A priest is someone who stands in a place of remarkable vulnerability, and by doing so, invites other people to enter the sacred.

This definition of priesthood, offered to me years ago by a friend who was entering the ordination process, is the best definition of priesthood I have ever heard.

In many Protestant traditions we talk about the “priesthood of all believers.” We assert that all Christians should view themselves as a kind of priest, whether they are ordained to holy orders or not. This means, if you take my friend’s definition seriously, that those who call themselves Christian must know what it is to stand in a place of vulnerability in order to invite others to enter the sacred.

One way a priest does this is by living a relationship with the sacred in a way that others can see. That’s why a priest’s vulnerability is important—people can see it, and be encouraged by it, and join into it, knowing that they aren’t alone in approaching the sacred. A priest thus consciously cultivates an awareness of the sacred, and conspicuously lives in a way that makes entering the sacred more possible. A priest lives into the realities that theologians perceive. Which is to say, a priest connects the lived reality of our lives with a theological understanding of the God we worship.

The title “A Priestly People” is a double entendre. It suggests that queer people en masse have a priestly quality—a quality that Christianity ignores, or worse, disparages to Christianity’s considerable impoverishment. In this section, we will explore several ethical locations where queer identity places concrete demands on individuals and on the community—where the rubber hits the road, so to speak. Any person who has had more than a casual acquaintance with queer community has most likely encountered these ethical issues. They are central to queer sensibility: the understanding that the most important thing we can do for ourselves and for one another is to tell the truth—about our inherent value; about who we are; about the multiplicity of our experiences; about who is still struggling and what they/we are still struggling with, and what we are going to do about it.

But the title has a second meaning as well: it is a way to understand a call to authentic Christian life. There are many people of good heart who not only call themselves Christian but who also take seriously the queer/Christian ethics that we’ve been discussing throughout this book. Some of those people—some of you—are already familiar with the idea of “the priesthood of all believers.” Some of us are even comfortable walking around in that identity, claiming it for ourselves, daunting as that may at first seem.

An appreciation for queerness can revitalize progressive iterations of Christian life and thought by making us better priests. Not just those of us who have been ordained, but all of us who call ourselves Christian.

Making oneself vulnerable, consciously—as a queer person must, as a priest must—requires that one know oneself. It demands risk. It involves touching others. There is something scandalous about it. And it is foundational to our ability to be in community with each other.