Sermon (Fr. Cunningham) April 29, 2018

If you have ever heard a sermon from someone who was in seminary you may have noticed something in his or her sermon.  And the something was that they were not content with telling you one bit of information that they had learned in seminary, but rather wanted to tell you everything that they had learned in seminary.  I can honestly say that I never gave one of these sermons, not because of any great virtue of my own, but rather because my wife always reads my sermons and makes me remove any item that is not directly related to whatever was my theme that week.  Anyway, that floated around in my head a bit today as I read the text from our Gospel; largely because I had so many things I wanted to say about it, that I finally had to realize that if I did, this sermon would be a sprawling mess.  So let’s try and narrow it down a bit.  In the interest of transparency and so that you can grade me on whether or not I wander too far afield, let me tell you my theme which is this: The necessity of both us as individuals and the church in general to abandon those things which are not producing good fruit and focus our energy on that which is.

            So let’s start with a little background.  In the poetical devices that Jesus uses, there are lots of agricultural ones.  I am probably missing something, but broadly speaking I would put these agricultural devices into two categories.  The first ones have to do with growth and are things like the parables of mustard seeds, the spreading of seeds on various soils, the planting of vineyards and so on.  The others are those like what we have today which are stories of pruning.  Jesus says today, “[God] removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.”  So agriculturally speaking we have stories of growing and stories of shrinking or pruning.  Now, if I was ranking popularity of these stories, at least in our day and age, I would say that stories of growth are far more popular than stories of pruning.  If you don’t believe me do this experiment, type the phrase “church growth” into Amazon and then type in the phrase “church pruning.”  Actually I will save you some time.  Amazon happily reported to me that “church growth” netted over 20,000 results whereas “church pruning” gave me 16 (that’s 16 as in 8+8).  Church Growth is pretty popular – I mean for some more perspective I typed in the Kardashians and only got 7,000 results.  And yet there it is – pruning is part of who we are as Christians.  And by extension what the Church is called to do.  But what does it mean to prune and why is it not really very popular?

            Let’s start with the popularity question.  Broadly speaking I think the answer to why pruning is less popular is that growth is fun and exciting.  We like our net worth to grow, our friendships to grow, our opportunities to grow and so on.  Outside of our waistline and growth that is modified by the word malignant, growing is generally something that we like.  And on a more existentialist plane, growing generally requires less introspection.  Which leads directly to the reason why pruning is not all that popular:  it is often not fun or at least not all that exciting.  Pruning, in practicality, means getting rid of parts of our personality and of our habits.  It requires us to part with things that while not healthy, are still part of who we are.  The things that require pruning about which Jesus speaks today can be issues like a temper, a tendency to judge others, a propensity to gossip or a drug problem.  These may not be good for us, but we often like them and hold onto them because they are ours – they are part of who we are.  Pruning makes us look deep inside ourselves and ask what in me is not glorifying to God and then seek to rid ourselves of those things.    

            When I was growing up, I would often go out to my Grandfather’s vineyards. January was generally the time of year when you had to prune.  It was a fairly exacting procedure, cutting off sucker vines, tying the healthy ones in place and so on.  I remember my grandfather explaining to me how it worked and what you needed to look for to determine what had a healthy future and what needed to be chopped off.  He of course never let me actually do it because it was not really something that you would or should trust a 10 year old to do.  But for all of those who have pruned any type of tree, the main idea is to get rid of the unhealthy or non-fruit producing parts to allow in this case the vine to channel its energy to the place that will bear good fruit.  And, often in this, you may prune some vines that will produce fruit, it is just that they will not produce the best fruit.  For without pruning, the vine will produce mediocre fruit at best and after enough years of neglect the mediocre and non-fruit producing parts will overwhelm the vine and nothing of value will be produced.  Now, of course, such a procedure is ripe (get it) with imagery.  Vines will grow if left un-pruned, in fact they will grow a whole lot, but they grow in ways that makes them of not much use for anything and ultimately they end up as a big worthless vine.

