Preachers from three orders of ministry: Rt. Rev. Catherine S. Roskam (Bishop), The Rev. Fletcher Harper (Priest), Dr. Louie Crew (Lay person)

Initially the three come to the podium from separate places in the audience, each sitting with others in her or his order of ministry, and each in turn reads a different tag line of the texts for the day, first Fletcher Harper, "Do you love me, feed my sheep?"  Louie Crew, "Do not be ashamed.  Do not be ashamed of the Gospel of Christ or of me his prisoner."  Bishop Roskam, "The Lord is my shepherd.   I shall not want."   When the three are all together on the platform:

Roskam:  Here we are - a veritable trinity of preachers.
Crew: I am accustomed to an hour and twenty minutes.  How much time did he give you?
Roskam: Oh, no!
Harper: I thought that if you two went first, I might go out and get some lunch for the three of us.
Roskam: I don't think so.  Here we are representing the fullness of Orders, Jack, that will be sharing in your episcopate.
 
 

The Lord is your shepherd.  In a very few minutes you will be given a shepherd's crook, your crozier--a sign of your office.

More than any other order, more than when lay folks care for one another, more even than when you  were a priest caring for your flock at Atonement, as a bishop you will be seen as a shepherd, bearing the symbol of the shepherd of all our souls.

No one can prepare you for that.  I thought I knew what it was going to be like.  Hey, I had been ordained before.  But I had no idea.

So much of it is wonderful.  (You have anointed my head with oil, and my cup is running over.)  The best part is going from congregation to congregation to see the lives of commitment and dedication to our Lord.  Such faithfulness among the people of  God.  Such astounding ministries lived out in a quietly quotidian manner.  It will keep you hopeful about the church.

But you will also see the church at its worst, at its pettiest, most intransigent, meanest, self absorbed, conflicted, sinful. (Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you are with me;)  You will be in the midst of mess and people will look to you to make it better, they will look to you to tell the truth, and some will hate you for it.  But you will do it anyway, because it's what Jesus would have done.

And you will make mistakes. Maybe even large public ones that will make you want the floor to open and swallow you whole. And when you do you will have the opportunity to model for people how to say I'm sorry.  (Your rod and your staff; they comfort me.) But in your best moments, and with God's grace they will be the more numerous, God will enable you to forward the mission of the church, to spread the Good News in ways you never dreamed of..

Oh and then there's the House of Bishops, that quirky hotbed of contention and affection that defies description.  That's a part of your call too, more a part of it than you imagine until you read the small print upside down on the back of the contract.

Awful:  That this business of being a bishop is not simply a role we play or a function we perform, but it's who we are, and we will never not be it for the rest of our lives.

You will be amazed at how much it means to people for you to just show up. There will be days when you have the feeling your most important ministry is put on your bishop's get up and just stand there.

And there will be days when you feel that you are the loneliest most isolated person in the world.  Jim Fenhagen, former dean of General Seminary, writing about the isolation of leadership says that the challenge and the opportunity lies in transforming the loneliness of isolation into the joy of solitude.

That can only happen if you remember that the Lord is your shepherd.  You shall not want.  What fed you spiritually before may not do so now that you are in the refiner's fire.  But if you look to the Good Shepherd in your need and in your joy, he will bind you close, and preserve you from evil, and give you the strength and courage and wisdom to feed his sheep and tend his lambs. So whenever your left hand closes around your shepherd's staff, remind yourself:

The Lord is my shepherd.  I shall not be in want.
  He makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters.
        He revives my soul!

Let me suggest a few areas in which we might find this dynamic at work, and let me ask us all to hear that conversation between Peter and Jesus - "Do you love me? Feed my sheep -" to hear these words as the melody beneath the chords of our times.

Consider three brief vignettes. A researcher has recently published a study comparing young girls' diaries kept in the late 1800's with similar diaries kept today. The earlier diaries reveal that the primary concern of yesteryear's teenage girls was their ability to make intelligent conversation, to be morally upright. And the primary concern of today's teenage girls as revealed by their contemporary diaries? To avoid being fat. I accept the overdetermined Victorianism at work in the 1800's, but if our culture has betrayed its young women by allowing their physical shape to be their primary concern, is the church a place where this betrayal is redeemed, where young women discover a deeper, more enduring definition of womanhood? "Do you love me?" Jesus asked. Then feed my sheep."

