I certainly grew up in a culture that valued knowing God and, in particular knowing that you were saved.  “Do you know what will happen to you after you die?” was not an infrequent question in high school and young adulthood.  I confess that I never knew quite how to answer it.  Somehow it seemed if everything depended on something I knew, which seems to me quite a different thing from something in which I had faith. 

That’s why I love the passage from Acts that is the first reading this Sunday, Acts 17:22-31. 

Many years ago, the seminary I attended had an “off the books” work study program.  Putting legalities aside for the moment, students were assigned some work to do for the well-being of the community.  Some worked in the kitchen, some in the library, some in the day care.  It was rather a Benedictine model of community forming a shared life together shaped by a rhythm of prayer, study, and work.  So far, so good.

This is what the lectionary does sometimes.  After three Sundays of slow pitches for preachers—Easter Sunday, “Doubting” Thomas, and Emmaus—this Sunday’s assigned readings leave me cold.  It’s Good Shepherd Sunday (Jn. 10:1-10). 

For one thing, the metaphor of the Good Shepherd doesn’t do anything for me.  Shepherds are just not part of my experience so the comparison just doesn’t speak clearly to me.  I know that shepherding is a long-standing Hebrew metaphor for leadership.  They knew what a sheepfold was.  They could picture the gate Jesus spoke about and knew what the gatekeeper did.  I, though, don’t get it.  I feel a little better that John tells us the people listening to Jesus didn’t get it, either (v. 6).  

The Emmaus story (Lk. 24:13-35) is one of the church’s favorites.  It is also one of mine. 

I am intrigued at the disciples walking along the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus were joined along the way by the risen Jesus but fail to recognize him.  These were people who knew him personally and had, at least from a distance, been witnesses to his passion and had heard, at least third hand, the reports that he had been raised from the dead.  He was there with them but they failed to perceive who he was.  Luke says, “their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (v. 16).  Why is that?

The phone rang not too long after my family sat down for dinner at the rectory.  I knew it was risky, but I decided to answer.  It might be a pastoral emergency, I thought.

“Hello," I answered as I picked up the phone.  

“Hello.  May I speak to St. Thomas, please?”  the voice on the other end replied.  The number was listed in the phone book as “St. Thomas Rectory.”  I was a bit taken aback, but I was pretty confident I had a solicitor on the line.

There is a curiosity about the two windows above the main door to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the church that encloses both the site of the crucifixion and the tomb of Jesus.  On the ledge outside the windows is a wooden ladder leaning up against the wall and leading to the window on the right.  No one knows for sure how it got there, but it has been there a long time, at least 300 years, with no purpose whatsoever.  

I learned most of what I know about living, at least in the first instance, from my mother.  I’m sure she had learned them from her mother.  In fact, I often heard the two of them say exactly the same things about what I needed to know about the world growing up.  Both of them had pretty good sense about things, and I paid attention.  In general, it has served me well.

I am not a very handy person.  I miraculously passed shop class in high school, and I’ve never been good at fixing things of any kind. 

There is one and only one exception to this ineptitude, and it involves a small wooden table that belonged to my wife’s maternal grandmother, Grandmother Guin.  I don’t know how old the table is, but my wife can’t remember her grandmother’s house without it.  It is certainly not something of recent vintage. 

I’m beginning to notice that I’m opening myself to readings of Scripture I hadn’t noticed before.  Like last week’s Gospel reading.  Jesus called Peter, Andrew, James, and John and immediately they left their nets and followed.  I have been so struck by the immediately part, I guess because of its incongruity with my own experience, that I’ve been overlooking the very real possibility that immediately doesn’t necessarily preclude a great deal of time Jesus had spent with the four future disciples before he got around to calling them.  The notation about immediately may have other purposes than the indication of blind faith. 

A sermon preached on January 22, 2017, at Church of the Incarnation in Highlands, NC

This is a Sunday filled with temptation for a preacher.  It is tempting to make this Sunday about our new president.  It is tempting especially in light of the readings for today. 

It would be easy enough to use the readings for today to such an end.  The reading from Isaiah is about the end of a political catastrophe and the coming of a great light.  The only problem is that it depends on where one stands as to whether the catastrophe has just ended and the light arrived, or whether the light has just ended and the catastrophe arrived.  It would be easy enough to use Paul’s words to the Corinthians to address the realities of our present division, for the division is undeniable from whatever perspective one observes it.  “Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.”  (I Cor. 1:10)  I can even imagine how one might use the reading from Matthew to address the current political climate in our country.  (Mt. 4:12-23)