            So let’s bring this back to the two agricultural metaphors that are present in Jesus’ ministry.  Growth is big these days. In fact, it is something that the church has been fairly obsessed with in the past fifty or so years as Amazon attests to.  But the question must be asked of whether or not we are growing anything worthwhile.  Both a pruned and an un-pruned vine grow, but only one bears good fruit.  And honestly I am not sure how often the church in general or individuals within the church ask if the things that we are growing are worthwhile or if we simply think that it is enough that we are growing vines, because growing is fun and requires little introspection. 

There is a theory about the church, which posits that in the future we will see a smaller church.  And this is not the theory of some crackpot; it was actually put forth by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger writing before he was Pope Benedict and Pope Emeritus Benedict.  He had this to say about the future church, “[It] will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes . . . she will lose many of her social privileges. . . As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members.... It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy.  And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man's home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.”

            I don’t know if what he says is true.  Certainly, in the West the Christian Church is shrinking.  What I do know is that the Church in general and we as individuals should always think about pruning.  The conclusion that Cardinal Ratzinger reaches is that this smaller church will enjoy a fresh blossoming.  From the pruning much good fruit will be born – because the focus of pruning is on the fruit rather than on the growth.

Part of being a Christian is looking for ways to stop expending energy on things that are not glorifying to God.  The energy that we spend being envious we should use to focus on kindness; the energy we devote to pride should instead be focused on humility; the energy spent on anger should be spent on patience and so on.  Just as a vine only has so much energy, we also only have a finite amount of energy and so we should eliminate the places where our energy is devoted to things that are not glorifying to God and instead focus that energy on the things that bring Glory to God. 

            It might be time for the Church to get back to basics, to stop looking at itself as a corporation bent on growth at all costs and instead see itself as a place where we grow in our love and service of God.  Sometimes this will be painful, it will ask us to rid ourselves of habits that are very much a part of who we are, so that we can devote ourselves more fully to God. But ultimately the Church is there to call us to serve Christ in all things, glorifying him with every ounce of our being so that we may be his both now and forevermore.  

Sermon (Fr. Cunningham) April 22, 2018

As someone who can have fits of procrastination, I understand the impulse of wanting to wait to do something until we feel like doing that certain thing.  Sometimes this feeling actually does come, but most times I end up having to plug my nose and go do whatever it is that I have been putting off.  I bring this up to point out that there are really two ways in which we can perform an action.  The first way to do it is, rather obviously, because we actually feel like doing it.  The things that fall into this category are often the fun and enjoyable things in life.  People rarely say that they don’t feel like having a cookie or getting a massage or taking a cruise in the Mediterranean.  The other way of doing things is doing an action not out of any great desire or pleasure derived from those actions but is rather out of a sense of obligation.  These are often things like scrubbing the toilet, picking up after the dog or unclogging a drain.  We may not despise these actions, but we do them mainly because we know that they need to be done.  In these actions we rely not on an internal feeling, but rather on something outside of ourselves, which convinces us of the necessity of a given action. 

            Now part of being a Christian is doing actions that may not be actions that we feel like doing.  This does not mean these actions are wrong, quite the contrary, but rather that our feelings are often not good barometers to measure the things that we should do.  For example God asks us to forgive one another just as he has forgiven us.  He asks us to avoid gossip and slander.  But things like gossip and slander may be things which might come quite naturally to us.  But part of being a Christian and growing in Christ is changing our hearts so that the thing, which we do out of obligation eventually becomes something that we do out of desire.  In other words the goal is that we do things like forgive others, not because God tells us to, but because we want to. 

            I was thinking about this distinction today when Jesus talks about himself as the Good Shepherd.  He says, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep.”  Why does the hired hand run away?  The simplest answer is that he feels like running away.  The hired hand acts on the desire to not get embroiled with a wolf and the actions that will be required to defend the sheep against such an animal.  Jesus on the other hand says that he is the one who of his own will and desire will sacrifice everything, including his life to keep the sheep safe.  Or as he puts it, “I lay it down of my own accord.”  And so here is the question for us, how do we move from having the mind of the hired hand to having the mind of Jesus.  That is how do we move our desires from the selfish ones that are exemplified in the hired hand to the perfect and loving desires as displayed in Jesus?

