Sheep

This past Friday night, the Baccalaureate service for Episcopal High was held at the Cathedral.  The procession was very long, with well over a hundred seniors, faculty, Board of Trustees, Administration and clergy. Most of the seniors sat in the first few rows, but one row was directed to sit in wooden chairs in front of the altar rail. The vergers ushered them to their seats. They looked around, feeling uncomfortable.  And then they all stood up and promptly left their seats, marching to the back of the transepts where they sat in folded chairs. When I got to the front, I wondered where they were.  Once I located them in the back, I wondered if I should stop the service and herd them back to their assigned seats. I decided not to, but I thought to myself, "Ah, sheep!"


When the early Christians began to form a community, there were no processions and noformal liturgy, but they did have rules. And their rules were no joke. Many of us today would see their community as communist or at least monastic. They had no private ownership. Everyone brought their money and belongings to the community and the leaders divided it all up. In other words, everybody shared.

When Ananias and Sapphira sold their property, they only gave the apostles a portion of the income, holding back some of it for themselves. When Peter accuses Ananias, the man falls down dead. And later, when his wife comes in, Peter asks how much she sold the land for. She, too, lies and gives the lower price. Peter accuses her as well, and shows her the feet of her husband, who lies dead on the floor but the disciples have covered up his body with a sheet so only his feet are showing. When Peter accuses her of lying, Saphira too, falls down and dies.

It is not exactly an advertisement for private ownership. But how do we compare the community of the book of Acts with our lives today? It would be simply unacceptable for me to tell all of you that we are all going to share our money and belongings. It would be chaos. You would not accept that and even I would wonder if it was really a good idea.

I think that we get stuck on the ownership issue and fail to neglect the main point of the early Christians. That point being that they were really interconnected. For Peter and Paul, life as followers of Christ meant life together, as a group. You did not believe alone. You believed in community.

A man visited with me after a funeral a few weeks ago. He told me how the funeral meant so much to him, that it warmed his heart like some kind of resounding bell had been sounded deep inside, a bell that had been silent for a long time. I invited him to return to church.

“I’m spiritual, not religious,” he said. He told me that he prayed alone, in the morning. He liked to walk in the woods and contemplate the majesty of God. “I used to go to church, a long time ago. But the people disgusted me. They were so petty. I just figured I’d be closer to God out here.”

Being together is frustrating. It is much easier to pray alone. In church, we have kind people and we have jerks. Sometimes it is so hard to get along with one another that we can hardly worship. Believe me, there are times when I myself feel like fleeing out to some pasture alone to contemplate God. It would be a heck of a lot easier.

But the disciples saw the Risen Lord in community. Even Mary Magdalene, who saw the Lord alone, was told by him to go and tell the others that he had risen. Most of the Resurrection appearances were in the company of at least a few of the community. The Holy Spirit came to the Church when they were gathered in community. It is when we come together that God is most potently present.

“When two or three are gathered in my name,” Jesus said, “I am in the midst of them.”

Why? Why not just let us be church alone? It would be so much easier.

The reason why God told us to worship together is because God knew how very interconnected we are. We are not really ourselves unless we are together. Human beings are communal creatures. As much as we get into fights and skirmishes with one another, we function as one body. We were meant to be together, not alone.

Jesus tells us that we are like sheep. And sheep always travel in packs. If they wander off alone, it is usually bad news. Their safety and their salvation are in sticking it out together. And that is what we are supposed to do.

In America, we live by a myth called the Self. We truly believe that you can make yourself happy. We train you to think for yourself, focus on your own health, your body, your education, your career. We ask one another “How are you?” as if it is the individual whose mood is most important. And we neglect to recognize how much the lives of those around you affect your own happiness.

If a newborn baby is not held, it will die. So you must be held and supported and you must hold and support, in order to be fully alive. We sheep have to stick together.

Max and I are reading a book. It is called Follow the Drinking Gourd. It is about the Underground Railroad and how the slaves in the South were led to freedom before the Civil War. These slaves were taught a song by a man named Peg Legged Joe. Peg Legged Joe would hire himself out as a handyman to plantation owners. While he was working on the plantation, he would teach the slaves a song. Follow the Drinking Gourd, the song went, Follow the Drinking Gourd. The song had details about how to follow the Drinking Gourd, what we would call the Big Dipper, northwards to freedom. The song detailed markers along the way north. Once the slaves had the song well-memorized, Peg Legged Joe would move on to another plantation, to teach more slaves the song.

