether because of choices they made or circumstances imposed on them. He announced God's pardon, healing, and acceptance of people whom folks who were decent, hard-working, and sincere often thought of as under God's wrath.

The servanthood Jesus modeled requires a strong sense of integrity, power and presence. I am extraordinarily depressed by anxiety in the church about power, anxiety that results even in withholding power from those most able to speak for the oppressed. It is so like us to worry about power rather than equity.

If you read the same Bible I read, the "balance of power" is usually what God wants changed.

You may have noticed that the harder you work for what is creative and new and life-giving, the harder is the resistance, the pushing back, from those who prefer evil and homeostasis - and those two things are not necessarily the same.

Jesus' faithfulness and bold compassion and plain speaking of the truth got him killed. God raised this faithful, bold, compassionate, truthful one from the dead, illuminating forever the question of whether faithfulness, compassion, and truthfulness are worth it.

In our time, we may not see results in proportion to our dreams and ambitions - and maybe we will see them - but, either way, we are part of something that moves from resurrection to resurrection, part of a process that is infinitely bigger than ourselves.

Be bold, be powerful, be confident," I said to the three I recently ordained. "Dare to be deacons."