            The short answer is it will not happen overnight, it will take a lot of trying.  And getting there will probably mean that we will live for a while in the in-between space.  That is the area between being the hired hand and being the Good Shepherd.  Now before I go on I want to say that I am slightly broadening this discussion.  The way the text reads we see the Good Shepherd acting in one specific way and that way is in laying down his life for the sheep.  This reading was most likely chosen for this season of Easter because of that fact – laying down his life is something of a foreshadowing of the crucifixion.  But I don’t think we have to always see laying down one’s life as leading to physical death.  I think it is enough to say that laying down one’s life can also be seen metaphorically and that it will encompass all of those times where we put the will of God above our own.  Or in the words of Jesus laying down our life is when we say, “not my will but yours be done.”  And so with that out of the way let’s get back to thinking about the idea of laying down our life.  The two ideas that we saw in today’s reading where that of willingly laying down our life or willingly running away from that responsibility.  In both cases the actions were done in accordance with what the person wanted to do.  Jesus wanted to lay down his life, the hired hand wanted to run away.  However as I said I think there is a place in between these two and we alluded to that in the opening discussion when we talked about scrubbing the toilet and picking up after the dog.  This is when we do something that was not necessarily what we wanted to do, but realize the necessity of doing it.  So in this case it is when we lay down our life, that is we submit our will to God’s will, but we really don’t feel like doing it.  This may not be the most popular thing in a day and age where authenticity to self is highly prized, but I would contend that there will be times in our life where the right thing to do and our wills will be in conflict.  And in such times we should say, “not my will but yours be done.”

            The great thirteenth century theologian Thomas Aquinas talked about virtues as being habits.  What he meant by that was virtues were good things and therefore we should do them, but because we might not always want to do them we should look at them like habits.  To understand a little better let’s think of something sort of mundane like turning off a light when we leave a room.  Most of us probably grew up with parents who told us to do this and if we are parents we have probably told our children to do this as well.  Based on my experience of raising children it appears that turning off a light when you leave a room is not a natural thing.   In other words children do not come pre-programmed with an overwhelming desire to turn off lights.  Eventually, though, with enough reminding it becomes a habit.  And it is a habit that helps save electricity.  So similarly submitting our will to the will of God may also not be something which comes naturally, but if we do it enough times it becomes part of who we are and something that we do naturally.

            And so now lets go back to our two examples of the Good Shepherd and the hired hand.  Ultimately we should become like the Good Shepherd, but most likely none of us are there yet.  Furthermore many of us are probably fighting against many of the characteristics that would make us like the Good Shepherd.  As a result we need an in-between place which is the place where we may act like the Good Shepherd but do so only out of obedience, hoping that one day it will become part of us.  A habit that we do naturally.    

            I want to conclude today with a brief discussion about hypocrisy.   And I realize at first this might seem to come a little out of left field, but please bear with me.  The chief secular sin in our day and age seems to be hypocrisy, that is believing one thing and doing another.  We love to find the pro-family politician caught in an affair or the environmental activist who flies around on a private jet.  But I don’t believe hypocrisy is inherently bad.  After all I would prefer it if all people with a mental predisposition towards being serial killers were hypocrites.  The thing is if we believe in higher ideals, the kinds that are exemplified in the Good Shepherd then we are most likely going to be hypocrites at some time in our lives.  We will believe in doing the will of God but may end up acting in quite another way.  Falling short of the Glory of God is not an invitation to give up and say that God’s calling on our lives is of no importance.  Rather it is a call for repentance and a call to continue to strive to do the will of God.  We will not always succeed.  We will all be hypocrites at certain points in time, but the hope is that success will lead to more success and we will grow daily in our love and desire for God so that we may be his both now and forevermore.    

