Washing up

Remember what you were told as kids just after dinner was announced? In my house it was "Wash up!"

And I am sure that you’ve seen the signs: "employees must wash hands before returning to work." We are getting more and more used to it. 

The other day, I heard a little boy washing his hands with his dad. I loved hearing them both sang “happy birthday to you” because evidently the little boy learned in school that he needed to scrub that long to wash away the germs.

Look around. Almost everywhere, including in this church, you see bottles of sanitizer so people can clean their hands. Why? Well, we want to be clean, and we want to be healthy. And we are trying to protect ourselves from things we can’t see. And we’ve gotten used to seeing them everywhere: at the entries to stores, restaurants, doctor’s offices, medical buildings, hospitals, convenience store counters, even at Church. These past two years, we’ve gotten used to hand washing and sanitizing.

Hands, okay. But washing feet? 

Every year, I've heard the same thing when Holy Week rolls around. Whenever we invite people to have their feet washed, they often say “ugh” or “eww” or “no thank you!” But it was once part of everyday life but even in Biblical times, people got weird about washing feet.

There are three stories of foot washing in the Gospels, and each time someone is unhappy. In two of these, women wash Jesus feet. In Luke, a woman comes into a dinner party where Jesus was eating with both his disciples and with Pharisees and scribes, and washes his feet with her tears and dries them with her hair. In the Gospel of John, Mary of Bethany washes Jesus’ feet and anoints them with expensive perfume and also dries his feet with her hair.

In these cases, people were scandalized. In Luke, when Jesus allowed a woman to touch him and while she was at it took a typical ritual of hospitality and went overboard, the people in the room were scandalized. In John, Judas sniffs that expensive perfume used on his feet was wasted.

Tonight, we heard that Simon Peter protested, “You will never wash my feet.”  Not Jesus.  Not his master.  Not ever.  Still, there was Jesus with his wash basin and his towel.  He knelt in front of them one by one and washed their feet, calluses and all.

In all of these accounts, no one is upset that foot-washing per se is, well, yucky. It’s just that it should be done by someone else, preferably a servant, and whatever happens, no one should talk about it too much. In all three Gospel accounts, though, the person washing the feet draws attention to both the status of the washer and the status of the one being washed.

When Jesus was done washing his disciples feet, he told them why he did it.  “I’m setting an example for you,” he said.  “You also should do what I have done to you.” 

If we look at the precedents set, at least in the Gospel of John, look at what Jesus did. He reduced himself not only to the status of a slave, worse than that he is now at the level of women.

Shocking, yes, but it is at the heart of Jesus’ ministry and the reason he is heading to the cross. In Jesus’ action, he has flipped everything upside down. Servants are now at the heart of the Gospel. Those who are being served…the humble, the sick, the incarcerated, the poor, the outcast…are the head of the line in God’s reign.

The word “Maundy” for “Maundy Thursday” comes from the Latin for the new command that Jesus gives his disciples. We are no longer to settle for merely practicing the golden rule of treating others in the way we would like to be treated. To follow Jesus is more than simply being “nice.”

No. Jesus’ new commandment is to love one another as he has loved us. This new command is one where our love is to be love for it’s own sake, with no expectation for anything in return.

Jesus is sending his disciples—and us-- out into the world, into those crowds of people with all kinds of needs, fears, hopes, possibilities and foibles.. And what are we to do? We are to wash their feet. We are to share Jesus’ body and blood in broken bread and poured out wine. We are to baptize, washing people in water and the Holy Spirit so that they may be a part of God’s family, the Church. Jesus’ washing of feet teaches us that at the heart of the Gospel is to actively, practically love them because in the act of loving, both the lover and the loved is changed.

This Lent, I read a book called Priests de la Resistance!: The Loose Canons Who Fought Fascism in the Twentieth Century by a priest in the Church of England named The Rev. Fergus Butler-Gallie. In it, he describes the many clergy, nuns, monks, and Christian laity of several traditions who fought fascism, often resulting in death. It was a useful meditation on the sacrificial nature of Christian discipleship. But one does not have to experience martyrdom to understand and live the practical love of Jesus every day.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta once talked about the enormous job of being Christ’s people in a broken world. She said:

“People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Love them anyway.

People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. 

If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. 

If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. 

If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. 

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. 

Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. 

For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.” 

Jesus demonstrates his new commandment to love one another as he loves us when he stoops to wash his disciples feet. He becomes the slave so that we can learn about the primacy of service. He will demonstrate it again when he will willingly give himself to the cross so that none of us have to face death with the same terror again. He lives, he dies, he serves so that we might have life and live in in service to others.

Now that we have been given this new commandment, just what are we to do now? Jesus’ answers when he takes up a towel and some water and gets down on his knees to serve: His answer: Love them anyway.

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Here is the bulletin for Maundy Thursday at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater, FL

Here is a video of the liturgy.

Here is a video of the sermon.

If you have ever known emptiness, today is your day.

Holy Saturday, April 3, 2010, 

Revised April 15, 2022 

If you have ever experienced your faith as being absent, today is your day. 

If you have ever experienced deep emptiness from your soul to your bones, today is your day. 

If you have ever known loss that cannot be filled, today is your day.

If you've ever looked around at the world and see war, violence, greed and corruption, and wonder if things can't get any worse, then this day is for you.

If you have ever discovered, as C.S. Lewis did, that grief feels very much like fear, then this is your day. 

If you have ever gone through the motions because you don't know what else to do, this is your day.

Holy Saturday is a day very easy to jump over. Today is a gorgeous spring day. People are out planting flowers and going to the store to buy for Easter dinner. Easter dresses are being tried on and egg hunts in the parks are happening as we speak. 

