Some of y'all have been around long enough to remember that when I first came to this church, I didn't look quite the way I look now. Back then, I had long hair, and I wore it in a ponytail. I had a beard and various tattoos. I looked like I just walked in off the set of Sons of Anarchy.

Still have the beard and the tattoos. But alas, no more ponytail.

I mention that because it's relevant to a story I'm going to tell you about a wedding. Some of you've heard it before. Some of you were there. But it’s too good a story to put in mothballs.

Anyway, not long after I started here in 2008, Anne and Gary came to me and asked if I'd officiate at their daughter Leslie's wedding to Mo. I said that, of course, I would. I'd be honored.

The wedding and reception were held at Yew Dell Gardens, a beautiful place, and I was looking forward to it. So the day of the wedding, I drove out there, feeling good, feeling pastoral, you know, like a person who officiates at weddings for a living.

But when I got there, I encountered a labyrinth of orange traffic cones in the parking lot. To be honest, I wasn't sure how anybody was going to park in the parking lot. It was filled with traffic cones.

They were everywhere. In addition, there were parking attendants in vests, and it was not at all clear where I was supposed to go. I got a little frustrated, as is my custom when I don't have any idea what I'm supposed to do or where I'm supposed to go.

So, I decided that the cones were only meant to be suggestions. I drove around them. I mean, I could see them. I didn't want to run them over, which felt rude. I'd only started at the church five months earlier. I didn't want to give the wrong impression by bulldozing through the maze of orange.

I hadn't gotten very far when I noticed, in my rearview mirror, a man in a vest sprinting across the parking lot, waving his arms and hollering for me to stop. So I stopped, rolled down the window, and waited while he covered the remaining distance at a full run.

He arrived at my window, breathing hard and considerably irritated. He bent over and put his hands on his knees. "Did you not see the traffic cones?"

I said, "Of course, I saw the traffic cones. Why do you think I drove around them? I didn't want to run them over. I'm not an idiot."

Apparently, he'd arrived at a different conclusion, because he didn't seem to find this as reasonable as I did. He was getting ready to say something else when he looked at me, took in the ponytail, the beard, my generally impressive presentation, and said, with a tone that made his opinion clear: "Tch! What, are you with the band or something?"

"No," I said. "I'm the officiant."

He stared at me like I'd just claimed to be a Zamboni driver or something.

"The minister," I clarified.

And I watched his face do something remarkable. His eyebrows shot up. His eyes got big. And then, like a man who'd just realized he wasn't talking to the entertainment, he said, "Uh ... right this way, sir." And he ushered me through that parking lot with the greatest possible solicitousness.

Now, I've thought about that story a lot since it happened, and what I keep coming back to is how quickly everything changed once I "flashed my credentials."

One second, I'm just a shady-looking dude carelessly driving around the cones and probably played drums in a wedding cover band.

The next second, I was "sir." Same car. Same ponytail. Same tattoos. Same beard. The only thing that changed was the title.

Who gets to decide who belongs? In that parking lot, the answer was: the really angry, red-faced guy in the vest.