It's All About the Shepherd

My mother used to tell me that it was one thing to be ignorant, just don’t open your mouth and prove it. Well, today, all over the Christian world, preachers like me will open their mouths will prove, in great detail and with great authority, that they know nothing about sheep! Myself included.

The truth is that everything I know about sheep and shepherding I’ve learned from old Warner Brothers cartoons involving Ralph Coyote (not to be confused with Wile E.) and Sam Sheepdog who both punch in to work on a time clock before a day of mayhem.

The funny thing is that we preachers who get so distracted by the nature of sheep and their behavior forget that the passages that show up every Fourth Sunday of Easter—traditionally Good Shepherd Sunday—are never about the sheep. They are always about the shepherd!

It’s a classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees, or the not seeing the sheep for the flock…. Oops! There I go again!

It’s all about the shepherd!

Jesus describes himself as the shepherd. The good shepherd. Who is very different than all those bad shepherds, not to mention the thieves and wolves and others who are bad for sheep gatherings.

Jesus says in today’s Gospel that the good shepherd can come and go through the sheepfold. What’s a sheepfold? Okay, I had to look this up. It’s a kind of pen, or corral, used to gather up the sheep at night. And the sheepfold is guarded by a gatekeeper who checks to be sure that only shepherds enter the gate. And I guess in those days, sheep only heard and responded to the voices of their own shepherd, so instead of branding them they’d…. Oops. Sorry. My bad! I forgot. Old habits, you know.

It’s all about the shepherd!

It does not help that not only have modern, urban, preachers been misunderstanding sheep and shepherding, there is also a tendency to make the passage into an allegory that neither Jesus nor the Gospel of John intended.

So the sheepfold in this passage represents… wait for it… a place to keep sheep at night. That’s right. It is not heaven and it’s not really the church. This passage is not about those who try to get into heaven by dodging the turnstiles or entering the theater without a ticket. If it were, he’d be talking about sheep sneaking in over the gate after curfew.

And no, this passage is not about heaven, who’s in and who’s out.

It is about the Church. Specifically about the nature of Christian community. This passage is a riff on Christian leadership and a warning to Christian followers to choose wise leaders.

So the Church is the place where the sheep go for protection and safety. And it’s all about the shepherd.

John’s Gospel teaches us that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. And that we need to be wary of all the things that can distract us, take us away from the church and the life of faith, and cause us to follow the wrong voice. Most of all, the Gospel warns us that some people will pretend to be doing good when in fact they are really looking out only for themselves.

Fortunately, this is only a first century problem, right?  I mean, there is no one out there today competing for our attention, right? There’s no one out there who wants to sway us into doing something harmful, right? There’s no one out there using the language of our faith to trick us into prejudice, fear, and tribalism, right? No! Not in our modern, enlightened 21^st Century world!

Right!

But let’s not just focus on the obvious. The typical American is confronted by over 5000 advertising exposures. Every. Single. Day. From the car logo on your steering wheel to the brand name on your jeans to the ad on tv or on the back of the bus…we are exposed to over 5000 advertising messages a day. And what’s their goal? To make you feel that the only way your heart will be satisfied will be to open your wallet and buy this or that gadget, thingee, or food item.

Anybody raising a kid these days knows that they will know the different fast-food logos are and what they are for long before they can even read…before they can even form sentences. 

In our world, the bad shepherds may not be climbing over the fence, but they have surrounded the sheepfold with billboards and flat screen televisions.  We live in a world of loud, persistent voices vying for our attention… trying to take us away from the main thing. What do we do?

Remember…it’s all about the Shepherd.

The Gospel today reminds a few things about who Jesus is and about what good Christian communities do to stay together.

First of all, Jesus teaches with authority. In the church we hold out a balance of scripture, tradition, and reason as the basis for what we teach and believe as a community. The Good Shepherd…and good Christian leaders…use their authority for the good of the community, based on what the church has learned and known over time and in community.

The image of the Church we hear in the book of Acts today reminds us of the real, practical ways in which from the very beginning, Christians gathered into communities to hear again the voice of the Shepherd and to care for each other.

Second, the Good Shepherd knows us and meets us where we are. The Shepherd guides us as we move around in the proverbial pasture that is the world. Do you experience too many voices, too many distractions in your daily lives? Jesus says that instead of bouncing from one thing to another, go to the place where the Good Shepherd is found. Go to the place where the community of the faithful is gathered. In that community you’ll find the Shepherd…Jesus… who leads us and cares for us wherever we go.

It is the sacramental life, lived in community…a life grounded in scripture, in Eucharistic sharing, in prayer—both alone and in groups, as well as in worship-- is all about the Shepherd. Focusing on Jesus the Good Shepherd will help us sort through all the competing voices in the world.  And together here, in our little sheepfold, is where we learn to know Jesus’ voice and follow him. This is where we learn and do the work of Jesus.

The world is a noisy place, full of distractions. As a people of God, we are not alone, but are a community of people gathered in Jesus’ name. We are a people who are “on the way.” And together we keep an eye out for the Shepherd, Jesus Christ, who knows us, cares for us and leads through our complicated and distracted world and brings us safely home.

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Bulletin for Worship for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 30, 2023 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Scripture Lessons for 4 Easter A, April 30 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on April 30, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on April 30, 2023.

"Call" is trickier than it looks

“Call” is a tricky subject. We take the words for granted in the church, but the whole idea is a mine-field of expectation, vision, and self-image that can bring beautiful vision to life, motivate us to do grand things, send us on journeys of faith… or lead us to do incredible evil. To paraphrase religious writer Frederick Buechner, “[Call] is like nitro-glycerin. It can either heal hearts or blow-up bridges.”