The bravest slaves would follow the song, letting the big dipper led them north to freedom by night. But the slaves would not have made it were it not for the people that they met on the way. They were hustled into barns, fed in secret rooms, hidden in wagons full of corn. Mile by mile they traveled on the wings of those they met. Without the community of the Underground Railroad, they would not have survived.

Think over your life for a moment. You would not be here were it not for the love of others. Someone fed you as a child. Someone gave you a job reference. Someone introduced you to your best friend, your spouse. Someone invited you to church. We do not exist apart from one another. We cannot survive without one another.

And so God comes most potently to us when we are together. In fact, I am not allowed to celebrate the Eucharist alone. It simply does not work. The bread and wine will not become the Body and Blood of Christ for me alone, only for us.

The early church knew that they must stick together. The disciples shared everything because they knew the truth, that everything is ours, not mine. My future belongs to my children, my past to my parents. Last Sunday I stood between our former Dean, Edward Harrison and our Seminarian, Quinn Parman, and I realized it that I was standing between the past and the future. I am part of something much larger than myself. That’s why we worship together, because this is much bigger than any one of us.

When you wake up in the morning, don’t just think about how you are doing, what your day will bring, think about us. Think about your church, your family, your country. How are WE doing? That is really the question. For you cannot really think of yourself apart from your community.

It is such a relief, the day that you leave me behind and begin to think about us. It is such a relief because not everything is up to you. You are one of the sheep. I am one of the sheep. And we are most joyful, most faithful, yes, most challenged, but most blessed when we are together.

Slow of Heart

Did not our hearts burn within us as he walked with us on the road, as he opened the Scriptures to us?
                                                                                                  The Gospel of Luke


When the two disciples were on the road to Emmaus, they were processing. So much had happened in the past week and they needed just to talk about it. They were trying to understand what had happened to Jesus and how to reconcile the rumors that they had heard about his resurrection. They must have been the kind of friends who just need to get away together and talk and talk about the events that transpired. Two extraverts who trust one another, they hoped to bring each other clarity, or at least a sense of closure. Their minds were working furiously trying to catch up with what had happened, and their hearts were troubled.


When Jesus met them, they did not recognize him. They thought that he was a stranger, a fellow traveler, so they used this opportunity to spill their guts to him. They told him everything, about how they wanted Jesus to be the Messiah and how he disappointed them by being crucified. They told him about how confused they were, about how Jesus died but people were saying that he had risen. All of this just poured out of them for they needed someone to talk to, someone objective who could clarify for them what all of this meant. Someone who was capable of listening.

When they finished their story, the stranger spoke. Now, we would expect him to console the disciples or to reflect upon what they said. But Jesus responded in the strangest way. He yelled at them. He chastised them. You Fools! He says. You are slow of heart.

You are slow of heart.

What does Jesus mean, slow of heart? When Jesus expresses his disappointment, he does not talk about their minds or their intelligence. He does not call them ignorant or stupid. Instead he talks about the state of their hearts. He is disappointed with the state of their hearts.

What is so important about the heart and what does the heart have to do with recognizing God?

Sam Grinstead was a doctor. He came to Baltimore and found himself partnering with an older doctor who ran a thriving general practice out of his old Victorian home in a nice section of downtown. It seemed natural when Sam proposed marriage to the doctor’s youngest daughter, Delia. She was her father’s favorite, so pretty, newly graduated from college. She seemed content to be his secretary and his wife. She was fifteen years younger and seemed to adore her new husband. She never had to move out of her childhood home and when her father died, her husband just took over.

Sam and Delia had three children, two boys and a girl. They both worked hard to bring in new patients and send their children to private schools. Sam depended on Delia for everything. Delia busied herself not just with secretarial work but with carrying her children from one place to the next, filing medical insurance bills for the practice, telephoning patients, making lunches, volunteering in school.

By the time that their youngest child was 15, Delia felt as if she were suffocating. Her chest hurt and she could not explain why. Without being able to articulate anything, she left her husband suddenly, walking away on the beach at a family vacation and hitching a ride to a small town an hour away. She rented a room and went to work for a law firm as a secretary. Everyone thought that she was crazy. She left a good man, a doctor at that. And what about her three children? Even she thought that she What kind of a mother was she? Even Delia herself thought that maybe she was crazy, but something was hugely wrong with her married life. Her heart was just breaking.