The world is busy and alive, and here we are in a darkened church before a bare cross and it feels empty. 

This is the kind of emptiness that any who has grieved the death of a loved one knows. It is like going through the motions at work, and confronting that first thanksgiving or Christmas or birthday knowing that the one we love is dead. 

I will bet that the followers of Jesus had the most somber, depressing Passover meal on record. But if they are at all like a lot of people I know, they will have done it. They will have read the words, and eaten the bitter herbs and the lamb, because...because what else could they do? Even if it was by rote, it was something. Something to anchor. Something to hold on to when there was nothing else. 

Holy Saturday is a day of absence, emptiness and numbness. If you have ever felt this way, this day is for you. 

The thing about Holy Saturday that is special is that it is the last day of the Old Creation. It's just that we don't know that yet. Just as we won't know that we have passed through the darkest moments of our grief until we suddenly find ourselves feeling again. We won't know until we look backwards. 

And here is the dreadful and true part of Holy Saturday. There is nothing we can do about it. All we can do is what I've said: slog through, go through the motions. We steer into the wave and hope that our boat is not swamped as the wave crashes over our heads. But the feast also tells us that as we wait, as we slog through our fear and emptiness, Easter is coming. 

The disciples hiding and fearing for their lives in the locked upper room did not know that yet. We never know it when we are in it. But Easter is coming. 

Our creeds and tradition say this is the time when Christ descended into hell and went among the dead. Holy Saturday reminds us that even in the emptiness, Christ is there. If we go down to Sheol, and walk among the dead, Christ is there. There is no place where we can go to escape God's love. 

But we don't know that now. We will know that tomorrow. In the meantime, this day is for you.

When will we gather again and when we will receive Communion?

(Updated Tuesday, May 19, 6 p.m.) Yesterday, I got an e-mail from a member of my parish. It raises a number of questions that I know have been floating around my congregation (and others). I have decided to post his note and my response.

We are in this for the long haul.Our pastoral and liturgical response to this unfolding pandemic will require theological inquiry, community reflection, and liturgical creativity. 

Here is part of the letter that started this:

Andrew, 

...Do you plan to celebrate Morning Prayer only until we have in-person worship?  Is there a date for the return to in-person worship?Trinity Wall Street returns June 1.  St. Paul's, Doylestown returns June 14. Why haven't we done online Eucharist?

Here is my response:

Thank you for your e-mail and for your questions. I will try to answer them as best as I can. 

When will we re-open and gather for in-person worship?

Before I start, I would like to refer you to Bishop Kevin Nichols' pastoral letter to the Diocese of Bethlehem "A Phased Approach to Regathering." Following what Bishop Kevin has written, we are still in Phase I across the whole diocese of Bethlehem. As a result, we are limited to the following protocols:

• Gathering for online worship, formation, and community

• Limiting service ministries to safe protocols dedicated to essentials such as feeding ministries  

Bishop Kevin's "Phased" approach roughly corresponds to the Commonwealths Color-coded scale. Northampton, Lehigh, and Bucks counties are all "Red" according to the Commonwealth.  The description that the Diocese of Bethlehem has laid out follows the Commonwealths nearly word for word. 

There are several  questions I don't have answers to. For example, does that mean that the whole diocese will move through the phases together or will we move through regionally depending on how the situation unfolds in different areas? I can foresee the rural northwest of our diocese reaching "green" (following the State's scale) well ahead of us in the Lehigh Valley, but Bishop Kevin could decide to have the whole diocese re-open at once rather than by region as an act of unity and visible communion. That will be up to him in consultation with the Diocesan Council and Standing Committee. 

As for the June 1 date at Trinity Wall Street and June 15 for Doylestown (Diocese of Pennsylvania) that you mention, as I read their websites, these are tentative dates. I can't say what TrinWall's criteria is, but if Doylestown follows the protocol laid out by the Diocese of Pennsylvania, their reopening will depend on how new cases develop in their county.

Even in places that have reopened, the requirements for physical distancing, hand-washing, masking, etc. might rule out Communion as we know it. Many places are also prohibiting (or at least discouraging) congregational singing. (For example, the Royal School of Church Music has suspended the King's College Course normally held at St. Stephen's Wilkes-Barre in mid- to late-July because singing blasts the droplets that might carry the contagion.) 

Keep in mind that the virus is passed along from people who are asymptomatic, and because of the scarcity of testing supplies, asymptomatic people are generally not tested. That means that by the time a person pops symptoms and tests positive, they may have been conveying the virus for 14 or more days before a definitive diagnosis. This is why the isolation and physical distancing is the required (and wisest) protocol. 

As for our own Diocese, when the Lehigh Valley reaches "Yellow" we'll see if that moves us to Phase II on the DioBeth scale. I don't know when that will be, so I don't know when in-person worship will return. (Update: Bishop Kevin has distributed guidelines as to how we'll enter "Phase II" of our COVID-19 response in the Diocese of Bethlehem.)

Right now, at Trinity, Easton, I know of at least five people who have either tested positive for COVID-19 or have been exposed to someone who has. One parishioner has died from COVID-19. So I have opted for an assertive approach to handling this crisis.

Will we only be doing Morning Prayer for On-Line worship?

Right now, we have no specific guidance from Bishop Kevin as to the do's and don't's of on-line worship. If the Cathedral sets the norm for the diocese (and this is the only place where I've seen Bishop Kevin preach and/or lead worship on-line), then the norm is Morning Prayer. I suppose that Ante-Communion is also an option. 