If you don’t believe me, just wait around this week and watch the news.

This week we commemorate The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and there is no doubt that he was called… called to lead his congregation, his people, his nation, to the civil, economic, social, and spiritual liberation of African-Americans from a 400 year history of enforced servitude and oppression… and that this call cost him his life.

And this week, we’ll inaugurate a new president, whom we hope will bring out our better angels instead of encouraging what we saw eleven days ago, when the countervailing forces of fear and evil were at work when thousands of mostly white men and women turned what seemed like a protest into an attempted insurrection so that they could overturn an election they lost at the behest of a president who came to power on the very resentment fear and anger that these people have harbored since well before The Rev. Dr. King first came on the national scene in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 and 1956.

Now here’s the thing that serious Christians, serious people of faith, must come to terms with: both the civil rights movement and the capital rioters last week used the language of “call”--- of adherence to something higher than themselves—to justify and explain their actions, to motivate their followers, and find energy for their cause. It’s just that one was after a common good and the other perpetrated an evil.

As I said, “call” is a tricky subject.

How do we know if a “call” is from God or is coming from someplace else… someplace contrary to God?

Today we hear a snippet of scripture that sounds wonderful, even whimsical, at first: the call of God to Samuel. Samuel is considered a prophet in Jewish and Christian tradition, but he was the last of the Judges. Before Israel was governed by hereditary kings, they were governed by Judges. These were not people in long robes presiding over courtrooms but were senior religious figures who governed the nation. They not only took on the rabbinical role of settling local disputes, but it was thought that they—being especially attuned to God and particularly holy—could govern the nation.

Samuel was being raised by another Judge, named Eli, but while Eli might have been a person of great faith, and wise in the way of faith, he was a rotten judge of character when it came to his sons, Hophni and Phinehas. Hophni and Phinehas were lazy, drunken, and spoiled. They were sexual predators and thieves. Worse, they thought that because their Dad was a Judge, they could do pretty much as they pleased, and they did not pay Eli any mind when he would mildly rebuke them for their bad behavior. To top it off, these two neer-do-wells assumed that they’d inherit the family business and be the next Judges over Israel. When it came to his sons, Eli was a softy and a push-over

One night, the boy Samuel—who was the only child of Hannah, who had dedicated him to God, and so was being raised by Eli the Judge—was trying to get some sleep when he hears a voice calling his name. Samuel assumes it was Eli, and goes to find out what’s up. Eli, shaken awake by his young student sends him back to bed. Three times this happens! Finally Eli, realizes that it is God who is calling Samuel, so he says to his young padawan, “the next time you hear that voice, say ‘Yes, Lord, your servant listens.’” And that’s what happens. Samuel listens and finds that he is called by God to be a Judge and a Prophet.

Sweet, right?

Well, not so fast. The thing that Samuel learns from God is that God has pretty much had it with Eli not being able to discipline Hophni and Phinehas—and worse, putting up with the evil they did in Eli’s name abusing God’s name and authority in the process! And so, Eli is not only going to lose his job as Judge but will die in the process. When Eli presses Samuel to tell him what God said to the boy, he learns his fate and says “The Lord must do what is right.” Or, as we might say today, “it is what it is.”

So… you see what I mean, right? Call is a tricky thing!

And, that is before we get to what we talked about before… that sometimes we attribute some pretty horrible ideas to “being called by God.” How many tyrants, opportunists, and even everyday insecure people fall back on the language of “call” to justify their actions?

I mean, going back to the Rev. Dr. King, how many segregationists and white supremacists justified their active evil, or their passive acceptance of an obvious evil, by blaming their actions on the “call” or “will” of God. How many could not distinguish between “the way it’s always been” and the will of God?

In today’s Gospel, I can see why Jesus liked and called Nathaniel. Because he was as faithful as the day is long… and he was nobody’s fool. When Andrew and Philip come running to him about having found the Messiah—his response was “yeah, right.” But his friends persisted, and they invited him to come and see. Nathaniel’s call came through his skepticism and Jesus knew not to shower him with sweetness but instead to bust his chops. Nathaniel could take what he dished out and seeing that Jesus knew him in a different way, followed Jesus’ call to discipleship.

But sometimes “call” takes us beyond ourselves and these very human, very ingrained, ways of thinking.

To hear a call is to take one above and beyond oneself. A sense of call is a heady thing but it can go to your head, so one must be careful. And most calls, truth be told, are not specifically religious or to a religious vocation. The other day, I saw on Facebook, how a young woman who grew up in this parish, Keri Appleman, will start her turn as a student teacher, fulfilling what her mother Shae says is a lifelong dream… to become a teacher in a classroom! To undertake this calling in a time of pandemic will be a daunting task, but Keri is up to the task and we both congratulate and pray for her as she lives out her baptismal vows and her calling.

This weekend, Peg and I have been hosted by the Rev Can himself, Father Dale Grandfield and his husband Brad, as we get ready to move to Florida this week. It was this congregation that raised up Dale and sent him off to Seminary to pursue and test his call to ministry. He was our music director, and any parish would have assumed that this was enough, but Dale knew there was something more, and this community nurtured and encouraged that in him. Hearing and pursuing a call may take us in unexpected places.

This parish undertook a call to share in the feeding and sheltering of the poor, the hungry, and the homeless, and we know this ministry today as the Ark Community Meal. But way before Easton had Safe Harbor and before the revival of Easton’s downtown, this parish took turns with other churches in sheltering the homeless from the cold. This parish community’s heart for ministry, led by the vision of Fr. Jim Gill, Janet Charney, Fr. Cliff Carr, and so many others, attuned us to listen for God in creative ways that this led not to only Safe Harbor, but also ProJeCt of Easton, Cops’n’Kids, Turning Point, Third Street Alliance and so many other local agencies and ministries that serve the poor, the outcast, women, and children, and the elderly and those with special needs. Listening to a call can draw out from out amazing, holy, creativity.