Sermon (Fr. Peay) April 22, 2018

St, John Chrysostom Episcopal Church - Delafield, Wisconsin

Fourth Sunday of Easter – April 22, 2018

V. Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.

[Texts: Acts 4:5-12/Psalm 23/1John 3:16-24 /John 10:11-18]

            "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." Those are touching and familiar words, but also rather unfamiliar in other ways. How many of you have had any direct interaction with sheep or shepherds lately? – I thought not. Because I know that I haven’t. It’s almost like something I read from a British clergy magazine, “Two sheep were standing in a field. ‘Baaa,’ said one. ‘Bother,’ said the other one. ‘I was going to say that!’”  Two years ago Julie and I went to Ireland; there we saw flocks and flocks of sheep as we traveled around the wondrously green countryside. Little lambs gamboled about and one got the picture of a truly pastoral landscape. Oddly enough, on this "Good Shepherd Sunday,” I can’t think of a flock anywhere close.

Today we have to go to the zoo or way out into the countryside to see sheep, yet so much of the imagery we have for our faith is based on this pastoral, sheep and shepherd thing. I am the pastor – the shepherd (well, I’m more like the sheep dog) and you’re the flock, but we don’t know what that really means. Do we? Sheep, shepherds and suburbia simply don’t seem to mix.

            It would have been different in the time of Jesus. Certainly both the Old and New Testaments draw on the imagery of sheep and of shepherds. So when David wrote the Psalm, when Jesus spoke his words, sheep were everywhere.  While most often it was the king, like David, who would be seen as shepherd in the ancient near East, Israel developed a different motif. For Israel it is the living God who is the shepherd, as the familiar words of Psalm 23 remind us. It was out of that pastoral culture that Israel began to understand its relationship as a people to God.

            A shepherd cared for the flock and held the lives of its members in his hands. Thus, the Psalmist isn't merely playing with a romantic notion. This Psalm unfolds against the threat of want, of "shadow of death," and of the presence of enemies. Yet, God's provident care and embracing love allow the flock to be gathered in safety and to live in peace.  So the flock becomes an apt metaphor for the Church. We are a community gathered around the Good Shepherd. One of the titles for clergy is 'pastor,' but there is really only one Shepherd.  I would suppose pastors are more like sheep dogs than shepherds; our task is to run around – sometimes barking a bit – trying to get the flock closer and closer to the Shepherd.

John's Gospel has the Good Shepherd giving us the description of how he relates to his sheep. He doesn’t approach them as a hired hand, as someone who only sees this as a job, but as one who profoundly loves and cares for the sheep. The shepherd, unlike the hired hand, sees his welfare intimately tied-up with that of the sheep. The sheep come to know the shepherd, trust him and follow him, because they have come to know his voice and his care. The relationship of the faith community – the church – to Jesus is like that of the sheep to the shepherd. Jesus says that the sheep hear and then follow. The community of the Good Shepherd, then, is a listening community. We seek to hear the Lord speaking to us with the ears of our hearts. His Word of life and love takes hold of us so that we then follow after him, become his disciples, trying to live out the word that we have heard.

All sorts of voices will compete with that of the Shepherd. These voices will seek to draw us away from the path of life and love to follow one of narrow self-interest and selfish behaviors. These voices will exhort us to distrust people who appear different from us and exclude those whose beliefs, or thoughts, or ways don't match ours. If we are to follow as we must, then we need to keep our ears attuned to the Shepherd's clear tones. We do that by offering worship, listening to and studying the Scriptures, meditating on them, and by prayer – in common and in private. Out of our hearing will come our following, because we will want to conform our lives to that of the Shepherd.