My approach has been to assemble worship with as many people as possible reading or leading prayers from either home or on-camera from church while practicing safe physical distancing. Our virtual choir happens as members record their singing and then the voices are mixed into a single recording and then edited into a Power Point. All of this is saved mixed as an MP4 video and published on YouTube. After publication, it is posted on our web-site, our social media, and a link is sent to folks on our e-newsletter list. 

Again, my goal is to involve as many people as possible rather than have a point-and-shoot worship (which is how we do Wednesday and major Holy Day services via Facebook Live) focusing only one or two clergy in a largely empty room.

This is where my read of Anglican theology of worship comes into play. One Episcopal parish in the LV is doing an on-line Eucharist, but the reception is only by the presiding priest and there is no congregation present either in actuality or on-screen. As you will see below, in my mind this does not meet the minimum criteria for Eucharist 

The concept of spiritual communion in our tradition has been reserved to special circumstances such as those sick or infirm to receive by mouth, or, interestingly, to soldiers in battlefield situations. Older editions of the Armed Forces Prayer Book (an Episcopal document in origin) first set out the prayer that we reprint in the e-newsletter for spiritual communion.

I am also informed by my work in Catholic Healthcare. From 1994-2002, I was the director of pastoral care in a Catholic hospital. We had an extensive ministry by both deacons and extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist. When we had Mass in the hospital's chapel, the LEM's and/or Deacon would fan out immediately after Mass. On days when we did not have Mass in our Chapel, we'd time their work--- utilizing pre-sanctified elements-- so that it would take place immediately after the televised mass on EWTN at mid-day. The point was to connect the communicant with the community in communion. 

Before the extent of our physical distancing was announced mid-Lent, I considered doing something very much like that: small groups in the presence of an LEV or Deacon who would then receive from pre-sanctified elements, while I would lead a liturgy via Livestream or Facebook Live. But this is not possible (nor advisable) in the current situation. The virus is just too virulent and too communicable.

On Private Masses and Distance Consecration

I believe that our Anglican tradition discourages both private masses and "distance" consecration. 

A private mass is when the priest celebrates the mass without a congregation present. 

Another approach, suggested by Dr. Diana Butler Bass (a lay theologian who migrated from Evangelicalism into the Episcopal church) and others, is that I could say the words of consecration on my end of a TV or Livestream broadcast and you could hold a piece of bread and cup of wine, and we could say that it was somehow consecrated and then you could receive... this is what I mean by "distance consecration...." I believe that this pushes us in a direction where we don't want to go: the Eucharist is a Sacrament, and Sacraments are not magic. The prayer of consecration is not an incantation but a work of the people of God in community. 

At the same time, the Sacrament is not a point of personal privilege nor a private possession. It is an act of community that communicates Christ and mediates grace. 

Dr. Butler-Bass has suggested that not having even a televised/live-streamed Mass is an act of "hoarding" by the clergy who are keeping the laity from the Sacrament, a view that I strongly disagree with. Reducing the question into a faux justice issue is, in my view, unhelpful, and misses the point of how sacraments function in Christian community.

Sure, God can do whatever God wants! Who is to say that the One who lives in Kairos (God's time) can't transcend Chronos (human time) and consecrate the elements across a TV or the internet. But Sacraments are not magic and the Eucharistic Prayer is not an incantation. I personally believe that the gathering of community is an essential element at the heart of the Eucharist. 

Short of specific guidelines from the Episcopal Church (except for the general guidance of the Presiding Bishop, Bishop Kevin, and various other diocesan bishops), I have fallen back on the guidance I lived under during my time in Catholic healthcare nearly twenty years ago. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops set out useful guidelines for televising the Mass, (updated in 2007) which in my view covers the issues of televised and live-streamed Mass in much greater detail in a very helpful way. A key passage says:

Since the liturgy is the work of Christ and the work of God's people, the televised Mass should always be celebrated within a living community of God's people whose presence reveals the full, conscious and active participation of the faithful. Even when the liturgy to be televised is taped apart from a regularly scheduled parish liturgy, there should always be a group of people who participate in the liturgy as fully as possible by their prayer, song, and presence.  

Because the present Coronavirus situation precludes the gathering of a group of people who can fully participate in the liturgy, even for the purposes of video recording, I am wary of doing a broadcast mass that would seem to reduce the Eucharist to mere performance. 

This week, I will be meeting with Fr. Raymond (a fine liturgist), Deacon Fran, and members of our parish's worship committee to discuss the possibility and limits of doing Eucharist on line and how we can do that according to the guidelines I've noted above. When Bishop Kevin issues guidelines for Phase II, we'll also meet as a Vestry to make some decisions. 

Fortunately, we have inherited the traditional monastic offices in our Anglican tradition. Thomas Cranmer sought to apply the monastic pattern of frequent daily prayer. Before the consecrations of Samuel Seabury, William White, and William Provost as our first bishops, the Anglican (later Episcopal) Church in America functioned quite well not only without bishops but with very few priests. For almost a century and a half (or more!) before our church was formed in 1789, congregations in North America lived and thrived on the pattern of Morning Prayer, metrical psalms, and preaching (often by lay preachers reading from pre-printed sermons). They did this in a frontier church in a new country building new communities. 

We are in a new frontier right now. We will have to think about mission, liturgy, community, and formation in new, creative ways. I think that we can mine those resources and our Anglican and Catholic tradition deeply and to good effect. When the day comes that we do find a way to more formally express ourselves Eucharistically, I don't know what it will look like, but it will be different and it will be wonderful! Right now, we are in an in-between time of waiting,  experimentation, exploration, innovation, and prayer. 

