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Author: Meredith Keseley
“What are you?” As a thirty something female walking around in all black and a clergy collar, this is a question I get on a somewhat regular basis. “Are you a nun?” some will ask with caution. “Father,” I have been addressed on more than one occasion by a Catholic lay person who had no other frame of reference for a person dressed as I was. My favorite came very early one Sunday morning when I had stopped at the gas station to fill my tank on the way to church. “Did you just get off a flight,” the man at the pump next to me asked. “Excuse me?” I replied. “Oh, your uniform,” he explained, “I thought that you were a flight attendant.”
What are you? For someone like me it is kind of a fun question. I enjoy the strange looks and bewildered stares from people trying to make sense of how someone like me can be a pastor. Not everyone, however, enjoys these kinds of questions. For some, especially in these economic times, the question brings with it a sense of dread.
“What are you?” the person sitting next to you at the bar asks meaning, of course, what is your profession. It is one of the first questions often asked when starting a conversation with someone you don’t know. It is one of the primary ways that we seek to get to know people in social situations. “What are you?” we ask. “What do you do?”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as quoted in a recent news article, “37 percent of all Millennials are either unemployed or out of the work force.” That leaves more than 1/3 of young adults trying to figure out a creative way to answer this kind of question. If you happen to fall into this 37 percent than you probably know what I mean.
In a society where identity and profession are often tied together, who are you when you are not your job? If you happen to fall into the other 63 percent of the millennial population, then who are you outside of your job? Often times those in that percentage are working more than 40 hours a week trying to keep their job or get ahead in their career. When our professions or jobs are stripped away, with what are we left?
The church offers us an intriguing idea. What are we? We are children of God. Our identity comes not from what we do in the world, but the one who put us in the world in the first place. This is a radical shift in our identity. It is an identity that can not be lost or taken away. It is an identity that stays with us no matter what we might be doing in the world at a given time. It provides the ultimate job security, for God will always be seeking God’s children to work in the world.