This parish chose once and for all to repent of our past ambivalence (and resistance) about whether to welcome LGBTQ persons into our parish, and were so led to embrace the ministry of Sr. Helena Barrett, the first openly gay person to be ordained in the Episcopal Church, and encourage her along with Sr. Alison Joy to form a new Benedictine religious community. After the Pulse night club shooting, we as a parish decided to proudly proclaim that welcome publicly in both word and deed.

This parish hosted a pilot of the Episcopal Church’s “Becoming a Beloved Community,” and worked with Lafayette College and other community agencies to speak out about the sin of racism, held community workshops, and decided through the Vestry, that this parish—as a whole—would be life members of the NAACP through the Easton Branch.

During my time here, we have experimented in many ways responding to the call of God in a variety of ways. Our concerts and artistic endeavors, the founding the Chautauqua of the Two Rivers, our choral scholars—two of whom came to faith and were baptized as young adults in this community—our work with Lafayette. We adopted a school in Kajo-Keji, South Sudan, and made audacious decision to tithe our capital campaign to build that school.

My experience of this community over the past nineteen years that this is a community that strives to listen for the call of God in big and little ways. Even our bike rides, our picnics, and partnerships with other parishes were living responses to the call of God to “discover, share, and live God’s love as friends and apprentices of Jesus Christ.”

Now, the time has come to listen again to the call of God. God is taking you to a hope-filled future. It is a heady thing, this business about call, so be careful not to get ahead of yourselves. Time and again, I have learned the hard way that good intentions become pavers on the road to perdition when we let ourselves think that we know better than God what God wants. So stop, pray, listen, discern, pray some more, and—above all—don’t be bamboozled because the evil one wants our good intentions to lead us someplace else. Meet your calling with integrity, inquiry, and, yes, even humor, and God will honor you with great things and trust you to follow him as friends and apprentices of Jesus Christ.

Listen for God’s call. Respond to God’s voice. Be discomfited by God’s urging. And may God go with you in all you do.

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, January 17, 2021, at Trinity Episcopal Church, Easton, Pennsylvania. This was my final sermon as 13th Rector of that parish.

Being Trusted by God for God's Work

So, what the heck is a talent, anyway? I’ll tell you one thing: it won’t win you a spot on America’s Got Talent, or Dancing with the Stars, that’s for sure! You know those giant lottery billboards … the ones that tell you the current jackpot in great big letters? That’s a talent. If you suddenly had in your hand enough money to equal the average annual salary times twenty…. That’s a talent.

So imagine if you hit the jackpot. What would you do?

The trusted servants in Jesus’ story did not hit the jackpot. Instead, they were people their master had come to trust with what amounted to a winning lottery ticket—but there was a catch. They had to make it grow on his behalf!

Imagine if someone gave you a big pile of money and said “I am going away now, you take this big pile of money and make it grow and when I come back I will collect what you’ve made.” What would you do?

This is what happens in the story Jesus told about three servants who were told to grow their masters money. Only two did, but one did not. He trusted them all, he believed them all to be responsible. And he gave them only as much as they could handle. Two of them did something to make their money grow. But not the third.  Remember, the master believed that the third slave had some skills, some gifts, some ability—because even though he was given the smallest amount, it wasn’t chump change! He gave the guy twenty years of average daily wage! That would be about a million dollars by today’s standard. Cha-ching!

But he was afraid of the master and knew he’d be angry if he lost, so he kept it safe…and that’s all.

Thinking about that third slave reminded me of a news story from a few years ago, where a young couple bought a house in California from the estate of an elderly man who had died alone, having outlived his wife and whose grown children lived far away. As the new owners began to renovate their home, they found envelopes full of cash squirreled away in nooks and crannies. Soon these envelopes became a pile and that pile amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The old man didn’t trust the banks. He didn’t invest the money. He kept it a secret so no one would steal it.  He hid them for the day that, no matter how dreary and wet, was never rainy enough. His children said he lived in near poverty his whole life while working every day he could.

Now the new owners had a dilemma. Their lawyers told them  that all that money was theirs to keep. The contract on the sale of the house said so…all the contents of the house were theirs. But the new owner and his wife knew that the man did not save all that money to go to some stranger who happened to buy a house. Sure, they thought, here is a windfall but what kind of lesson shall we teach our children? So, instead of keeping the money, they gave it back to the man’s children for them to use.

Heart-warming story. But what made this man hide all his money in the first place? What made him keep it a secret from even his children? What made him live as a pauper while riches were only an arm’s reach away?

Fear. Fear and a kind of backwards faith that says something bad is always just around the corner.

That’s why today’s Gospel is so very important. Matthew’s church was trying to figure out how to live in that very long time between the resurrection and Jesus’ return. They remembered a teaching of Jesus and applied it to their own church and that lesson was never to bury or hide what we have been given.

Think about it. Here they were, fifty or so years after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, and already there has arisen a disturbing tendency for the community to stand pat and let things work themselves out.

They, like us, had to be reminded of the bounty God has showered on his people; and, most of all, on the trust Christ has placed on us to carry out his mission…to be Christ’s people, Christ’s representatives in the world. And so Matthew included this lesson of Jesus into his Gospel… because his church was stuck in a kind of inertia—whether it was out of fear or simply stuck in complacency, we don’t know. But they had to be reminded that God in Christ trusted them with a great gift to do God’s work.