Living as an offering in a time of pandemic

In 1878 a small band of Episcopal nuns, a couple of Episcopal priests, a number of Roman Catholic sisters and priests, and a few prostitutes, were doing what they could to minister to the sick and dying in Memphis, where typhoid fever had broken out and was ravaging the city.

The Mother Superior of the Sisters of Saint Mary, an Episcopal order, had just sent two more sisters from New York, Ruth and Helen.

Sister Ruth wrote, ““The city is desolate, everyone who is not ill says, ‘It is only a matter of time.’ … Money is quite useless … There is plenty of money here, but it buys no head to plan, no hands to wash, nor the common necessaries of life. … We are helpless and do not know what to do nor how help can come … There are nearly fifty children here now [in the orphanage]; we have no clean clothes, and it is utterly impossible to get any washing done. There is no one to send for supplies, and no stores are open.”

In a city of 50,000, 30,000 fled and 5,000 died. Sisters Ruth and Constance were among the dead.

In response to Ruth and Helen being sent to assist, Sister Constance wrote the Mother Superior this:

my sense of duty in the matter is so divided between the feeling that I ought to secure all the help I can for these poor suffering people, and the fear for those who come. I will guard them to the utmost; but they know and you know that they are offering their lives.

Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time in conversation, prayer, meeting, not to mention writing and publishing how we should respond to the latest viral disease to come along, this one called “coronavirus” or COVID-19, especially now that we are in this period of extended lock-down.

Right now, the conversation in much of the church is about how we care for ourselves (washing hands, sanitizer, limit contact, common cup, intinction, etc.). Before the lockdown, I sent out two e-mail blasts, and before that had conversations with parish leaders, sacristans, and medical professionals both in and outside the parish, and consulted with other clergy colleagues just to help us form a useful, do-able, and calm response in this congregation.

Interestingly, our conversation has shifted to matters of the spiritual life: our humility in the face of what we don’t fully understand and control; meditation upon death; adoration and love as our response to fear; and, sacrifice for the common good. I have spent much more time that I imagined on the phone, on video chats and conferences, and in texts and e-mails talking with folks about things spiritual, as people seek to make meaning and find grounding in this strange times.

I find myself over and over again returning that part of the Stations of the Cross, when we say at each stop “we adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.”

The media response to the news of the spreading virus has been anxious and high-pitched. As Christians, we will struggle to find our way out of the impulses of denial and catastrophizing. Those driven by anxiety and the crisis junkies will do what they do. The rest of us need to attend to adoration and kindness, devotion and compassion, reflection and sacrifice.

We’ve are doing everything that’s prudent to do. We are holding worship services and meetings on-line, and limiting our contact in person. We are a collection point for face masks and person protective equipment that people can donate to the Lehigh Valley Health Network. We are continuing to serve walk-ups at the Ark Community Meal. The trick is change our habits and figure out how to do what we do as a parish with generating additional anxiety.

Scripture says “True love casts out fear.” (I John 4:18). We cast out fear when we choose not cater to paranoid, frightened, anxious, or conspiracy driven people.

We cast out fear when we accept where we are and don’t deny it. We’ll face the facts, and we’ll make careful prudent choices. But most important of all, we cast out fear as we remain present to each other and continue to do our work as a parish community on behalf of all whom God has given us.

So, after you’ve washed your hands and learned the best information we have, the most important thing you can do is to turn your attention to the spiritual life. As we move through Lent in this time of crisis, let us move towards adoration and awe. Say the daily office (Morning & Evening Prayer, the Noonday office, and/or Compline using resources like Mission St. Clare (https://www.missionstclare.com/), walk the Stations with us by following the link on our website (www.trinityeaston.org). Join us for our on-line live and YouTube Weekday and Sunday worship services. Join with all the Saints, like Constance and her Companions, and offer intercession, adoration, and care for one another.

Give thanks for those on the front line of sacrifice. Medical workers and first responders, and all those who continue to go to work each day to provide transportation, food and supplies, and the working of government.

Pray this Lent and Holy Week to be willing to join in the common work of sacrifice. Accept in humility any needed restrictions upon your person that are for the safety of all. 

Listen and pray through the stories of those who serve the ill and dying, those who care for the dead, those who bear their illness with patience and courage. Tell the stories of perseverance and sacrifice.Participate in the beloved community. Be kind and gentle to all. Do not spread rumors nor give into anxiety. Seek the truth. Live hopefully. Walk in love.

Written on March 22, 2020 for the April newsletter of Trinity Episcopal Church, Easton, PA

Recalling 9/11 18 years later

I remember where I was. I had just put my daughter on the school bus. My brother called to tell me that my niece was in the hospital about ready to deliver a baby boy. I was loading my bags into a car to go to the airport. I was going to fly to New York City to interview for a chaplaincy position--- but plans changed when the attacks happened and the planes weren't flying anyway. I called them and said something like "you folks are probably up to your eyeballs in alligators, so call me when we can reschedule." 

They did. I went in almost a month to the day later and the folks were still pretty shell-shocked and the interview was pretty perfunctory and did not lead to a job. Without much bidding on my part, the conversation would shift from them talking about me and my skills, to the group and their experience. After weeks in intensely shepherding others through this time, they had yet to fully process their own emotions, which was a completely normal and natural response, but still unsettling for those experiencing them.

But the trip wasn't wasted. A week or so after the attacks I got a call from a person who did employee health for the Salvation Army. He had been given my name as someone trained in Critical Incident Stress Management. They were putting together a debriefing and some other emotional and spiritual support services for their personnel who had been on-site at Ground Zero since the day of the attacks. A lot of these folks had been working non-stop for a month and needed to go home for rest. But first, they needed to process their experiences. 