Thus the sheep hear and follow while the Shepherd knows and gives life. He knows us because he has become one of us and has shared our life. Even when we may turn away and seem changed from what we were, still he knows us and cares for us. That's why Peter in Matthew's Gospel would say, "Lord to whom shall we go? You have the Words of eternal life." The life giving Word Jesus speaks tells us of God's love for us, of our worth, and of our potential to be whole. He modeled that Word for us on the cross showing us the path of unselfishness. Each of us, then, is called to come to life, to renewal in the Risen Christ, the Good Shepherd. The life Jesus offers us is to be one with the Godhead. He prayed in John 17:22 "So that they may be one, as we are one."  Now he speaks of “one flock, one shepherd.” The fullness of life for us is found in community with God and with one another. We are a flock gathered around the Shepherd, so we need one another.

Our community, the flock, is to be a place of unity, of peace, of all-embracing love, and life-giving acceptance. It's unfortunate that all too often churches don't look like churches because they've been deformed or injured by selfishness, agendas, or lack of true love. The buildings may be there, but the community isn't, it's just a group of individuals, not a flock.  I think Gordon Lathrop offers an apt description of the flock in his book Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology:

The church is an assembly. The church is a gathering of people in a particular place who are, together, through concrete means, participating in the mystery of Christ and so are being formed into the holy assembly. The church is not a collection of consuming individuals, choosing religious goods according to their own self-perceived needs or desires. It is not a club supporting a particular ideology. It is not the audience for a speaker's eloquence, a choir's concert, or a priest's rituals. The local church-assembly is itself, as gathering, the primary symbol. By its participation, by its communal mode of song and prayer around Scripture reading, meal keeping, and bathing, it is being transformed into a primary witness to the identity of God and the identity of the world before God.  [p.49]

If, as Lathrop says, we speak forth the very identity of God in the world, then we are to be a people of real love and real care.

            How do we achieve this? I think the readings from the Acts and John’s first epistle give us glimpses. Peter and the apostles are hauled before the authorities because they’ve done a good deed in Jesus’ name – they healed a man. Now they testify to the healing power of Jesus’ love, even in the face of opposition and persecution. We’re to be like that, doing good, being instruments of God’s healing love, even when it’s not convenient. The essence of God's love for his world goes out through us, in the words we speak, in the things we do, even in the thoughts we think.

            A shepherd – a good shepherd – was willing to risk everything for the sheep. That’s what John tells us Jesus did, and because he laid down his life for us, we’re to lay down our lives for each other. John’s epistle challenges us. John isn’t interested in what we say we believe. John isn’t interested in how we think on any level. John is interested in how we act. So, he says, “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth…” 

            To be in the community of the Good Shepherd is to be placed irrevocably in God's hand. We are brought into this community through Christ's identification with us. How, though, can we know that? By listening for the Shepherds voice, hearing him call our names, knowing us, and our needs. Listen and you will hear that you are called to the table. Come, eat and drink. Through simple signs of bread broken and cup poured we will hear his voice. Here then is the table prepared and the overflowing cup. It happens here in a community gathered in worship, around Word and Sacrament. It continues and grows as we leave this place and live lives guided by the Good Shepherd showing our faith by the way we live in the here and now.

            So, here we are sheep, with a Good Shepherd, in suburbia – who would have thought it possible. And dear ones, fellow sheep, healthy flocks grow. Flocks that are well-tended, loved and cared for, produce. It is that way with churches, as well. The difference is that the Shepherd is ALWAYS tending, it's the flock that neglects to receive the care. We can only grow and prosper as we place ourselves in the hands of the Good Shepherd.

            I believe that this flock is ready to work to be healthy. All around me I see signs in the desire for spiritual growth and the offering of loving service. My job as your interim is to help you get there, and your vestry folk and I are going to work on this. Together let's continue to listen for the voice of the Shepherd as he speaks to our hearts and through each other. Together let's follow in loving service, giving of ourselves as the Shepherd did who says, "I lay down my life for the sheep." If we hear and follow, we will be known and given life, especially as we let our following bear fruit in loving and unselfish deeds in everyday life. The Lord IS our Shepherd and we are his flock, his community.