Or consider, on the other hand, teenage boys, shaped powerfully by the culture of school sports and athletics' programs. In the midst of the benefits of learning teamwork and the skillful use of aggression, such activities, and I speak from not so distant experience and from regular contact over the past decade with decent, good teenage guys, such activities are havens of homophobia and sexism, where young men learn that to put someone down you call them a woman or gay. Is the church a zone in which these boys learn a more humane manhood, a more compassionate manhood, a less prejudiced manhood? Research has shown that the vast majority of physical attacks on gay men are carried out by other men between the ages of 18-22. And yet men have a higher rate of heart disease, and a shorter life expectancy, than do women. Certainly there is a web of relationships between these startling statistics. "Do you love me?" Jesus asks us. "Then feed my sheep."

Or finally for adults - let me suggest that the role that materialism plays in establishing and justifying our adult identities is far too powerful in our society today. On a recent trip through Times Square a friend saw one of those traveling billboards mounted behind the cab of a small truck. The sign read "Too much stuff is not enough." From the sneaker stores on the streets of downtown Newark to the malls of Bergen County and Short Hills, we live in a culture where the worship of the material has too often replaced the appreciation of the material as a gift pointing us to God and higher purposes. If you doubt this look at the winter catalog from Tiffany's in New York, which displays a scarcely clothed woman kneeling in an apparently reverent posture, holding a Tiffany's box as her object of worship. In "Titan," the recent biography of John Rockefeller, it is estimated that Rockefeller gave away upwards of 70% of his wealth in his lifetime, still, obviously, living very well. Does the church effectively teach a different way of understanding stewardship, wealth and the purpose of material goods so that as adults the imagination and power of our souls is not highjacked by smart marketers? "Do you love me?" Jesus asked. "Then feed my sheep."

Do not be ashamed.   Do not be ashamed.  Paul understood the power of stigma.  He understood the price you pay when you stop believing that salvation is the property of a narrow group of people just like yourself, but instead news genuinely good for absolutely everybody.  Other Jews gave Paul a hard time. They tried to make second-class Christians out of his gentile converts.  Other Roman citizens beat him and threw him into jail.  Yet, Do not be ashamed, twice Paul tells Timothy,  Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God (2 Timothy 8)

Paul does not say to Timothy, "Do not be a coward."  That would suggest that bravery comes by sheer force of will, as an act of ego.  Instead, Paul says,  "God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline."  Courage, like faith, is not our gift to God, but instead, God's gift to us.  Wait for it.  Expect it.  Be honored by all tough challenges that give God's spirit a chance to live in you.

Each time God's spirit has petitioned the church to open up to yet one more excluded group, we have been warned, "If we started accepting them...., If we let in Samaritans, we won't be a Jewish organization any more, and the next thing you know, we'll have to let in the uncircumcised."  And they were right.  "If we let in lesbians and gays, we won't be a straight church anymore."  And they were right.  The next thing you know, we'll have to let in....

Who will come next?"  It's a good warning, worth our heeding.

2.75 million people live in our diocese.   And God loves those of us here only as much as She loves everyone of them.  There is much good news for us in that, but we must have ears to hear it.

Many of those 2.5 million have great spiritual hunger and yet believe that God could not possibly love them.  But they might begin to believe in God's love  if you and I love them first.  Do you want to see God?  Go to the least of your sisters and brothers.  Do not be ashamed to love and be loved by them.   Do not be ashamed.   Do not be ashamed.

Nothing about this office protects you from deafness.  Much in the office tempts you into deafness.  Wherever you go, people dress up for your coming.  The parish is rarely cleaner than on the day that you visit.  The rector and vestry rarely have better manners.  Even as today, the choir is magnificent and the food delicious. You can be very easily lulled into believing that God counts all this display as righteousness.   I charge you to get a hearing aid.

I urge you to spend one night a year incognito as a homeless person in a shelter.

I charge you to make yourself a buddy to someone who is in prison.