So a team was put together, mainly from the upper mid-west... that was because all the trained CISM personnel and teams in the New York and Washington areas were busy, and a few of these very folks were the folks that we would be de-briefing! 

So after my rounds of interviews in New York for the job that would never be, I came to  Allentown for a series of small group debriefings, large group training sessions, and one on one meetings. 

Flags in Marietta, OH after 9/11

The whole experience was a rush of images and emotions. I had to marvel, because I wasn't even there... I was a distant witness watching things unfold on television or over the car radio. I could not imagine what it was like for people living through it. And the closer I got to the city, the more intense things became. 

I saw lots and lots of American flags on the drive out from Ohio to Pennsylvania through West Virginia. People put up signs and impromptu memorials. Staying with relatives who lived between Philadelphia and Reading, PA, I took the train into New York. I was struck by the big plywood construction barrier inside Penn Station, that was now covered with signs and posters of peoples names and pictures. People looking for the lost or missing, which was taking on more and more the look of a memorial.

Some of the things I saw were disturbing... scrawled signs at roadsides or in front lawns as I drove encouraging us to kill all Arabs and Muslims, often using unashamed racist language. There was one billboard that stood out to me because it was so angry: the text read "Your courts, your schools, and your government are anti-Christian!" pointing people to an 800 number and some kind of (so-called) ministry. Seeing that while driving through Appalachia gave me a shudder... were we growing our own form of Taliban? It made me wonder about the depths and complexity of the hatreds in our world.

One of the things that I recall the most was the signs demanding revenge or retribution were thickest farthest away from the disaster. The closer one got, the more often the sign asked for prayer or patriotic support. Of course, in the city there was wall of pictures of the missing.

Meeting people who had rolled up their sleeves to do the impossible work of rescue, recovery, and disaster response, was a whole other matter. These people were not filled with hate but with a kind of determined compassion to find life wherever they could. The thing about chaplaincy and trauma work with first responders, medical personnel, and those who work in public safety is that one is blessed to witness people who rarely forget their humanity, no matter how bad things are. In fact, it was the sensory overload of so much awareness-- so much compassion for so much pain in so little time-- that was at the heart of the stress they were experiencing. 

Being a priest and chaplain to such people, even though we had never met before, was humbling. Because of the rawness and immediacy of their experiences, they rarely had difficulty connecting the dots between their work and God's mercy, or of the mystery of love in the face of evil. They rarely used "god-language" but they told sacred stories. Sometimes one would get "why" questions, but way more often I heard, unbidden, stories of the holy showing up in unexpected, ruined, places. 

My little team worked three different groups who were being "de-mobilized" for about a week. Other teams did more. There were that many volunteers who had gone to Ground Zero. My particular groups were comprised of people who had worked nearest the disaster scene for the longest hours. None of these folks were amateurs. They had all worked everything from house-fires to to landslides to tornadoes to hurricanes. But every one of these said that this was the most devastation they had ever witnessed in one place and the most intense. They told stories of what stood out for them: one person helped the local humane society care for the dogs brought in to search for survivors and later the ones brought in search for bodies. Another talked about giving first aid to firefighters and construction workers who had been digging through rubble sometimes with bare hands. Others spoke about the hours spent talking to the workers from the towers and the surrounding neighborhood as well as residents. One person worried that he might be inhaling the very remains he was searching for amidst the ash and dust of the site. A chaplain spoke about his work with members of the city department of sanitation and what it was like to sweep up all that office paper that littered the streets after being blown out of the buildings. 

After I came to my parish, I found that some of the experiences of that day would filter into our life from unexpected places. I did spiritual care for two dying persons who were both deeply touched by 9/11 even though they were never in the Twin Towers. One had a scheduled breakfast meeting at Windows of the World, but his doctor called him the day before and insisted that he go to his office on Tuesday morning. This caused him to cancel the breakfast meeting, which saved his life and the lives of those he was to meet. But the doctor needed to tell him that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive cancer that he would not recover from. 

Another parishioner worked in the North tower but got out when the first plane hit the South Tower and, unlike so many others, did not go back in. She worked near the bottom of the tower anyway, so all of her co-workers survived the attack. Still, when she left lower Manhattan covered with soot, she was either shunned by people who knew where she must have been and were frightened or else doted up and cared for by many others. 

Yet another parishioner was just settling into a new office in New Jersey having the week before moved from a former office in the Twin Towers, to witness the attack from across the river. 

Our diocesan clergy day later in September, 2001, included a summary of a conference taking place at Trinity Wall Street with the Archbishop of Canterbury when the attacks happened. We heard of how they were evacuated and sent to South Ferry where they had no place to go and how he was taken away on a ferry boat but could not get back into the city to get his stuff from his mid-town hotel room. 

I interviewed with my present congregation's search committee just before the attacks by teleconference and met with their representatives a week or so afterwards when they came out to hear me preach but before my trip east. It was strangely hopeful to hear them talk about their 9/11 experiences and then turn to talk of the future of this parish in this community in the same conversation. 

Looking back over the last nineteen years, I am struck at how much people have healed and how little it takes to bring people back to that moment. For people who have been born since then and are only now reaching adulthood, the events are at once abstract and defining. They don't know what it was like, but they do not know a world "before 9/11."

Our parish hosted community prayer services on the first and tenth anniversaries of the attacks and this coming weekend we will hold an interfaith prayer service in our sanctuary. For me, the day is a remembrance that can never hide or distort the real sense of horror and fear of the attacks, and also it allows to recall and reclaim the resilience that marks so much of our response at the time and in the nearly two decades since. 