But being trusted can be scary. We don’t want to disappoint. We are afraid of messing up. We don’t want to lose what we’ve been given. And if that fear takes hold…if that worry about what might happen becomes front and center…if thinking about potential disapproval or judgment or concern over what people might think takes hold of our hearts…then we become helpless. If we are overwhelmed by worry then we become helpless. No wonder the third slave buried his treasure and hunkered down!

That is our challenge even today. We live in a strange time of uncertainty, caution to the point of fear, sometimes resulting in irrational defiance. We have just been through a strange, stressful election season, and even still some people cannot let go and trust the process they claim to love enough to accept the outcome. We think we hang on out of conviction, but really we are hanging on to dear life out of fear. In this environment we are tempted to hunker down, get belligerent, hide our gifts, and so become helpless.

I am reminded of the words of blessed Pope John XXIII—who risked it all for the sake of the Gospel in calling together the Vatican II Council in 1963. He said we in the Church are not the curators of a museum; but instead we are the cultivators of a garden. Gardening is hard work and requires planning and preparation and attention, and our hands will get dirty. Because gardens are for growing, not for burying.

Jesus’ parable says that the master gave each slave a gift in proportion to their abilities. I believe we have all been given what we need and the place to act on those gifts.

While we tend to focus on the poor guy in the Gospel who gets thrown in the outer darkness, we forget about the rest of the story: don’t forget the two servants who are complimented for their work, and more than that…they are welcomed into the joy of their master. What they receive is not a promotion with a fat paycheck but something much more important. Their faithfulness means that they enjoy a deeper relationship with God.

The fundamental difference is how they saw their gifts and how they understood their master in the first place. The master trusted all three and that trust was a gift— the ones who saw abundant possibility were the ones who returned that blessing to their master many fold and received blessing in return.

But too often we are like the third servant. We are often tempted to see God first and finally as a hard judge—as someone very scary—and this can blind us from seeing the gift we are entrusted with as an opportunity and calling but as a time-bomb. The third servant led with his fear, and so lost out.

The lesson here for you and me, the average friend and apprentice of Jesus, is this: receive what God has given you with joy, and use it—even it means some risk—in a way that returns that blessing to God. Don’t stand pat—do something big and audacious and risky for God.

We live in an uncertain time. We are asked to wear masks and wash hands and not go into crowded places. This is an important work of love and I commend it to you, not out of fear but out of care. We are tempted to get angry and stubborn and do something stupid. We are tempted to go for the familiar, instead of the imaginative and new. And I am not just talking about money—or even masks! I am talking about our tendency to organize our living around what we are afraid of, and that is when we bury what we’ve been given.

The antidote is to live joyfully in the blessings God has given us in Christ Jesus; to use the abilities and resources God has given us to be God’s hands and feet in the world; and to build on the blessings and assets we have to cultivate our lives in service to God and to the world starting right here, right now. We are being called upon to think of church and community in new, imaginative ways.

In Christ, we have been a given a gift beyond expectation or imagining. Now, how do we use what we have been given?

A Sermon for the 24^th Sunday after Pentecost (28A), Matthew 25:14-30

Watch your mouth: On truth, friendship, and character

For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.

-Aristotle

A buddy of mine on Facebook-- a fellow Episcopalian who belongs to another parish-- disagrees with me on many things, often political in nature and he loves to engage me on my social media feeds.


He adores President Trump. I don't.
He thinks Brexit is a great idea. I don't.
I think he thinks a wall along the southern US border would solve a lot of problems. I think it's a fool errand.He thinks climate change is either a hoax or just nature doing it's thing. I'm worried and believe that humans have had a profound impact on the environment.

But we engage each other as people, and so when we agree, we do, and when don't, we say so!

What we don't do is call each other names. One element of our periodic debate is that he is always respectful towards me and this encourages me to continue to be respectful to him. He'll never change my mind (or at least I don't think he will) about certain issues and I will never change his. He has corrected me when I've been wrong, and I accept that. But we talk (at least electronically) and we know that, even in our separate churches, we share the same communion table and follow the same Lord. 

One thing I avoid doing on the interwebs is reading the comments. For every little clever gem that gets posted there is a dump-truck full of dross. Call me a hypocrite... I will periodically comment, and I suppose that my gem is someone else's dross. But this does lower my blood pressure, it also means that this just adds to my digital isolation.

So he does me a service, for which I am grudgingly grateful. You see, I am like a lot of users of the internet. I have my favorite sites and either by answering certain questions or liking certain sites and posts, the almighty algorithm has figured out what I like and feeds me more of it. If it weren't for my buddy, I might think that the whole universe agrees with my obviously enlightened and well-reasoned positions on nearly everything.

Call it an echo-chamber. Or a silo. Or whatever, I live there. 

My pal helps me see the world a bit more broadly. And sometimes that reveals to me some things that are pretty darned ugly. 

Yesterday my twitter and FB exploded with posts claiming that Greta Thunberg, who spoke at the UN this week, and the thousands of young people who went on climate strike last week have somehow been brainwashed by, I don't know, somebody. And their objections come down to something like "Isn't it terrible to use a child in this way!" 

This appeared in the New York Times today:

Fox News apologized after a pundit, Michael Knowles, called her “a mentally ill Swedish child” on one of its programs on Monday. (Ms. Thunberg, who is 16, has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, and has called it “a superpower.”) The network called the comment disgraceful, and a spokeswoman said Fox had no plans to invite Mr. Knowles back.

Mr. Knowles, who writes for the conservative news site The Daily Wire, defended his remarks on Twitter, where he accused Ms. Thunberg’s supporters of exploiting her. The notion that she was being used as a puppet was repeated by others, including the conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza.