The more she reflected the more she realized. Her husband did not even look at her. He did not know her. He did not know how she had changed and how she felt. He did not know when she was sad or angry. He never listened to her or asked her questions. They lived like two strangers alone in a marriage. And her heart was dying.

When she left, Sam began to realize what he had done. It hit him all of a sudden, late at night. He realized that he had never hit her or abused her in any way. But he had not seen her. She had become invisible to him because he thought that he knew her. He would have told everyone that he loved is wife. But in reality, he did not love her at all. He just cared for her. He did not really even know who she was.

When Peter steps out before a crowd of Jews in the beginning of the Book of Acts, he tells them that they missed the Messiah. He tells them that the man that they crucified, the man that they hated, this Jesus of Nazareth, that he was the promised savior of God. And they had not even recognized him. They thought that they knew who he was, but they were wrong. They were not listening. And they had made a terrible mistake.

When Peter says this, the Scripture says that the Jews were cut to the heart, just like Sam was cut to the heart when he realized the truth about his marriage. The heart often knows things that the mind cannot grasp or reason. And sometimes, when we say that we know someone, we made up our minds about this person and we really do not know them at all.

The Book of Acts is a story about a change of heart. The people who become the first Christians did so because their hearts are changed. They learned how to listen to God. They learned that God often does new and different things, things that we could never have guessed or predicted. They learned that we cannot assume that what we thought was right yesterday is right today. They learned to love God with their hearts and to live their lives by this love.

Love means never defining a person but being open to the fact that they are unfathomable, capable of surprising you and changing you. To love someone is to honor the mystery of God within them. Love is something that is always listening, always honoring, never fully comprehending. The moment we cease to listen to one another is the moment when we cease loving one another.

When Delia came home for their daughter's wedding, Sam asked to speak to her alone.  He told her how sorry he was, how much he had failed to see her, failed to know her.  And she came back to him.  You could say that he departure jumpstarted his heart.  And he learned to love for real.

When the disciples finally recognize Jesus, he disappears. But they remember how their hearts burned within them as he walked with them, how their hearts burned as he opened the Scripture to them.

Their hearts burned.

Every Sunday, we read the following prayer at the beginning of our worship…

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known and from you no secrets are hid. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts…

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts…

It is as if we are asking God to clean our hearts, to make them a blank slate so that we are open to the newness of love and the ever changing revelation of God and of the ones we love.

If we are to love God with all our heart and soul and mind, we must learn to listen to God. We must realize that God is going to do a new thing with us every day, that God’s love will live and grow within us. If we are to love God, then we must learn to love one another with the same kind of open devotion, realizing that the people we love are not stagnant creatures which can be defined but rather magnificent creatures who are ever changing and growing, who must be seen and heard each day anew, as if they were never known to us before.

The Story of Peter

What happened to Peter? Peter, my favorite disciple, went from being the one who always put his foot in his mouth to preaching an incredible sermon about Jesus in front of a huge crowd. What happened to Peter?


I know that Peter loved Jesus. We know that for so many reasons. He gave up his job fishing, left his nets and his boat and followed Jesus. For a fisherman, your nets and your boat were your ticket to life. Lose them and you lose your ability to eat. So when Peter and Andrew, the two brothers, left their nets, they left their lives.

Peter was married. How do we know this? Because he asks Jesus to come and heal his mother-in-law. So not only did Peter leave his nets, he left behind a family. We do not know if his wife accompanied him on his travels with Jesus nor do we know if he had any children.

Though Peter was the one who identified Jesus as the Messiah, the son of God, he was also the one who put his foot in his mouth on the Mountain of the Transfiguration and wanted to try to stage God and the prophets by building them little huts to dwell in. Peter was the guy who could not walk on water because he was afraid. Peter argued with Jesus about his crucifixion and it was hard for him to allow Jesus to wash is feet at the Last Supper. He is constantly arguing, complaining and generally getting things wrong. I think that is why I am so fond of him, because Peter is you and Peter is me. Peter represents all of us bumblers who always say the wrong thing when God enters our lives.