Rules are rules

She came to church every Sunday. Even long after her income was fixed, her offering came in like clockwork. For as long as she could she showed up at church suppers, studies, gatherings of small groups. She prayed. And when she was home-bound, she wrote notes to other sick and shut in members of the parish and congratulatory notes to those celebrating birthdays and baptisms. Many of her fellow parishioners were her longest, and closest friends.

But she was also a private person. Not given to announcing her needs, and always concerned that she not "be a bother." So when her terminal illness came, and hospice was called, the parish office was never officially notified. The right paper it seems was not filled out.

We were never invited to hospice team meetings. We never took part in her spiritual assessment. Our clergy or lay Eucharistic visitors were never a part of the care plan. We were not included in any call tree for when she would finally meet death.

Oh, we knew... this time. Bits and pieces. Here and there.

Her friends called my cell phone or stopped me after church or even came to the office, but whenever I called the house, her son promised me that he would let his mother know we called and were interested. We sent cards, altar flowers, along with the regular church communications. Our pastoral care team planned for her care, and a lay pastoral visitor would visit from time to time-- but it was chancy. She was a low-church kind of Episcopalian, so regular communion at home was not in her spectrum of observance. The counters tell me that her offering would arrive by mail like clockwork. But since a card or a note were attached to any of these, I am thinking that someone handling her affair took care of the offering, along with her other bills.

People in the parish would ask me how she was doing. After a while I would have to say, something like "I hear that she's in hospice, but I really don't know."

That's because Hospice was of no help. At all.

They were of zero help in allowing us to our part in the end of life care of their patient.

Twice I called the Hospice Nurse. Once I got through, on the second try. I don't know if the nice person who answered the phone passed along the message the first time, but she called me back on the second try.

I asked to meet with the Spiritual Care Coordinator, who is (I suppose) their chaplain. I have no idea of the person's credentials or training, but it doesn't matter. He or she never called me back.

I told the Hospice Nurse that I was the person's priest. That the patient had been a part of this parish for over sixty years and attended Sunday Eucharist every week. I told her that I would, first, like to visit the patient and second, would like to work with the Hospice on providing the spiritual care for their patient. I said I would make time to come to team meetings or meet with the social worker, nurse, or spiritual care coordinator at their convenience. I told that I knew that I was a "guest" in their system and emphasized that I was at their disposal. I was told that she would bring this to the Care Coordinator and to the patient's son and they would get back to me.

Crickets.

After a week. I called back. Left a message. No response.

I decided to take a crack at just showing up, and alas, I came at a time when the patient was sleeping (or "resting" I was told). I left a card. I asked the uniformed caregiver to please let the patient know I came and that I would like to come by.

Still more crickets.

A third time, I called and asked to be a guest at the Hospice team meeting. I told them that not only was I the person's priest, but that I was at one time a Hospice Chaplain, the member of a Palliative Care Team, worked on a state-wide bio-ethics panel, and was a Board Certified Chaplain.

The choir of crickets persisted.

Three days ago, the patient-- our parishioner-- died. A little detective work led us to the funeral home handling the arrangements. I know the funeral directors there, and have a great working relationship with them. They are professional, caring, and skillful at handling all the nuances of closing out our mortal lives, including the spiritual and pastoral issues. After a brief conversation where not much formal information was shared (but between us much was communicated), I can see where this is going.

Our long-time parishioner, with a lifetime of connection, story, service, and worship, will probably not be buried out of the parish and it is up in the air as to whether or not her pastor will even be invited to preside.

What's worse, is that a community (this parish community, and God knows how many of her community of friends) will be left to work out their grief solo, in the dark. The curtain of another life quietly drawn to a close with little or no comment or recognition.

And the place where she came to give her living meaning, hope, purpose, comfort, and direction, will have no opportunity to listen to their stories, share our story with those she loved, and her Gospel story will be will be left un-said at least in the context of a funeral.

Crickets.

Part of this is completely in keeping with our member's way of being. She was a quiet person, unfailingly polite, who never wanted to be a bother to anyone. I think that the idea of anyone making a fuss over her would seem mortifying. Still, I remember the Prayer Book she brought to church every week. Not only was it hers, but it was filled with old bulletins, pages torn out of the Anglican Digest with some prayer or meditation that meant something to her, prayer cards and Mass cards from other funerals, the ever present copy of this quarters Forward Day-by-Day behind the inside front cover. When I told her how to preserve the ribbons with dabs of clear nail polish, she told me of her sure-fire method of getting wrinkles out of purificators from her altar guild days.

So the sound of all those crickets at the end felt particularly painful and sad to me.

And, I'm betting dollars to little round doughnuts, that the spiritual care was being left to the wishes, whims, and biases of the primary care giver, who (as luck would have it) was estranged from anything spiritual let alone religious.

Imagine having a Jewish patient being ministered to by Catholic priest or a Scientologist because that was the affiliation of the primary care nurse or the relative of the patient doing the care. Imagine if the doctor decided that only Mormons or Methodists would be allowed into the patient room. That would be wrong, right? Well, I think that was what was happening here. And not maliciously, but because no one was skilled enough to a proper pastoral and spiritual assessment.

Usually, in my experience, the whole range of the ways people frame their meaning and spiritual life is boiled down to two questions: "Do you have a church?" and "Do you want to call your priest/pastor/rabbi/imam right now?" Two questions designed to elicit a range of unpacked feelings and no action.

Which is why I had this awful feeling that big part of this person's end-of-life care was being left out.

A big chunk of this, though, is my fault. Not in the actions of me or this parish in the months and weeks leading up to her death.. We did all we could and then some to care for our sister in Christ. No, it's my fault because a long time ago I was apart of a committee that helped create rules to formally protect a patient's privacy when they are in the healthcare system. In the 1990's, there was this big inter-disciplinary committee meeting in Washington, DC, called together to form rules and regulations regarding patient privacy and confidentiality.  I was there. Among the handful of pastoral caregivers in the group.

