Yes, been a while......
This is a basic challenge to my priestly peers as well as a general shout out to the Priesthood of All Believers. Are you a shepherd or a pharisee?
I figure no gradual lead in. Let's just jump right in. After all, this speaks to so much of what we in the church are truly dealing with--a dangerous realization that faith levels have plummeted. Why? Maybe you don't care. Maybe you do care that your average Sunday attendance (ASA and the 'gold standard idol' of the Episcopal Church) is dropping. Maybe you don't.
Many years ago now I was sitting in Deacon's School on a Saturday afternoon. The teacher for the day was Arch Deacon Harvey Huth. He was expanding upon the understanding of shepherd as it related to the pastoral duties of our callings. He shared about growing up on a sheep farm. He talked about how you could always tell those who took care of sheep. How? Was it some convenient name tag with titles? Was it on their driver's licenses or non-driver's license id's? No....the way you could tell was a little more simple than that.
You could smell it.
He noted how, true shepherds, the ones who truly care for the flock, smell of that flock because of the time spent with them. It did not matter the number of showers they took or how the clothes were washed or what they were washed in. There was always a certain smell that permeated everything. As a result, you can know the shepherds. And, as a result, you could tell the ones that were in it for show or only "part timers". They didn't carry the same level of scent to them.
This story has always stuck with me. Since the first time I heard it, it has sunk in and occasionally bubbles up to the surface again.
This morning, was one of the times.
You see, if we are truly called to be pastors, the same word in Greek also being shepherd, we are then probably going to smell like the sheep we tend. Does this frighten you? What might get in the way of this? How might others react?
To truly step up, as both a pastor and as part of the priesthood-of-all-believers, is going to require something of us that we may or may not be able to be overcome in a singular moment--we have to stop being afraid of hell.
Yes, I'm going there.
We need to stop being afraid of hell, the devil and the world.
When Jesus offered up his "high priestly prayer" in John 17, he asked that we not be taken out of the world, but that we no longer be a part of the world. He also, when Peter offered his confession of faith, Jesus said this (the confession of Jesus as the Christ and Son of God) would be the rock upon which he would build the church and, here's the kicker/gut punch/whatever you care to call it, the gates of Hell would not prevail against it.
Do gates move? Not that I'm aware of. Last I knew, gates are stationary. They sit and guard a stationary locale of a physical place. Even as a city might expand, the original gates still remain and new gates are merely added as the walls are expanded further and further out.
So, why would Jesus make these kind of statements regarding the gates of hell? Perhaps he had lost his mind for a moment? Or, perhaps, just maybe, Jesus was expecting the kingdom/the church, to move in such a way as to push against those gates? Ponder this for a moment. What does that mean for how we are to pastor our flocks? Behind closed walls in sanitized buildings with beautiful decorations? How does that push against the gates of hell? If anything, that allows hell even more building room.
I was trying to come up with some fancy way of articulating this. I am currently unable to. So, here it is in plain speak:
Our churches are failing because faith has been replaced with fear and pastors have been replaced with pharisees.
We fear the world and all that it has to offer. We fear pastoring those who may not be like minded or may struggle with numerous challenges that are "offensive" or maybe they are young and raw in their faith and this is something that feels prickly and uncertain. It raises anxiety and that anxiety bleeds out into the congregation and the congregation becomes more and more anxious. Rather than our focus being on introducing and cultivating a relationship with God, we focus on trying to create good church goers who will help out at the bazaar and give a good image to the local grocery store.
We don't smell like sheep. We smell like myrrh and fabric softener.
We seek uniformity rather than unity and, like the early Jewish counter parts, we teach the precepts of men rather than the word of God. How could I be so bold to proclaim this? Where in the bible does it say that men have to have short hair and women have to have long hair? Where does it say that a man should not have an earring? Actually, to that, the bible says the opposite. The levitical law included a provision for piercing the ear of a slave that did not want to leave his master's home.
My challenge to us, myself included, is to become more fully open to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Paul was driven to the gentiles and preached to them a strange new belief. They were not circumsised, ate crabs and munched on bacon. They did not follow any of the rules. Yet, he went boldly to them in order to share the message of the good news of Christ and the restoration of the relationship between Creator and creation.
Patrick went back into the very place in which he endured slavery in order to bring the good news. He did not stop their practices. He did not stop their songs. He did not stop their prayers. He offered to them the opportunity to turn these over to God. Thanksgiving prayers were given each more at the kindling of the fire. Now, rather than offering up that thanks to some other deity, they offered up the thanks they already had to the new light in their lives, the light of Christ. Celtic Christianity is filled with this. Patrick worked side by side with them in the fields, hauling wood, tending flocks, getting water, preparing meals, mending fences and roofs and all of the other day to day chores that went into life. Only when they would go to worship would they separate out.
We have sterilized our faith which has led to it losing all power and presence.
Brothers and sisters, it is time to begin walking by faith rather than hiding in fear. It is time for us to use our worship time as a time of refreshing only to empower us to more boldly spend the rest of the week in the world. How will they hear if no one is sent to them? How will they know that the love of Christ is available if the only thing they encounter in the world is our sneers and disdain for those who "are like we used to be"? How will they ever step foot into a church/worship service if all they know of it is how judged they already are on the outside of the building?
I have never ever seen one person successfully shamed into belief. I have never seen any one person sustain faith that is birthed in fear of hell (whether now or in the afterlife). I have seen time and time again that faith birthed out of desperation all too often fades when the pressure is taken off.
I have seen whereby someone comes to a different understanding of God as a result of my relationship with Him and with them.
Join me as I accept this challenge to live my faith boldly following the leading of the Holy Spirit unafraid of hell. After all, scripture says that He who is in me has overcome the world. The victory has been one. Time to stop living in fear of defeat.
God's peace and blessings to all.