We must not get so caught up in the shepherd imagery, that we become docile like sheep.  In the same Gospel, John tells us, "I have not called you servants, but friends."

We cannot freeze dry manna.   Spiritual experiences that have fed us must be repeated to renew us.

Do not be embarrassed to be humble.  Do not be embarrassed.

Second, I charge you, within the next year, to speak to your priest about the most pressing spiritual or ethical issues present in your workplace or in your home life, and to ask for your priest's reflection, assistance and ministrations related to these issues. The places and ways that the church's ministry needs to develop in the future will be indicated by the needs and issues that you experience in your daily lives. If there is no conversation between clergy and laity about this, how can we uncover what that mission is to be? So speak to your clergy about key spiritual and ethical issues. Ask for their response. Make it clear that you expect an intelligent one.

And finally, for my third charge to you I charge you some time in the next year, to take a public stand on behalf of a dispossessed group or important social issue that you believe in your heart of hearts to be right but which makes you nervous. Stretch yourself in taking such a public position. One of the consistent markers of Jesus' ministry was his taking of such positions. One of the consistent markers of Christ's relationship to each of us is that public proclamation that nothing we do will separate us from God's passionate love. So take a position that seeks to express this love and concern, and grow in the process of doing so.

I have three charges for the clergy, on both sides, priests and deacons:

First, trust your bishop. He was a trusted and well-loved colleague of yours as a priest.  Things will be different in the sense that, no matter how we talk about mutual ministry, your bishop has authority over you.  Trust him anyway.  He is worthy of the trust.

The second charge is, you share in the success of any episcopate, all of us do, and I charge you to communicate with your bishop.  When you catch yourself talking about "the diocese", as if you are not part of it, or talk about "the Bishop", as if you are not connected, then take a deep breath, say a prayer and give him a call.  Send him an email. If you find that you are nattering and complaining about something, let him know. But let him know also, when he gets it right, when your ministries are supported and fed, don't take it for granted that he will automatically know that.

Third, I charge you to pray for your bishops.  Pray for your bishops.  Pray for them in every public service by name.  Hold them daily in your private prayer.  When I was on the other side of things, I heard that mainly as a name, and I certainly sent positive thoughts up to the deity on behalf of the bishops, but I want to tell you from the other side how crucial that is, and in the stresses and strains of the ministry that we exercise, we need your prayers.

Pray for your bishops by name.  Actually, it is quite easy to do in this diocese, isn't it?  But pray as your shepherds that they may be vehicles of the shepherd who is the shepherd of all our souls.

The Lord is our shepherd.  We shall not want.

Roskam: Jack, if you could stand there, we have several charges for you.

Together:   Jack, our brother,

Crew:  Do not be embarrassed.  You come to this office with enormous spiritual strength, tested again and again.  You have loved well the Church of the Atonement in Tenafly.  You have already been a pastor to many of the pastors in the diocese.   You and Marilyn well understand St. Paul's bidding "Do not be embarrassed."  You have embraced stigma and redeemed it, by loving well your lesbian and gay children and others like me.    It is with great love and gratitude that I charge you:

You now move into a new assignment, in which all are your children.

Harper:   "Do you love me?  Feed my sheep."

Crew:   In the census area of this diocese, 112,000 poverty renters  spend more than 50% of their money on housing. Of all renters in the diocese, 17% live in substandard housing.   20% live in doubled-up or overcrowded housing.

Roskam:  "Feed my lambs."

Harper:  In Hudson, Bergen and Passaic, we have more than 10% of all women with AIDS in the USA

Roskam:   A second time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?"

Harper:  20% of the people in Newark have some kind of substance problems.

Roskam:   "Tend my sheep."

Harper:  75% of the teenagers pregnant are victims of statutory rape.

Crew:  The median income in New Jersey is $28,858, second only to Connecticut.

Together:   "Jack, son of Ethel & Robert, do you love me?"

Croneberger answers:  "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you."

Cathy, Harper, Crew:   Feed my sheep.
 

• Louie Crew's page for the Diocese of Newark.
• Louie Crew's Anglican pages.
• Louie Crew's home page.

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