The day before Ms. Thunberg’s United Nations speech, Mr. D’Souza likened her image to ones used in Nazi propaganda, posting a photo on Twitter of Ms. Thunberg, wearing her signature long braids, next to an illustration of a young woman with a similar hairstyle standing in front of a swastika flag.  

Other outspoken figures on the right sounded similar notes. Sebastian Gorka, who worked in the White House briefly under President Trump, wrote on Twitter that Ms. Thunberg’s remarks were “disturbingly redolent of a victim of a Maoist ‘re-education’ camp.”

Laura Ingraham, the Fox News host, called Ms. Thunberg’s United Nations speech “chilling” on her Monday night show, and ran a segment about how climate change “hysteria” is changing American youth.

The segment included a clip from “Children of the Corn,” the 1984 movie based on a Stephen King novel in which children in a farm town murder adults. 

Now nothing gets me riled up quite like seeing otherwise adult people piling on a kid. Even a kid as articulate and media-savvy as Greta Thunberg. But just as I was getting the most riled up, I have had to stop myself. If it is wrong for people to treat Thunberg this way, then why is it okay for me or the people I happen to agree with to do it?

Ethics are pesky that way. 

Case in point: yesterdays address to the United Nations by President Donald Trump. He basically said that the way of the future is nationalism unleashed. Every nation for itself. Never mind that both fascism and communism were defeated by the concerted, combined efforts of the nations of the world (at the cost of a great many lives along the way). Never mind that everything from international travel to mailing a postcard overseas to being able to telephone or e-mail a person across the globe or share information in the internet are all possible with international cooperation. And you would think that being such a fan of capitalism, the idea that international markets--and the possibility of making and selling lots of things--are only enhanced by these international relationships. 

But no! According to his address at the UN yesterday, It is every nation for itself. Borders are beautiful. Cooperation is for losers. 

Now it would be easy for me to fall into the same trap... I think that the idea of decreasing international cooperation and feuding with other nations over more and more things we used to work out together in places like the UN and the dozens of international conventions that govern our global common life is is a very bad idea. These conventions and organizations have done much to preserve peace and extend prosperity over the past 75 years. They are not perfect but they sure beat the heck out of the alternatives! 

It's when we fall into the trap of resorting to name-calling and character assassination that trouble me. It is easy to do, and so difficult to stop. 

When we are start being strident towards our neighbor, filling our language with bluster, implied threat, and imputed motives that the seeds for disharmony and misunderstanding grows. We might feel the short term rush of having silenced the other guy or putting our opposition in its place, but we have created the seeds for future conflict that will eventually consume us all. 

I firmly believe that one of the ways we overcome the games, manipulation, and the drama is to keep cool. So just as I think people shouldn't beat up on Greta Thunberg, I think it is unhelpful to only pile on insults and characterization on the President or anyone else we disagree with.

Everyday ethics, not to mention being faithful to the Gospel of Jesus, means that we tell the truth, and we that we respect the people we are telling it to. We must name evil for what it is. We must not think that doing evil to fight evil will somehow result in a good. We must do the things that evil hates.

Don't get me wrong. Satire and humor are essential. The best satire gets us to think about issues differently. And one of the first signs that a person is too wrapped up in themselves or that their view of the world is too constrained is when they lose the ability to laugh at themselves. So keep it up Trevor and Stephen! 

I have a feeling that as we move into this new phase, with talk of impeachment in the air, we won't need to exaggerate or pontificate. We need to stay cool and focused. The true character of a lot of people will come to fore all on their own. And while bringing out the worst in people might create a short term gain, in the end the people who build themselves up by tearing others down will ultimately be crushed under the weight of their own debris.

And the same thing is true for responding to climate change and caring for our environment. Do what we must to get the conversation going: protest, petition, organize, teach the science, plan realistic responses, and all the rest. Yup, even satirize. We won't need to exaggerate or beat up on those who either disagree with us or, especially, on those who don't understand the problem. 

At the same time, we will need to deal with the fact that there will be those who won't mind or care if their behavior is unethical or sensational in order to make their points or to stop this movement. Don't let them deter you. 

As we move into a new phase, with both impeachment and global warming in the air, and with an election just around the corner, we will have to deal with a lot of hype, a lot of emotion, and a lot of spin. Opportunities for hate and division abound. 

Scripture is filled with good advice about watching one's mouth. These days it's not just the tongue that can get us in trouble but our keyboards and our memes. First Peter 3:10 comes to mind which reads “Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.” 

I am reminded over and over again that the line between being a prophetic witness and a total jerk is pretty fine. So it is important to speak truth and also to mind my mouth. 

If we are going to get anywhere on effecting real change when it comes to climate, poverty, racism, and social division, it will be essential for us to balance our clarity with our charity. Speak the truth. Hold fast. Lead with love.

The thing that I am learning from my pal is how to listen and how to be more articulate, and how not to resort to cheap shots, distracting accusations, or easy characterizations. If a cause is worth the struggle, it is worth doing honorably.

Herding cats in the kingdom of God

If you were to ask me to choose the 100 best TV commercials of all time, do you know what would be at the very top of my list? It would be an ad that first appeared in Super Bowl XXXIV in 2000.

Picture tough, dust-caked cowboys riding the range. They are on a drive through the desolate, wild, open prairie. From their horses they shout, whistle and use their lariats to bring their herd home. The ad opens with a young cowboy standing next to a Conestoga wagon, holding up a picture. “This is my grandfather,” he says. “He started herding cats when he was 15.”

Yes, these cowboys are herding cats.

“Anyone can herd cattle,” one of these cowboys says. “But keeping ten thousand half-wild short hairs together… is about the hardest work a man can do.”

This ad works because it takes a time honored image that we all know and with wonderful details like a little yarn, a sneeze, and a lint roller---not to mention dozens and dozen of cats--and turns it all upside down.

