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The Good Shepherd - The Rev. Carol Duncan
Listen in to the sermon from the Rev. Carol Duncan for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, May 8, 2022.
Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin's by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Acts 9:36-43
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30
Psalm 23
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
The Good Shepherd
The Rev. Carol Duncan
May 8, 2022
Jesus Good Shepherd, as you call us each by name, open our minds, hearts, souls and inner being to respond to you in all your guises, visible and invisible. I make this prayer in your holy name of love. Amen.
Dear flock, please be seated in this fruitful pasture.
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday and you are all in the pasture. It is also the next to last Sunday we will have Jarrett with us.
I want to consider what it means to be Jesus' flock, Jesus' people, at St Martin's when we are about to be without an appointed shepherd for quite a while. I find it a challenging and a bracing prospect. And I want to pay tribute to a faithful shepherd who has guided us for 11 years, very much by Jesus' compass leading him.
Today's readings are meant to give us a sense of the rod and staff of our heritage. Four different settings, four versions of shepherd and flock. How do we find ourselves in these passages?
I love the first scene of shepherding from Acts. A group of women disciples doing good works and acts of charity. So much like us: Tabitha and her friends would surely recognize Blessed Baking, Women Connecting, Stephen Ministry, Biblical Study groups and all the rest. We have been in their shoes, doing what we can to ease the suffering of our loved ones. When one of us is sick or dies, we call our pastor, our shepherd, just as the women of Joppa did. And we have known that Jarrett will be there instantly. I am not crediting him with raising the dead. But Jarrett does the next best thing. He conducts the most deeply moving funerals, consistently, of any priest I have ever known. The work of a good shepherd is to comfort, to discern and convey the deep abiding meaning of our lives. We honor and embrace this work. We are a church that values and practices being community in pain and in joy. Even when it is difficult. We have learned that. We follow the pattern set in Joppa. I think we can count on ourselves for that.
The second scene of shepherdship: the 23rd Psalm - so moving and so comforting, it follows us all our lives. Its water and oil are redolent of baptism. Jarrett was so thrilled when he got to baptize a teenager by full immersion. He figured out the logistics of how to do it by obtaining a moveable trough big enough to submerge a sizeable body. We did it on the front patio. A space, by the way, that Jarrett envisioned as a way to enlarge our worship space so we could share the surrounding community with our worship. St. Martin's more typical baptisms are celebrated inside the church at the beginning of a Sunday service so the whole congregation can welcome and incorporate the newly baptized. After the baptism, Jarrett processes up the aisle joyfully, extravagantly sprinkling us all with baptismal water. The freshly baptized settle down with their families to bask in the newly recognized holiness of their members. The rest of us recall again that the Baptismal Covenant as Jarrett has come to help us understand is the source and root of all we are about at St. Martin's. Everything that we do. Everything.
Now the hard example of how shepherds work, from Revelation. This is perhaps most Jarrettlike and most us. We do not take the easy just-go-to-church-on-Sunday version of Christianity. Under Jarrett's leadership, we have some sense of who it is who comes first in God's care. Those who hunger and thirst, who are kept from learning and thriving, who are refugees. These are the ones who come out of the great ordeal of our present world. We have learned to hear them guided by Jarrett through the work of POWER, of Beloved Community, of Supper, through St. James School, through Beyond Borders. We have changed how we respond. Now, rather than donating money toward scattered programs, we invest major funds and our energy to respond covenantally to the suffering we've learned to see in our world. We are learning to listen, rather than to assume we know how to fix the problem. When someone asks us "Who are these and where do they come from?" We say "Please tell us. We are listening." The church in these increasingly secular years needs a shepherd like those of the early church. We can't take faith for granted. We live in a world that engenders martyrs. We will need a shepherd like Jarrett who considers and acts to counter systemic injustice in the name of Jesus.
The fourth scene of shepherding from the Gospel reminds me very much of Jarrett and how he has led us over these eleven years. In today's Gospel, Jesus answered his antagonists, "I have told you and you do not believe." So many times, most often in Community Engagement meetings, but other times too, Jarrett will say "I have said it, I have told you." Finally, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh year, Jarrett marshaled us to collect some of his shepherding guidance in a handbook. We wrote it down. The Community Engagement Committee has worked for years on the ideas and structure of this handbook. Community Engagement is the coordinating body of all the various outreach ministries of St. Martin's. The vision statement of the handbook says that we "engage as agents of Christ's love in the world by developing mutual relationships at the local, regional, national, and international levels that advance the mission and values of St. Martin's as we discern God's will as a Church, together.' This vision of doing Christ's loving work in the world together will serve us as a firm foundation from which to grow and thrive and we will thank Jarrett for it for years. Find it on our website in the Community Engagement tab. You should read it. There's beautiful writing in it. When you read it, you will recognize our voices in it, and Jesus' shepherding voice behind ours, long into the future. I know I speak for many when I say we are grateful. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
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By St. Martin-in-the-FieldsListen in to the sermon from the Rev. Carol Duncan for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, May 8, 2022.
Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin's by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Acts 9:36-43
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30
Psalm 23
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
The Good Shepherd
The Rev. Carol Duncan
May 8, 2022
Jesus Good Shepherd, as you call us each by name, open our minds, hearts, souls and inner being to respond to you in all your guises, visible and invisible. I make this prayer in your holy name of love. Amen.
Dear flock, please be seated in this fruitful pasture.
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday and you are all in the pasture. It is also the next to last Sunday we will have Jarrett with us.
I want to consider what it means to be Jesus' flock, Jesus' people, at St Martin's when we are about to be without an appointed shepherd for quite a while. I find it a challenging and a bracing prospect. And I want to pay tribute to a faithful shepherd who has guided us for 11 years, very much by Jesus' compass leading him.
Today's readings are meant to give us a sense of the rod and staff of our heritage. Four different settings, four versions of shepherd and flock. How do we find ourselves in these passages?
I love the first scene of shepherding from Acts. A group of women disciples doing good works and acts of charity. So much like us: Tabitha and her friends would surely recognize Blessed Baking, Women Connecting, Stephen Ministry, Biblical Study groups and all the rest. We have been in their shoes, doing what we can to ease the suffering of our loved ones. When one of us is sick or dies, we call our pastor, our shepherd, just as the women of Joppa did. And we have known that Jarrett will be there instantly. I am not crediting him with raising the dead. But Jarrett does the next best thing. He conducts the most deeply moving funerals, consistently, of any priest I have ever known. The work of a good shepherd is to comfort, to discern and convey the deep abiding meaning of our lives. We honor and embrace this work. We are a church that values and practices being community in pain and in joy. Even when it is difficult. We have learned that. We follow the pattern set in Joppa. I think we can count on ourselves for that.
The second scene of shepherdship: the 23rd Psalm - so moving and so comforting, it follows us all our lives. Its water and oil are redolent of baptism. Jarrett was so thrilled when he got to baptize a teenager by full immersion. He figured out the logistics of how to do it by obtaining a moveable trough big enough to submerge a sizeable body. We did it on the front patio. A space, by the way, that Jarrett envisioned as a way to enlarge our worship space so we could share the surrounding community with our worship. St. Martin's more typical baptisms are celebrated inside the church at the beginning of a Sunday service so the whole congregation can welcome and incorporate the newly baptized. After the baptism, Jarrett processes up the aisle joyfully, extravagantly sprinkling us all with baptismal water. The freshly baptized settle down with their families to bask in the newly recognized holiness of their members. The rest of us recall again that the Baptismal Covenant as Jarrett has come to help us understand is the source and root of all we are about at St. Martin's. Everything that we do. Everything.
Now the hard example of how shepherds work, from Revelation. This is perhaps most Jarrettlike and most us. We do not take the easy just-go-to-church-on-Sunday version of Christianity. Under Jarrett's leadership, we have some sense of who it is who comes first in God's care. Those who hunger and thirst, who are kept from learning and thriving, who are refugees. These are the ones who come out of the great ordeal of our present world. We have learned to hear them guided by Jarrett through the work of POWER, of Beloved Community, of Supper, through St. James School, through Beyond Borders. We have changed how we respond. Now, rather than donating money toward scattered programs, we invest major funds and our energy to respond covenantally to the suffering we've learned to see in our world. We are learning to listen, rather than to assume we know how to fix the problem. When someone asks us "Who are these and where do they come from?" We say "Please tell us. We are listening." The church in these increasingly secular years needs a shepherd like those of the early church. We can't take faith for granted. We live in a world that engenders martyrs. We will need a shepherd like Jarrett who considers and acts to counter systemic injustice in the name of Jesus.
The fourth scene of shepherding from the Gospel reminds me very much of Jarrett and how he has led us over these eleven years. In today's Gospel, Jesus answered his antagonists, "I have told you and you do not believe." So many times, most often in Community Engagement meetings, but other times too, Jarrett will say "I have said it, I have told you." Finally, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh year, Jarrett marshaled us to collect some of his shepherding guidance in a handbook. We wrote it down. The Community Engagement Committee has worked for years on the ideas and structure of this handbook. Community Engagement is the coordinating body of all the various outreach ministries of St. Martin's. The vision statement of the handbook says that we "engage as agents of Christ's love in the world by developing mutual relationships at the local, regional, national, and international levels that advance the mission and values of St. Martin's as we discern God's will as a Church, together.' This vision of doing Christ's loving work in the world together will serve us as a firm foundation from which to grow and thrive and we will thank Jarrett for it for years. Find it on our website in the Community Engagement tab. You should read it. There's beautiful writing in it. When you read it, you will recognize our voices in it, and Jesus' shepherding voice behind ours, long into the future. I know I speak for many when I say we are grateful. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org