And of course, worst of all, Peter betrays Jesus. He tells a blatant lie, not once, but three times. He claims that he does not even know Jesus as Jesus is being interrogated and tortured. And when it comes to the cross, Peter is nowhere to be found.

He is a mess. He is a failure. But Peter does do one thing right, and it is the most important thing of all.

Peter allows God to forgive him.

After the crucifixion, Judas kills himself. Peter does not. Peter believes in the love that Jesus has for him, despite his betrayal, despite all his faults. Peter does not run away. Peter stays put.

And when Jesus appears in the Upper Room with Peter and all the disciples, except Judas, Jesus says some really important things.

The first thing that Jesus gives Peter and the others is peace. Jesus says Peace be with you.

Have you ever wondered why we say that in the liturgy, right before communion? We say it because Jesus said it to the disciples. It is a sign of the presence of the Risen Christ. It is a new way of being together, when we allow one another to make mistakes and we forgive.

And then Jesus says something else equally important. He says

As my Father has sent me, so I send you.

Jesus sends out the disciples to do God’s work. These are the same guys who just bailed on him, the same ones who always had questions and doubts and never seemed to know what was going on. Jesus sends out Matthew and James and John. Jesus sends out Peter.

And the next thing we know, Peter is preaching and healing and people are following him. THOUSANDS of people are following him.

What happened to Peter between the cross and the resurrection? Did he have a brain transplant? Did he simply become another, more confident human being? No, it is very important to note that Peter was the same guy. Only one thing changed about Peter, he was forgiven. And after he was forgiven, Peter just stopped being about himself. He truly gave his life to God.

When it comes to doing ministry, many people feel that they just don’t have it together. How can I teach when I don’t know everything? How can I counsel when I myself am such a mess? How can I feed people when I can’t always pay my bills? The answer is simple. Just let yourself be sent.

Jesus sent out the bumblers. He sent out the ones who did not have all the answers. He sends you and he sends me. He does not wait for us to get our acts together. If God waited for us to be perfect before we could serve, well, there would be very little ministry going on in the world.

Instead, God sent Mother Theresa, a little nun from Eastern Europe. And she ministered to the world, lifting AIDS patients from the gutters and giving them a place to be cared for, a place to die, and all the while she was wondering if God is even there. She never got her act together. She never stopped doubting. She was never sure. But she just did it anyway. She lifted up the world anyway. Why? Because God sent her.

And God sent us Abraham Lincoln, who suffered from such clinical depression that there were times that he could hardly function. But he led our country in one of our most desperate days, in a day when we were not sure if we could even be a united country. Lincoln never knew for certain if he was doing the right thing. He was never certain, but he served anyway. Why did he do all this? Because he was sent. Because he was there and the country needed him. Because God asked him.

God sends faulty, difficult, bumbling people. God sends people who doubt and people who despair.

Just as the Father sent me, so I send you, Jesus says, as he looks on their weary faces. I send you.

And we want to say, “Wait! Can’t you see that I am not ready? Can’t you see that I can hardly get my own life together? Can’t you see that my house is a mess and my marriage is a struggle? Can’t you see that I yell sometimes and blame others for my own mistakes? Can’t you see that my insecurities interfere with my life? Can’t you see that I am a mess? Can’t you see that, God?

But God sends us anyway, faults and all.

To be saved by God is not enough. To have faith is not enough, you must also serve. Once you believe in the resurrection, you have no choice but to follow. Once you believe, then Jesus is right there, smiling at you, sending you out into the world to do God’s work. The story does not end with your salvation, it ends with your service.

The Acts of the Apostles is the book that is always read during the season of Easter. It is the book that tells the story of what happened to the disciples after Jesus was risen and how they became the church. But the Acts of the Apostles is a book that is meant to go on forever. It does not end at the close of the first century, it goes on for over two thousand years as each one of us rises from a life of self-absorption to a life of service. The Acts of the Apostles is our story. It is the story of the church, that bumbling mess of idiots who won’t give up and keep on trying to serve Christ in the world.

Do not wait to get your life together before you begin to serve God. Do not think that ministry is reserved only for the most faithful, the most moral, the most perfect of people. Remember that God sent Peter. God sent that self-centered, cowardly idiot. And it was only after Peter completely failed at everything that he forgot about himself and began thinking of others. It was only when he let go of trying to be first that he became truly great, a true disciple, a founder of the church