Sort of like taking an historic parish founded by a famous industrialist located in a town re-named for a famous athlete and then raising up for that parish an all-female leadership team.

The American cowboy is an archetype for us is because he embodies the free individual. 

Alone, against the odds, he by himself endures and brings the herd home. If there is camaraderie, it is a companionship of rugged individuals. The archetype appeals to us precisely because we can’t imagine ourselves being part of a herd.

We may like groups but we are nothing like cattle or sheep… or so we tell ourselves. We listen to our own beat, to many beats, all our own. We like to go our own way, do what we think best, maybe we’ll tell people what we’re up to or maybe not. We don’t live on the prairie, but we do think of ourselves as rugged individualists.

To tell you the truth, we are a tough flock to lead.

So when we hear someone say that parish life is “like herding cats” we all know what that means. None of us wants to be mere cattle…let alone sheep!

Which makes me wonder:  Why would the early church remember today’s Gospel image of sheep and, most of all, why would they remember Jesus calling himself the good shepherd? 

For one thing, I think they remembered that Jesus stood up to Israel’s religious leaders about their lack of leadership. One of the things that Jesus calls out, is the temptation to think of ourselves as so unique, so special, so “apart” that it cuts us off from the world God has placed us in.

The Gospel of John is also challenging some of the leaders of the early church. He reminds those "pastors" (another word for shepherd) not to fail their infant communities by putting themselves on pedestals or preaching a gospel they did not attend to themselves.

We like to think of the church as being one family, one unit with a single mind and purpose and yet we know from our experience that being in the same building at prayer does not necessarily mean that we are one flock with one shepherd.  At times we are like a herd of cats.

Yet somewhere in between the docility of sheep and the independence of cats, there is set before us the truth of who we are and what we need. We all need direction, purpose, and community. We all need, heed, and follow a good shepherd.

Now before you start giving Rebecca the side-eye glance and expect her to have all the answers, remember who the good shepherd really is.   

Jesus is the good shepherd by showing us a way. Jesus is the good shepherd because of his unity with God. Jesus is the good shepherd because through his life, death and resurrection each and every one of us has new life and a new way of being. Jesus redeems and shapes us to be something more than docile sheep or independent cats. 

In our baptism and our profession of faith we gave ourselves to the good shepherd and began to follow him. He guides us and protects us and teaches us.

In our prayer and worship and study, we learn to hear Jesus’ voice over the din and distraction of the culture we are in.

In our community, we learn to recognize Jesus at work in and through us. We discover how Jesus protects us and prepares us to face the assaults and ambiguities of everyday life through our sacramental and common life, and in the ways we listen and support one another.

In our witness, we see people without hope or purpose or who doubt that anyone will welcome them into any fellowship, and we give them shelter, and nourishment and care.

As followers of the Good Shepherd, who is at the very same time the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, we are members of a different kind of community. We follow a shepherd who serves. Who lays down his life for the sheep. Who seeks us when we are lost. Who leads us to new life and new community.

And in following Jesus, the Good Shepherd, we find that the true nature of the church lies somewhere in between the docility of sheep and the independence of cats. The more we follow Christ, the more we, together and individually, become like the One we follow.

If herding cats is one of my favorite ads, one of my favorite quotes about mission comes from Pope John XXIII. He said about the Church that “We are not on earth to guard a museum, but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”

In looking around this church, and yes I’ve been one of those tourists, there is a little sign right at the top of the grand outdoor stairs that no one uses because of the elevator. It tells people that you are a “free” church. That is, when this place was built, Mr. Packer decided not to charge pew rents, so instead of the wealthiest always getting the best seats in the house, anyone could get the best seat!

Once upon a time, my own parish of Trinity, Easton, had a church fight over abolishing pew rents. It was so fractious that the Easton Express Times reported on how the police were called to calm everyone down. The Bishop had to take the train from Reading to sort out which of the two vestries (yes, two!) that were elected that day was the real one. Those were the days, lemme tell ya!

That little sign on your door says you are open to all. It says that for all the beauty and all the grandeur, despite the Tiffany windows and the Mercer tile, this was to be a church open to all people. Which is why that even though the big mansions are over there, this church was built where all the tradespeople, workers, railroaders, merchants, and coal-crackers lived.  

But, as the sign also indicates, free is not cheap. There are things we have to do, and that means more than knowing when to stand, sit, or kneel.

Accepting the free gift of grace means that our lives will change in unexpected ways. Which is why the church is most obviously the church when we choose to model ourselves on the good shepherd, so that we can together share in the good shepherd’s care and longing for the world. When we follow Jesus, the good shepherd, we are also the ones who with Jesus give ourselves to the world he loves. As disciples, we follow Jesus so that we may become more and like him both by ourselves and in our common life.

In taking on Rebecca as your priest in charge, especially after accompanying her through so much of her journey, you might think that you are taking on the familiar. You might be tempted to do what you've always done with even greater fervor, as crazy as that sounds.

The truth is that being the body of Christ at once grounds us and is unpredictable. It is full of challenge and change. Living the Christian life is always on-the-job training (no matter how long you’ve been at it), learning and doing the work of Jesus, being a disciple of Jesus in community is demanding. 

The good news is that Jesus is our shepherd. Jesus has made into something more than a herd of individual cats and something better than flock of docile sheep.

All of us in this parish, in this diocese, in this community, in this time are adopted into Christ's body, and are guided by of the Holy Spirit and living in sacramental community, so we are together discovering, sharing, and learning what it is to follow him. And in this moment, in this place, we are Jesus' friends and apprentices, inviting everyone around us into new, life-giving life with him.