We were not a united voice, though. One person wanted to lobby for allowing chaplains and pastors to bill for their services (a non-starter), others wanted to protect patients from being proselytized, others wanted to allow free access for evangelists, there were ethicists, ritualists, and God-knows who else all wanting to have their piece of the regulatory pie. In the end,  there were two factions: one was the pastor-is-part-of-the-care-team faction and the other was the privacy-at-costs-faction. We came up with compromise rules that basically said that it's up to the patient, no matter how sick, or their family to contact the pastor and that the parish pastor could make no record of their work and no contact with the rest of the care team unless a particular hospital, hospital, or agency thought of it. Which they never do.

Later on, working out of my hospital in West Virginia, I was part of another interdisciplinary team that developed never-before-envisioned protocols for care at the end of life that covered everything from pre-hospital care, to pain management, and spiritual care. And we managed to include the clergy in the congregations with both effectiveness and efficiency.

So, when you add that to the hours of clinical training and patient care time... well, let's just say that this ain't my first rodeo.

Now I get the privacy issues loud and clear. When I was clinical chaplain through the 80's and 90's, mainly in small-town community or Catholic hospitals, and also in a hospital owned by a big for-profit corporation,  I had to deal far too often with staff who loved to gossip about patients, or people they knew who came through our doors. I once had to fire a staff member for blabbing intimate medical details of persons she encountered. I don't regret doing that for one second. But loose lips sinking ships is not what I am talking about here.

What I am talking about is the unintended, but perfectly foreseeable, consequence of the current state of the HIPPA rules. And that is the culture of circling the wagons and the need for a variety of reasons of limiting information to the chosen few.

There is a kind of gnosis at work under the guise of patient confidentiality that says essentially that if the person can't charge for their time, or is not paid by the caregiving agency or institution, then they can't get in. Even if their work has a direct impact on the patient's well-being.

I have a strange feeling that if way could be found a way to turn the ordinary pastoral care of clergy, lay visitors, and Eucharistic ministers into a billable service from which the healthcare entity could take a cut, then we'd have no trouble getting our foot in the door. For all the talk about "caring for the whole person, body, mind, and spirit" that hospitals and hospices love to advertise, it is far too easy to boil it down to billable services and patient volume. You know... "no margin, no mission!"

By the time I finish writing about this, the chart will have been completed, the charge-master closed as soon as the last reimbursement is received, and the next patient will have been admitted.

But the things that pastoral ministry cares about-- helping a person make meaning out of their living and their dying, sitting with the person as they recount some small (but vitally important) piece of their story, the permission to admit that illness is a pain in the ass, and that death is scary to a person who will just accept the observation and not try to fix it, and above all the ability to take part in the ancient rituals that humans have developed over millennia of experience and wisdom will not have taken place.

In addition, no one will process with the family and loved one the connects and the disconnects between the dying persons way of making meaning and their own. No one will look at the preferred or hoped for way of dying with the actual experience. No one will walk the person through the work of making meaning out of  can be a concurrently beautiful and terrible experience.

Sure, I get that the caring son who never left his mom's side was a dyed-in-the-wool atheist who never fully understood why his mom wanted to go to church every week while he sat in the car reading the Sunday New York Times. I even admire his faithfulness in bringing her! I wish that I had the chance to listen to his story of how he came to his spot and how that intersected with the care for his dying parent.

But rules are rules, you know.

Here's what we miss in our permission-first culture. It's the wonderful secret I know from years of doing rounds and popping in on parishioners and from hanging out with the retired guys who meet once a week for breakfast at the diner: holy stories happen.

You can't engineer them or plan them. The technique is the discipline not to have any technique.

There is wisdom in those stories. And Gospel in those encounters. There is holy history in the everyday encounter between the holy and the human... stories of change, of hope, of opportunities missed, and transformation experienced, of relationships broken, fizzled out, healed, or persisted over years.

Meaning is made and revealed when conversation happens. Anton Boisen, the founder of modern Clinical Pastoral Education, knew what he was talking about when he said that the people he encountered as a chaplain were "living human documents." People have stories to tell. People are stories that are waiting to be told and shared. And they come out with a wonderful spontaneity, if only you have the ears to listen.

I believe that everyone has something to celebrate and something to confess. Everyone needs affirmation and absolution. The trick is that it has to happen in every person's own time and in every person's own language. Now matter how traditional or how out-of-whatever-the-faith-box a person might be, they need the space, permission, and time to process. And a skilled practitioner of the pastoral arts helps that along tremendously.

I believe that in the telling and hearing of these stories, healing happens. And I believe that someone who can hear and appreciate and bless those stories in acknowledging that those moments were holy and that God (however they know God) is in both the living and the telling. I believe that this happens whatever the person's tradition might be, it happens for people of faith or no-faith, because we are who we are.

And the rituals that we are empowered by our traditions to lead... the prayers, the sacraments, the rites (even the last ones)... or, for that matter, the ones that we invent, are part of this artistic and symbolic language that points us to the holy. They help us navigate the awesome, unknowable, and tangible mystery that is life and death.

The process works best if the practitioner-- chaplain, priest, rabbi, imam, nun, LEV, lay reader, whatever-- can get in the room and actually do their work! So many of us train and practice and work to be present for, and sometimes facilitate, the person-centered process of spiritual care, and yet.....

All too often, when I have been called in it has been after the person has died. Perhaps for last rites, perhaps "to say a few words" at a memorial, or to preside at the funeral mass. I don't denigrate that work one little bit. It is an honor to be present to guide and help folks make meaning in those moments. It is a pastoral companionship of it's particular pattern and form.