It may feel like herding cats, but we have a direction, a place and a purpose because we hear and follow the Good Shepherd, who knows us and calls us each by name.

Preached at the celebration of new ministry of the Rev. Rebecca Parsons-Cancelliere at St. Mark and St. John Episcopal Church in Jim Thorpe, PA on the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year B, April 22, 2018.

A transition done well

UPDATED. As the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem prepares to elect a new Bishop, it seems like a good time to reflect on where we've come in these past four years. 

Right about the time I was coming out of seminary and entering parish ministry there was a show on television called “The A-Team.” As television went, it was pure brain candy.  It was all about four guys, all veterans, who were on the run from the Army and who would go around helping people in trouble. Every week they'd save the day through a combination of cleverness hi-jinx and, well, explosives.

At the end of every episode, the leader of the team, played by George Peppard, would look at the results of the justified mayhem, and smile while clenching a really big cigar in his teeth and say “I love it when a plan comes together.”

Me, too.

Sometimes, when I was a brand-new priest, I’d repeat that line when, against all odds, something we did in the church actually worked. The important thing when a plan comes together is that it is rarely, if ever, one person doing all the work. It is the work of a community. Of, ahem, "a team," so to speak.

As we stand in that prayerful space between walkabouts and the election of our ninth Bishop, I find myself saying that phrase again and again. I think it is a good moment to look back on the transitional period we have just come through and reflect on where we’ve come as a diocesan community, and enjoy how it all came together.

To tell the truth, we did not start this transition out on the best of feet. Relationships were strained, especially among the clergy. And because of that, people tended to pick sides and, if not point fingers, at least grumble a lot. Operationally, things were working but they weren’t happy. We did not lack for diagnoses or possible solution. We did lack long term vision and were unsure of what our resources were. To coin an oft over used (and misunderstood) phrase, we were an anxious system.

When things get like this, the big risk is to look for people to blame. That usually falls on the guy in the “big chair.” Harry Truman was not being naive or an autocrat when he put the sign on his desk that said “The buck stops here.” But when the temptation presented itself to seek blame and form up firing squads, I found myself reminding folks that if this is where we wanted to go, then we’d better find ones that could shoot in a circle.  

It is also tempting to look for quick fixes and this was not the time for that. When this process started, I was the President of the Standing Committee and the choice before our group was to either move directly into a search or to take some time to reflect and recollect. 

Another choice was to pretend there was no problem, kick the can down the road, and wait for the next bishop to solve it. How many organizations--I am thinking of you, parish churches-- have done that before? And how well did that work out?

For me, the choice was clear but not simple. As we on the Standing Committee talked with lay and ordained leaders around the diocese, the consensus grew that we needed to make some space for ourselves. But the momentum was already in place towards just diving into a search and finding the next bishop ASAP. One day the FedEx guy delivered a big box of notebooks and all the materials that a diocese gets to prepare for an episcopal search. As we started going down the checklist, taking the necessary steps, and having the meetings and regional gatherings to start a search, my gut was telling me that we weren’t ready, and in talking with other lay and ordained leaders, I learned that I wasn't alone.

The good news was that we, as a diocese, were not the first to experience this malaise and to need to do this kind of work. There was another place in our province whose experience we could draw upon even though the political and canonical landscape was different. 

Before the Episcopal Church had this canonical provision called a "Bishop Provisional," the Standing Committee of my former diocese of West Virginia, called a retired bishop to come to be their “interim bishop.” In those days, the Standing Committee retained the full reigns of ecclestiastical authority, but he was our bishop and set about the work of healing. 

Lots of dioceses today have Provisional Bishops, but we were looking for something more. This was about much more than croziers and confirmations. 

But you only know what you know, and we were just about to look for a retired bishop to hold down the fort, when I found myself one day brainstorming (and worrying and wondering) with the then-Suffragan Bishop for Pastoral Affairs, Clay Matthews. I don't remember how it happened, but the idea was floated that we might try partnering with another nearby diocese and sharing their bishop to address some of the structural and adaptive issues we were talking about. We kicked around ideas  about how this might work.

Eventually, we decided to invite a young (but not new) bishop in Northwestern Pennsylvania to come and serve part time as our Bishop Provisional. Later on, in March, 2014, I said this to the Diocese of Bethlehem before we elected Bishop Sean Rowe to be our Bishop Provisional:

I gotta tell ya, when the idea of having a provisional bishop who would remain a diocesan bishop was first floated, I remember thinking (if not saying) “what? Are you nuts?”

But when we looked at the wish list that the Standing Committee created from the input you brought to us last October (2013) and that the clergy helped us created last November… a bishop who would lead collaboratively, who could help us heal our injuries and rebuild a sense of trust, who thinks about the church in different ways… I found myself, and I believe the rest of the Standing Committee, began to say “yeah. Yeah! This might work!”

So the vision grew. Instead of just finding a person to fill a job, to hold things down while we found our next bishop, we began to think bigger and bigger. 

The more we talked, the more we dreamed. And the more we dreamed, the more our vision grew.

What if our two dioceses entered into a ministry partnership? There are things the Diocese of Bethlehem does really well. Among them was communication, global mission (for example, our unique and amazing partnership with the Diocese of Kajo-Keji in South Sudan), stewardship, the varieties of outreach around the diocese, Christian Formation both in the parish and for laity in the Diocese, and the way we attend to the connection between liturgy and formation and mission. We were already a diocese of creative thinkers and experimenters. 

At the same time, the Diocese of Northwest Pennsylvania understands small churches really well. They are  a group that thinks about and raises up lay and local clergy leadership, creates partnerships between local congregations (both Episcopal and other traditions) in new ways. They learned how to do a lot with very little. They had also navigated some very tough waters in a forthright and creative way. They were a diocesan community that was willing to experiment and to try something new. 

A priest from the Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania, Adam Trambley, said at the time

"I thought it was a kind of challenge that was just out of left field enough and just hard enough that it was probably of God.”

We felt that we might work together in new ways. We just had no idea what it would be like or how it would turn out.

But the experiment was important and not just for us. The Episcopal Church has around 110 dioceses in several countries. Every single diocese must repeat certain structures as if they are only show in town. There is a lot of repetition of structure and not a lot of collaboration. We have the biggest legislative body this side of China, but not a lot of experience in matching resources. 

For example, where I minister, in the very southeast corner of our diocese I am shouting distance from eighteen nearby parishes, a third of them in three other dioceses all within a half-hour drive or less. What is the “boonies” in those dioceses happens to lie right next door to the spine of our own, and yet we act as if the others parishes in these other dioceses don’t exist. When our parish attempted to start a Spanish speaking congregation, we got great support from both 815 and our own diocesan staff but were unconscious of the tremendous experience nearby if it weren't for those pesky diocesan and provincial lines. The Delaware may as well have been a wall instead of river, in terms of lost mission potential.

By partnering with Northwestern Pennsylvania, and by taking the time for a creative transitional period, the dream was that we, as a diocese could form our own vision of ministry into which we could invite the next bishop. Instead of just holding down the fort, our hope was that we would provide the vision to the next woman or man sitting in the big chair, instead of depending who ever that might be to have all the answers and tell us what to do.

Our hope was that in our Episcopal search we'd be inviting to someone to come and join us on our adventure.

But first, we needed to move beyond the relatively short season of exhaustion and hurt feelings before those dynamics became hard-wired and habitual. But instead to build on the good work that was left to us by both Bishop Paul Marshall and his predecessor, Bishop Mark Dyer. We were blessed because we had a living history and memory of experimentation and innovation under those leaders, and this was precisely the moment when we as a community needed to pick up that tradition and use it.

Of  course, not everything went according to plan. But that’s okay because generally speaking there was no plan. We were learning as we were going. Sometimes things were very bumpy and uncertain.  We had some distractions along the way. For one thing, we had to do an audit that ended up going back seven years, and that led us to do the work of getting our financial and administrative house in order. 

But the main thing was always the main thing, and that was to re-knit our relationships and together develop a vision for ministry. The Diocesan Pilgrimage was essential in accomplishing this. Instead of doing a massive strategic planning process, we did over a year of prayer, study, reflection and, significantly, attempting to develop partnerships between parishes, often ones that never worked together before.

While the formal Pilgrimage period is over, it is still bearing fruit. In my own parish (Trinity, Easton), for example, the partnership between us and St. Mark's and St. John’s Parish in Jim Thorpe that began during our Diocesan Pilgrimage and is still growing and expanding. Through participating in diocesan events and utilizing other resources like the RSCM-King's College Course, we have a deeper relationship with the Pro-Cathedral and other parishes to the north and west. The parishes in the Lehigh Valley are learning to work together and it has become almost holy tradition that we share Ascension Day services together at the Cathedral.

In addition, patterns of living established well before the transition still function organically. Every week, many of the clergy from the Lehigh Valley still meet for breakfast, as do the clergy in the Wyoming Valley, and the regional Bible studies occur under local leadership forming patterns of living that are right for each local region.

When I was in West Virginia, the diocesan staff was small. Maybe four people and a cat. We in Bethlehem don’t have the cat, but our staff is smaller than it used to be. This change was not just about money. Through it, we have learned how to distribute and share executive leadership around the diocese. Diocesan committees are learning how to function better and to be centers of leadership. Doing it this way actually takes more work than the old centralized executive model that we saw in the 1980’s and 1990’s across the Church, and is probably less efficient, but the pay off in participation, the tapping of resources that might otherwise be missed, and experimentation is very big. I believe we have set the table not only for our next Bishop but for all of us.

Mid-way through this process, my time on Standing Committee ended and I moved from being at the center of all this action to an observer. As much as it made my palms itch at times, it was important for me to learn how to let new leaders finish what we started. It was important for us as a community to learn how to make important transitions normally-- to stop thinking of transitions solely as endings-and-beginnings but to think of them as signposts along a continuous process. Generally speaking, the newer leaders saw things with new lenses, solved problems we didn't see, and kept the ball rolling.

But, both as a participant and as an observer, this transition has revealed that the changes we envisioned at the start of the process were right on the money. Many people share the credit for the imagination and chutzpah to do what we as a diocese has accomplished. We have moved from one kind of stability, into to a period of volatility, and now we look forward to a new stability. I believe that we have developed new skills, new energy and vision along the way that is deeply seated into our community. We are connected to our past, deeply present in this moment, and looking towards an expectant, faithful future. 

We are coming to the end of a process of prayerful, working discernment. In just ten days, we will elect a new bishop. But getting here meant a lot of effort, heart, conversation (and controversy) and hard choices. None of us could have done this alone. God gave us the right people in the right places at the right time and this has allowed our time of episcopal transition to unfold in the way it did. This time allowed us to regain our innate strengths, build on the great gifts and work of our past, and regain-- no, develop new!-- trust in one another. 

I believe that this was pretty much the outcome we were hoping for four years ago when the Standing Committee met with Bishop Matthews to decide how were going to proceed. We just had no idea how exactly we were going to do it or what it would be like.

The journey was an act of faith made real. We’re not done, but before we jump into the excitement of the next era of our common life, it is good to take a moment to smile, take a puff on our big cigar (or our candy cigarette), and muse in thanksgiving to God, “I love it when a plan comes together.”