But way too often, the work of doing that with the person, before they've died, and accompanying them--and their loved ones--through that final passage is denied and people are left alone to make what they will from that time, because, you know, rules are rules.

In the end, as a colleague puts it, God always shows up! The holy happens. Even as we bumble our way through protocols, policies, procedures, and other secular rituals of modern health care, divine caring happens. I am so impressed with the dignity and care of the countless paramedics and EMTs, nurses and allied health professionals, doctors and physician assistants, unit secretaries and admissions clerks, Hospice and acute care professionals, who extend towards the dying and their loved ones remarkable presence, dignity, skill, and compassion. I firmly believe that God's love is concretely expressed in the work of all these folks.

But imagine, just imagine, what it might have meant to that person to not only see her (or any) pastor, but to have the freedom to say anything she wanted from "can you pray for me" to "here's my story" to "get the hell out!" To have a person trained and tuned to listen and to accompany them as they make meaning of their life's story in the closing chapter of their living. Imagine what it might mean for the family to have a person who is at once a trained, experienced pastor, and a person conversant in medical ethics walk with them as they make some of the most difficult decisions they will ever have to make.

I'm just sad when once again, that me and this faith community were not given the chance to do our part, to bring a lifetime of experience and even just a smidge of that millennia of wisdom, to the bedside of another dying parishioner because some form wasn't signed, some protocol not met, some third party payer decided it wasn't reimbursable, and some administrator decided that there were other fish to fry.

Cough-Pillow Jesus

Yesterday, after the noonday Ecumenical Good Friday liturgy, the church was open for prayer and a few people stayed after the service or came in during the silence. And as I sat here, I found myself thinking about another period in my life where I would go to dark, quiet places and meet folks who were alone in their anticipation and perhaps their fear.

Way back in a time we can barely remember, surgeries were not drive-through. There was a time when we didn't do our preoperative tests in a walk in lab, and we didn't check in at Oh-dark-thirty and be hustled through a process like a surgical McDonald's. In those strange times, before managed care, and even before DRG's, we checked into hospital the day or even two before for all that pre-operative stuff. And it meant that we chaplains were in the practice of walking the halls in the late afternoon and early evening, surgery schedule in hand, to visit folks before their operations.

I found that the best time to make these pre-surgical rounds was about a half an hour after visiting hours ended, when people were in their room, curtains drawn, maybe the shared television would be on or not. It was in that quiet, semi-darkness when the chaplain could meet a person at that moment when they were alone with their thoughts and feelings... when anticipation, dread, questions, restlessness, or simply the "can we get this over with?" was most apparent. At one hospital where I ministered, we'd bring cassettes of funny movies, spiritual reading material, stuffed animals, and other things to help people manage their anxiety.

Those of you who have had abdominal surgery may know about cough pillows. They are firm little pillows that you hug about your chest so that when you cough, you won't go "ouch" from having the cough stress your incision and sutures. In the pre-operative instructions, patients were usually introduced to their cough pillow by the nurse.

Some clever unnamed nun somewhere came up with a cough pillow that was a doll that looked like Jesus...or at least our notion of Jesus. I have one here. It was a gift from the staff last hospital gig before I came here.

Cough-Pillow Jesus was tough. He could go through the autoclave and be wrapped in plastic so it would be sterile. He could be squeezed and held tightly without losing his shape. Kids would like to undress and dress him and fix his hair (sometimes even adults would straighten his outfit to make him more presentable!).

For me, Cough-Pillow Jesus is a perfect icon for what is happening on Holy Saturday.

Yesterday, during those quiet three Good Friday hours, I was sitting here in the church, while the whole world was going on without us. There were car horns, trucks, sirens. I heard people greet each other as they walked by, a shouted conversation from one side of the street to another. Some school kids were laughing as they cut through the church yard from here to there. Music made its Doppler sound procession as the car it came from drove past, the sound gradually getting louder and then suddenly fading away. In the distance I could hear a long freight train as passed through. The world was going on its merry way.

All I could think of were the Gospel lessons from Christmas. The Gospel of John says that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. It also says that while He spoke the world into existence, the world knew him not.

I think that's what was happening for Jesus as he died on the cross. Sure, for the people most involved with the crucifixion, watching Jesus die, then going through the work of laying him in the grave, they were all caught up in the all that was happening. It was all their focus. Like the film we saw on Wednesday, there was drama, politics, fear, running away, covering bases, and simple horror.

But in the end, that's a pretty small circle. My hunch is that most people in Jerusalem that weekend walked by the three men being crucified wondering if they could find a place to stay, or expecting the Temple to be crowded, or if they still get a decent lamb for the holiday meal because, well, guests are coming and there are things to do.

So today, the followers of Jesus sit with the enormity of the cross asking themselves what's next But the world has moved on. Just as the community Easter Egg Hunts go on without us and without a word of cross or empty tomb, the rest of the world goes about its business.

And that's what those darkened, hushed corridors of that hospital were like long ago. Silent. Anticipating. Worried. Wondering. Mortal. And we'd hug Jesus even more tightly.

Because while all that is going on, unknown to us, but quietly, Jesus who has died has gone to the place of the dead-- and to the places of our deepest anxieties and fears, he goes to the places that we have locked away in the darkest places of our hearts, and meets us. There are no more words. There is just Jesus.

And when God meets us in that place--that sometimes scary place--and holds us, lifting us away from death and isolation and anxiety, into a new life. An Easter life.

But today, there is waiting. And we hold on knowing that in Christ, God has entered that holy, empty space.

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.